The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo

Chapter 5

Summary

Satisfied that he has Blomkvist’s attention, Henrik details the circumstances of Harriet’s disappearance. During a Children’s Day parade in 1966, he claims, a car accident effectively closed off the island. Henrik explains that though several people saw Harriet both at the parade and after the accident, she never made it to dinner that evening. Henrik believes that someone in the Vanger family must have killed her, since the island was closed off to outsiders by the accident and no one could enter or leave unnoticed. The story shifts back to Salander, who finishes one of Blomkvist’s books. Then, as part of her work for Milton Security and the client Frode, she goes to scope out Wennerström’s apartment building. Additionally, she sets up a meeting with an acquaintance who goes by the name Plague.

Analysis

The isolation of Hedeby, as well as Frode’s unwillingness to offer Blomkvist any details about Henrik’s freelance job, sets a stark tone for the novel and highlights the secrecy and isolation of the Vanger family. When Blomkvist arrives, the cold and the quiet of the small town leave an immediate impression on him. The island is geographically isolated, but it feels emotionally isolated as well. Henrik contributes to this mood as well with his explanation of Harriet’s disappearance, which he compares to a locked-room mystery with a finite number of suspects. Repeatedly Blomkvist feels the urge to leave and return home, which exhibits the almost claustrophobic effect of Hedeby. Additionally, Henrik’s determination to keep Blomkvist on the island, evidenced by the way he engages Blomkvist and sets up the conversation, makes Blomkvist feel trapped emotionally as well as physically.

Hedeby, of course, houses the Vanger family, a dysfunctional clan that exemplifies the worst of Sweden’s social ills and dovetails with Blomkvist’s own troubled family relationships. One important feature of these chapters is Henrik’s admission of anti-Semitism in his family, which he treats as one of many shameful vices within the clan and which also ties the clan to one of the darker aspects of Swedish heritage. Other social ills plague the family as well, including alcoholism, hedonism, and laziness, and as a result the Vanger family functions as an exaggerated microcosm of the worst elements of Swedish society: isolated, dysfunctional, and self-gratifying. No stranger to troubled relationships, Blomkvist also has problems with family and committed relationships, and these problems manifest most strongly in his awkward interactions with his daughter, Pernilla, with whom he seems uncertain and slightly ashamed. The Vanger family serves as an extreme example of how family relationships can go wrong, and Blomkvist as a more subtle, and perhaps realistic, one.