Unchalantly Salander

          I am currently reading "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson, the second book of the trilogy. So far the trilogy is a pretty insane, action-packed, incredibly well written set of books. In the second book, Lisbeth Salander is accused of a triple murder. Salander is a very aloof woman, and does not entrust in government, or rarely anyone other than herself. She almost always uses a fake identity, and is constantly traveling all over. She may not trust in the authorities, but she is an extremely moral person, and often takes matters into her own hands. And yet, when she is accused of murder, she does not do much to stop it.
          Anyway, Salander is accused of a horrendous triple murder, and is put on high profile; everyone in Sweden has seen her terrible quality passport photo, and everyone is looking for her. During this period of time, Mikael Blomkvist is convinced she is innocent. Salander and Blomkvist had had a relationship in the previous year, but since then had not spoken to each other. Blomkvist knows that she is innocent, and is doing all he can to prove it.
          A major flaw in Salander's accusation is that she is portrayed to the public as a psychopathic murderer, who will harm anyone who gets in her way. Why? When Salander was younger, she was declared "incompetent", simply because she refused to talk on many occasions, and was not very socially active. This alone makes me furious. Just because someone does not like to talk, or does not fit society's idea of a "social" person, does not mean they should be declared socially inept! That declaration led to tons of other very serious problems later in Salander's life, because of that barrier. Salander is actually incredibly brilliant. I would say she's ingenious. But because she is anti-social (even if very), she is cast off as a nutjob. Because of this, to the public audience, she is a psychopath.
          For a long time, we read about the accusation. The discovery of the victims, the police teams, the process, the investigations, etc., all the while thinking, "What the hell happened? Is Salander innocent? What is she thinking right now? What is she doing?" Finally, the story goes back to Salander. The first few sentences we're hearing about her during the frenzy are, "Salander spent the first week of the police hunt far from the drama. She remained in peace and quiet in her apartment on Fiskargatan." then later, "She was irritated by the passport photograph that appeared everywhere. She looked stupid." Not only is she quite relaxed about the entire escapade, she is prominently annoyed about the passport photo used in the newspapers. As we find out shortly after, Salander is innocent of what they are accusing her of. Innocent. Yet, she is relaxing in her apartment as she moves farther and farther up "Sweden's Most Wanted". I simply don't understand it. She perplexes me, and frustrates me at the same time.
          Back to Mikael Blomkvist, one of the things he tries extremely hard to do is contact Lisbeth Salander. He needs to talk to her, to make sure she's innocent, to get some grasp of what's going on. When he is finally able to contact her, she responds in vague messages. One of the messages she sent Blomkvist was one word, "Zala". Blomkvist then responded "Lisbeth, You damn troublesome person. Who the hell is Zala? Is he the link? Do you know who murdered Dag & Mia? If so, tell me so we can solve this mess and go to sleep. Mikael." Seems like some pretty reasonable questions, considering, right? Salander responds with another cryptic message, "You're the journalist. Find out." If she knows something that could help prove her innocence, why doesn't she just go out and say it? I can't tell if she's waiting for someone else to figure it out, or if she just doesn't trust anyone else to prove her innocence, or what! Maybe she feels like she doesn't even have the responsibility to prove herself innocent, considering she is so under the radar normally, anyway. I don't know.
          If something is wrong, or injust, you have to do something about it. You simply cannot just sit in your apartment waiting for someone else to do it for you! It's choices like that that do not result in any accomplishments whatsoever. This situation is extremely frustrating to me. The fact that she is being blamed for such a horrific crime, and she has something that could prove her innocence that she isn't bringing to the table really upsets me, and I just don't understand it!