Lisabeth Salander

The author shows that you can't judge a book by it's cover. Lisabeth is the sort of girl who appears like a punk-rocker chick, with died black hair and skin covered in tattoos. In fact, she seems very much useless. She dropped out of high school and comes and goes as she pleases to work. Despite her appearance she works as a private investigator. Her boss almost fires her before realizing what she is capable of. It isn't just her intelligence or her mysterious ways of finding information on people that make her more than meets the eye. Her boss Dragan Armansky notices that she is almost pretty despite everything. She is almost delicate. She doesn't seem like much but she is very smart. She can get information described as being like "sheer magic" and "never once fumbled a job or turned in a single mediocre report."

Despite her differences between her and Mikael she handles conflicts with a similar matter-of-fact way. She is about to investigate whether or not he actually was guilty. Her reports are very matter fact similarly to how matter-of-factly he deals with his problems. Her reports are emotionless like how he reads his judgement thinking of how to deal with money and his company but barely his own emotional well being. When Lisabeth was about to be fired she convinced her boss to keep her three more days so that she could prove what she could do. Most people wouldn't try anything like that with their job on the line. She appeared as though she didn't care if she was fired but I think she did but didn't show it because she knew that it wouldn't get her anywhere. Lisabeth wrote a report on a pedophile with only pure facts and "dropped the bombshell" with the same "dry-dust tone she used to report that he lived in Sollentuna and drove a dark blue Volvo. Mikael gives very emotionless, vague answers in his interview after the trial when the court rules him guilty. It had just been officially confirmed he has to spend three months, basically ruining his reputation and he handles the press and his problems calmly. If only we could all face our own conflicts that attitude.

Mikael Blomkvist

So I just started reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." I noticed in the very beginning after Mikael Blomkvist has been judged guilty by the court it says, "As he read the judgement, he felt a growing heaviness and discomfort in his stomach. This surprised him. As the trial began he knew that it would take a miracle to help him escape conviction, and he had become reconcile to the out come. He sat through the two days of the trial surprisingly calm, and for eleven more days he waited, with out feeling anything in particular".... "It was only now that a physical unease had washed over him."

I guess it doesn't sound that deep, but to me it sounded poetic. I think often in life we know something is going to happen but it isn't till it actually happens that we really feel anything. When we know something bad is going to happen we don't realize just how it feels. Like we may know a loved one is going to die of a terrible disease but it isn't till they are dead that we feel we have lost them. This is interesting psychologically because it would make sense that we would always be terrified when we knew something bad was coming, and sometimes people are, but often we feel very little. At least  compared to when it actually does happen. Even physically we don't feel much. He felt fine, but it took a moment of realization that made finally it all seem real to make him feel anything about it. In our mind nothing that is going to happen, no matter how sure we are that it is going to happen, feels real till it is right in front of our faces.

Mikael goes at the whole thing very business like. He thinks of how going to jail and paying the money will effect his career and his business. At first I thought maybe he was just cold. Later he says things putting down business men so it isn't that he only cares about money. I think he is just very logical about the situation. He is going to jail for three months but he keeps his head. Not that he doesn't feel anything but he handles the problem instead of losing is mind. If I were to go to jail, even for a short period of time for something that wasn't that bad I would be thinking more about actually going to jail. Then again he is a adult man. He isn't unfeeling after all, he is at least nostalgic about his apartment because he basically designed it. I think he is just sort of average-guy who got in the wrong situation. There doesn't seem to be anything cold or bad about him and is likable but has no stand-out qualities. He is a good, fair reporter according to Lisbeth Salander but I'll talk about her next.