The Shinning

Sadly I have not gotten around to actually finish this lovely book yet because me and my father have had nightly quarrels over who gets the kindle or not and lately he's been winning. Any who, I only have twenty percent left so I'm close to finishing it. This book makes me want to read all of Stephen Kings books because of how scary this book actually is. The images are so surreal with the way he describes the women in the bathtub coming out and grabbing at little Danny's neck, or the bushes changing positions every time Jack or Danny looked behind their shoulder. It gives me shivers up my spine, but I love it. What has been bothering me though is Jack's character. I can not relate to him what so ever , and I think that I dislike him very much. He denies the fact that he is going insane and the Overlook isn't helping very much. How can you sit there and watch your precious son get hurt over and over again and still make excuses about it. I know his alcoholism hasn't helped much either. In fact it's the only reason I even understand him a little bit. The timing of going of the hotel during that winter didn't help because I don't think he was sober long enough to go through something like this. The mix of this creepy and crazy hotel and the alcoholism has made him consider more than once whether to kill his own wife and son or not. King has made me in love with Danny even though he's only a character in book. He seems like one of the smartest, most determined and loving kid characters I have read about lately. I think that's why I despise his father so much because in my opinion I don't think he tries hard enough to fight for him and fight enough to keep his family and sanity together. Danny is such a daddy's boy and loves him so much and Jack in my opinion just takes advantage of it. Wendy is even jealous of how much Danny loves him even after everything that Jack has done before and during their stay at the Overlook. I do feel like eventually when I do finish this book that maybe Jack's character will make a little more sense. I can not wait to finish this book finally and move on to his new one Doctor Sleep .

Where are you going, Where have you been?

This story honestly creeped me out, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because it gave me that feeling of worry and fear for this girl and for me personally I love stories or movies that can do that. All I was thinking it that I hope she doesn't go outside and please don't open that door. The fact that this character "Arnold Friend" knew everything about her and everything about where her family was made me have goose bumps. I like the mystery of not knowing if he was real or not also. At some points in the story like when he would be talking to Ellie or the way she described him at the door I would think he was real. But then at other times like when she would describe his voice saying it sounded like the one that was on the radio or when she described that something Arnold said sounded like song lyrics she had heard I began to believe that he really wasn't real and the sun was getting to Connie's head. But that's what I seemed to like about the story. The fact that you really didn't know if Arnold was actually there or not. I think the title has a lot to do with this story and the theme in general. In my mind the question "Where are you going" is one of the questions that little voice in your head asks you before you make a bad like Connie was going to do. "Where have you been" is a question you ask someone who has been out of it or in a day dream type state. In my opinion the very general theme is to trust your gut feeling. If you have a feeling something is off then go with that feeling and don't let other people or things distract you from that feeling.

In the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo there are many useful quotes that add to the theme and the novel as a whole. The first quote I believe has significance is the quote “Everyone has secrets. It’s just a matter of finding out what they are”. This whole book is revolved around unknown secrets. It’s considered a mystery novel for a reason. Every character you run into in this book as secrets. Salander’s whole life is a secret because of how secluded she makes herself from the world that people have no idea who she really is. People just judge her because of her looks and the way she acts but no one really knows how she is on the inside until almost the end of the novel. Blomkvist becomes one of the only people who even try to know her in that way. Salander’s life is the epiphany of that quote. Also Martin who is one of the two serial killers throughout the book keeps a lot of things to himself. For example the fact that he is one of the serial killers Blomkvist and Salander are trying to find because of his great uncle Henrik. Him and his father shared this sadistic side that no one know about except their victims and his siblings. He hid it for years and years before it was discover the afternoon he lured Blomkvist into his basement and tried to murder him. Also another quote that I believe is vital to the work as a whole is, “ It did no good to cry, she had learned that early on. She had also learned that every time she tried to make someone aware of something in her life, the situation just got worse. Consequently it was up to her to solve her problems by herself, using whatever methods she deemed necessary”. This quote goes with one of the main themes throughout the book of violence against women. In my mind this quote shows how strong one of the protagonist Lisbeth Salander really is. She has seen abused and has been abused but yet still finds a reason to move on and the strength to do it. The amount of violence this character endures is nothing like a normal woman should even encounter. To me her character and story is the main point and example of that theme of violence against women.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Part three

The author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is very interesting author to me. I began to notice that Larsson seems to go into detail about very simple things and also have a lot of little side stories. For example at the beginning of the novel when you first meet the one of the protagonist Blomkvist it starts out with his trial and then moves on to how he got there in the first place with when he first received the information he got in trouble for then the author goes into detail with that. After that he goes into detail about Blomkvist and where he works and that’s when you finally meet our second protagonist Lisbeth Salander, which is in fact the girl with the dragon tattoo. In my opinion this author jumps around a little bit at the beginning of this book. In this novel there is also a bit of a plot twist. As you’re reading this book you come to find out that Blomkist and Salander’s so called “murder victim” is not dead at all. In fact she’s quit alive and she is actually hiding. Once Blomkist figures this out her contacts her and finds out her side to the story. Also another kind of plot twist in the novel is when Blomkvist meets up with Martin Vanger at his house and Vanger lures him into the basement and attempts to kill him. We find out that Martin and his father where in the fact the serial killers that Blomkvist and Salander have been looking for this whole time. Martin’s dad Gottfried was the one who molested and abused both his children and inducted Martin into this type of practice also. This is also at the climax of the novel, and Salander comes to the rescue and saves Blomvist just in time for them to escape. Martin ends up trying to fall them in rage of what happened but ends up dying in a car accident. These two plot elements are important to the overall theme of this novel because to me the theme is violence against women in Sweden at the time. Martin and Gottfried are the best example of this theme because of how the treated women who they apparently loved and the victims that they killed also.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Part Dos

This novel seems to have a lot of mystery and surprises in it. One of the things that I found surprising so far is actually the way Lisbeth fights back with her new guardian. I know Lisbeth is not the kind of women to let someone control her like that for too long. I did not expect her to do the things that she did do to him. I expected her to just record it and black mail him with it. She took it a step farther though and this was the shocking part to me. She basically tortured him the same way he did to her, which I found surprising. How could you ever do that to someone? It's just gruesome and unheard of. I do not want to go too much into detail about what they did to each other but he raped her and abused her and she did to the best to her ability the same thing back to him. Both scenes are definitely not the best scenes in the book but they are important. Although what she did to him wasn’t right I was glad she took a stand for herself and defended herself instead of letting him walk all over her. She showed for once the strength of a woman in this book. Throughout this novel women are usually downgraded and seen as victims but in this scene it changed. Men were shown as weak. The fact that Lisbeth had the physical and mental strength to do that to this guy was surprising to me too. Later on in the novel you find out that this isn’t the first time she has stood up against another man. The other man that she happened to stand up against was her father. The only reason she found courage to do it though was because of her mother. He was abusing her mother physically and mentally and she didn’t like it at all. Lisbeth decided one day that it was enough and lit him on fire. Also what was surprising to me was that their missing woman wasn't even missing or dead. She was hiding. I'm usually really good at guessing situations like that in movies but in this book it came as a kind of shock for me.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

When my mother found out that I was reading this book she wasn't the happiest person with me. All she knew about the book was about the rape scenes. Which is what most people think when they hear about this book. In my opinion I didnt mind these scenes throughout the book. I wasn't completely okay with the fact something like that was going on but in a way it added to the book. I think it opens peoples eyes to the fact that these situations do indeed happen in the world. Not a lot of authors put scenes like that in there books for a reason because of how gruesome it really is. It's not like a movie and you can just turn your eyes you have to actually read it. This made the book more interseting to me. I think girls my age should definitly be aware that this happens all over the world to many of teenage girls and women. Many people think this novel is sexist and against wommen but I think differently. Even though throughout the novel women are abused , but I still believe that this isn't a novel degrading women I think it's a novel suppporting women. It's saying how horrible things happen to the best of us and again I think it opens people's eyes. Even after my mother and even my grandmothers warned me about how graphic the novel was at those scenes I still had interset in reading it. I do understand and identify with the authors reasoning with putting those kinds of scenes throughout the novel. It does make me symphazie more with Lisbeth and her struggles throguhout her life because it's not the first time in the novel when she got abused that she experienced abuse. She's in this whole mess of a sitaution because she lit her father on fire because he was in fact abusing her mother. She was standing up for her and thought that was the best way to end it. She went through all of this just to protect her mother. While I was reading it i was hoping that she would get back at her parol officer in some way or another. She could've done it a little bit differently but in the end he ultamitly got what he desesrved and what she felt he deserved. Instead of telling teenage girls not to read this novel I would actually recommand it to this age group more to become aware of what happens in the world.