I’m writing a review of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” for the Vanishing Tattoo website. Author Stieg Larsson has created an unlikely duo that team up to solve the mystery of a long-ago disappearance of a young woman in a lonely Swedish landscape. Blomkvist and Salander couldn’t appear more incompatible – a middle-aged journalist, principled, disciplined and male, in league with a young, brooding, anorexic, rebellious, body-modified hacker. About the only thing they have in common is the brewing and drinking of unhealthy amounts of coffee (on just about every page, I swear it’s true). Soon, though, it’s clear that for different reasons Blomkvist and Salander have something else simmering on the back burner – vengeance.
Never mind the story – what interests me is the device of bringing together such stark opposites. It makes for great dramatic tension, not least because Salander and Blomkvist become romantically involved. It also makes the point that two people can become one super-powered organism. What if we were to extrapolate that to humanity in general?
Recently, I’ve become impressed with my limitations. I am not and never will acquire a talent for figure skating, quantum physics, or navigating FaceBook. Similarly, few people on earth have my unique passion for sounding important in print, collecting old golf clubs, and meditating. Obviously, we can’t all be everything. As a species, though, we are – all together—everything. The evolution of the human species would appear to be lurching, however painfully slowly, toward a secure ontological footing in this fact.
So what?
So this – a vicarious glimpse of wholeness is one of the rewards of reading good literature. Authors aren’t knowingly designing stories with this in mind. They don’t have to. It’s part of a protagonist’s job description to gain a larger worldview in advance of charging into Act III.
After getting sufficiently battered by the forces of antagonism, the hero starts to become disenchanted with all her best efforts and comes to learn that she is ‘only human’. If she accepts that notion, she realizes that she’s part of a larger interconnected humanity. By acknowledging our limits, we simultaneously see the advantages of surrendering to how the whole works together. We see this in stories all the time. Look for it.
By the end of “Dragon Tattoo,” the dark and tattooed angel known as Salander is just beginning to wake up to these facts of life. She has two sequels to look forward to. Two more thick volumes in which to experiment with the nearly impossible art of becoming human.
PJ, a good read, thanks. And a good reminder of this powerful universal message of literature. Just got done reading Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, and it echoes fully with what you say here about humanity. Despite her story’s distinctly unmodernist prose style, her James-like convolutions and tedious furniture arranging, Wharton very much shows the tragedy of her heroine to be a lack of connection. If we as readers connect to this message, then we too take part in the drama of connection, as you imply. And may, vicariously, help in healing ourselves.
Good stuff, GK…maybe you’d like to be a guest blogger on this heavyweight site. I like to highlight the scenes in books and films — and in real life — that cause us (force us) to wake up to a larger perspective on the world. The ever bigger picture is the direction we’re taken by evolution. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it….unless a greater worldview suggests otherwise. Love to hear more from your corner of the world whenever you get the chance. Saludos.