The Girl Who Played With Fire...and other things.

The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson so far seems to continue the same themes and issues as the first book in the series. The subjects of sadism, rape, and all of those other morbid topics appear to be just as prevalent in the first book as the second. I feel that the first book heavily concentrated on the issues focusing around the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, while the second book seems to focus more on the personal life of Lisbeth Salander's and how her life translates to the real world.

In the first book we learned that Salander is an introverted, wild, and just plain weird person, however, we never really learned or understood why she was this way. We know that she was put in a foster home when she was younger, but we don't know why. I only know that this time period in her life is called "All the evil." I'm not sure of what this exactly means, but I can speculate that she was probably abused as a child since it's a very sensitive topic. If Salander was abused as a child, it seems to have affected her greatly: she's a loner, and doesn't trust anyone. It's as if being abused lost all of Salander's hope in society; that's why she's probably the way she is now. It's like she has Post Dramatic Stress Disorder and whenever anyone asks her about her personal life, she shuts up. To compensate for her short comings, she becomes a sex addict. My only reasoning behind is that it gives her a sense dominance that was possibly taken away from her when she was younger.

In conclusion, I've come across the idea that these books weren't just written to be entertaining. It's pretty clear to me that this book and the other books alike were written with a specific agenda in mind. It's obvious to me that these books were written to bring awareness to a serious issue that our society faces today: human rights. It's about how powerful people take advantage of vulnerable people, such as prostitutes or illegal immigrants, and exploit them unjustly and immorally. This is true in all of society, and it's an excellent point that Stieg Larsson makes.