A Peculiar Form of Suspense “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Julia Shumway and Jackie Wettington have something in common: a crush on Colonel James O. Cox, whom they consider good-looking (Julia) and forceful (Jackie). For her part, Rose Twitchell prefers CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer, who “can,” as far as she’s concerned, “eat crackers in my bed anytime” he wishes (765). King’s own admiration for the journalist is clear, as is his respect for CNN. Everyone, it appears, from the patrons of Dippy’s Roadhouse and the clientele of Sweetbriar Rose restaurant watch the news channel, as does Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie, the novel’s antagonist. Any newscasts that occur during Under the Dome’s action are those that are transmitted by CNN. Even the hospital staff listen to CNN. It’s tuned in, with John Roberts broadcasting, when Rusty Everett has his run-in with Big Jim. Indeed, on the rare occasion that King refers at all to his beloved CNN’s chief rival, FOX News, it is with derision. For example, when one of the FOX News team dares to ask Colonel Cox a question during the press conference that the military man calls, one of King’s characters is delighted to see the journalist put in his place. The colonel has just told the press corps that the Army has “established a no-go-zone around the Dome” because of a concern that “the Dome might have” unrecognized “harmful effects” in addition to the hazards that it is known to possess:

“Are you talking about radiation, Colonel?” someone called.

Cox froze him with a glance, and when he seemed to consider the reporter properly chastised (not Wolfie, Rose was pleased to see, but that half-bald, no-spin yapper from FOX News), he went on (762).

The reader is apt to note, with dismay, that King apparently does believe, after all, in a simple, black-and-white world in which the good guys are his guys (Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Barbara Starr, John Roberts) and the bad guys are not. It is regrettable that someone who’s written so many books for so long, about so many issues, albeit through the medium of fiction, rather than as a journalist, would still perceive politics, journalism, social, and military matters in such an unsophisticated manner.

Like his character, Linda Everett, he apparently believes that “there are sides“--two of them--in news reporting, at least, just as it is clear that he has definitely chosen his side. Obviously, King has every right to take sides--Under the Dome is his novel, after all, and its world is his world--but the reader who doesn’t share his biases is apt to resent his arrogance in assuming that CNN is respectable and that FOX News is the home of “yappers.” Moreover, such a reader is likely to wonder how such biases affect the thought processes of his characters, one of whom admits to having an almost romantic crush on Blitzer. Is one reading a liberal/Democrat novel or a non-partisan novel? If it’s not necessary to insert a particular political point of view into the story, one has to wonder why King does so. The term “self-indulgent” comes to mind, as it does, in the reading of such novels as Lisey’s Story and Duma Key. Please, Mr. King, the reader might want to plead, especially if he or she is a moderate, a conservative, an independent, or a Republican, just tell the story; a paean to CNN and the liberal point of view is not needed or particularly desired.

During “CNN BREAKING NEWS,“ Colonel Cox‘s press conference is announced. The colonel has called the conference to make life difficult for Big Jim and to frustrate the selectman’s push for increased political power as he, like Rahm Emmanuel, seeks to take full advantage of the crisis represented by the mysterious dome’s descent over the isolated town of Chester’s Mill, Maine. He does so by announcing a Dome Visitors’ Day and by calling upon Big Jim to answer such questions from the press corps (or from those who are allowed to ask questions), such as whether there are “any plans to add a press conference” (asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer); why Big Jim, rather than Colonel Barbara, is in charge under the dome (asked by Wolf Blizer); whether Big Jim would bother to attend such a press conference when he is reportedly involved in criminal activities or “financial mismanagement” (asked by NBC’s Lester Holt); whether it is true that Colonel Barbara has been arrested for serial murders (asked by CBS’ Rita Braver); and whether Barbie could have been “jailed to keep him from taking control as the President ordered” (asked by PBS’ Ray Suarez). (No questions are accepted from FOX News representatives. Apparently, Colonel Cox found the one about radiation impertinent.)

Following the press conference that Julia, Jackie, Rose, and others of Barbie’s supporters watch at Sweetbriar Rose, King’s omniscient narrator transports the reader to the jail, where Barbie is allowed to interact with Deputy Manuel Ortega, lest the reader forget completely about the passive protagonist. In this scene, Barbie comes off as even weaker and more ineffective than he has seemed so far. In fact, during the scene when he was shown as willing to drink from the cell’s toilet bowl rather than to faint from dehydration and the omniscient narrator shared with the reader Barbie’s past training in black ops, hand-to-hand combat, and interrogation techniques, referencing his service in Iraq, Barbie, who single-handedly bested four tough thugs in the parking lot outside Dippy’s Roadhouse, seemed as rough and ready as John Rambo.

Since then, however, much of the military toughness of the colonel has seemingly dulled. He’s been in jail since page 533, mostly being verbally and physically abused and subjected to the childish pranks of his jailers (who have salted his drinking water, for example, and contaminated his cereal with spit and boogers). He’s succeeded in very little otherwise, except to have stashed his pocketknife inside his bunk’s mattress. During this scene, Ortega, upset by Colonel Cox’s press conference (and, no doubt, by Wolf Blitzer’s questions), threatens Barbie with his .45, leaving Barbie shaken and sweating: “Barbie leaned back against the wall and let out a breath. There was sweat on his forehead. The hand he lifted to wipe it off was shaking” (768).

Barbie looks weaker yet because of the reader’s inevitable comparison of him, the passive protagonist, with Big Jim Rennie, the active antagonist. While, it may be argued, Barbie is--or can be--tough and is courageous, and that he has advanced hand-to-hand and perhaps martial arts skills, he seems to lack the passion for goodness that Big Jim has for evil. Big Jim is a determined, relentless adversary, who uses imagination, audacity, and intelligence to pursue his goals. He is also courageous and resourceful, organized and efficient, confident and defiant. A natural leader, Big Jim commands loyalty, inspires both respect and fear, and exhibits political acumen. Although he is contemptuous of others, seeing them as weak or dependent and he is involved in crime, including not only the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine, but also murder, Big Jim inspires the reader’s grudging respect in the same way that a Mafia godfather or a third-world strongman might do. He is glamorous, impressive, and powerful, a commanding figure with genuine presence. The passive Barbie, although he has shown that he can fight and is mentally tough as well as physically strong, doesn’t seem to be nearly as imposing as the villainous Big Jim.

Barbie comes off even less heroic when his passivity is juxtaposed to physician assistant Rusty Everett’s confrontation with Big Jim Rennie as he checks on his patient’s condition following Big Jim’s admittance to the hospital for treatment of his arrhythmia. Rusty has already confronted Big Jim once, in the selectman’s office, demanding an account as to what became of the propane that was stolen from the hospital, extracting from Big Jim the promise to investigate the matter, which, along with Big Jim’s decision to shut down his illegal drug operation, results in the return of two stolen tanks. Now, the courageous, if naïve, Rusty confronts the politician about a much more serious matter, declaring “I know you killed Coggins” (778), telling him about the baseball stitch marks he has seen on the Reverend Coggins’ face, which match those on the gold-plated baseball in Big Jim’s office, and demanding that Big Jim and Andy Sanders “step down” and allow Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell to “take over” the government of Chester’s Mill. However, Rusty crosses the line, morally and legally, when he threatens to withhold lifesaving medication from his patient if Big Jim refuses to “step down.” Unfortunately, Rusty is no match for his unscrupulous and murderous foe, who has concealed Deputy Freddy Denton and his bodyguard Special Deputy Carter Thibodeau in his hospital room’s bathroom. Having heard Rusty threaten to withhold the drugs that would keep Big Jim alive unless the politician agrees to resign from office, they are able to charge Rusty with extortion. In addition, they add the trumped-up charges of resisting arrest and attempted murder. They also allege that their prisoner, Colonel Barbara, or “Barbie,” “put him up to it” (782). After ordering Freddy to retrieve his cellular telephone, which Rusty had pocketed, Big Jim steps on Rusty’s left hand, seemingly breaking three of his fingers. (Actually, they are dislocated, although the fifth metacarpal of his hand is broken.) The physician’s assistant is then jailed, three cells down from Barbie, and the contrast between the assertive medic and the passive soldier is made even more striking, as, despite extreme pain, Rusty pulls his dislocated fingers, except for the pinkie, back into place, even managing to joke about his condition as he does so, saying he needs to “fix” his middle finger, as he “may need it” to flip off Big Jim and his cronies (788). Although Rusty no doubt acted rashly, both times that he confronted Big Jim (as he did when he seized the dome genberator), he has hardly made the situation any worse than it already is. The question is whether Barbie, jailed for over 250 pages now, has made anything better.

In any case, concerned that the jail is bugged, Barbie mouths the news to Rusty that, tomorrow night, a rescue is to be mounted, intelligence of which Rusty is already aware. Barbie adds, still mouthing the words, that they will require a safe house in which to stay following their escape, and Rusty thinks that, “thanks to Joe McClatchey and his friends. . . he had that part covered” (789).

King is a master storyteller with a long history of writing bestsellers, so it seems unlikely that he would be unaware of the apparent passivity of his jailed soldier. Barbie was promoted to the rank of colonel as the president’s “inside man.” He has displayed impressive combat skills in his fight against the four thugs who attacked him outside Dippy’s Roadhouse. He can be resourceful (he hid his pocketknife inside the jailhouse bunk’s mattress and drinks from a toilet bowl), and he is trained in close combat, interrogation, and black ops skills. He is respected by Colonel Cox, a “forceful” man. However, King’s having kept him in jail for a fourth of his novel, wherein he’s the frequent butt of jokes and jibes and has been physically assaulted and threatened with death on several occasions as well, makes Barbie seem more pitiful than admirable, as does Rusty’s manly, take-charge conduct, juxtaposed to Barbie’s apparent acquiescence to his foes. It will take extreme acts of heroism before the end of the story for Barbie to redeem himself as the hero whose past training, experience, and action has led the reader to believe he is capable of being. Perhaps King can pull it off. After all, he is a master storyteller with a long history of writing bestsellers. Still, the reader wonders, which is, in its own way, another, if rather peculiar, form of suspense.

Party Politics “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

For quite a few pages, ever since Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, and Benny Drake discovered what they (and physician’s assistant Rusty Everett) believe is the dome generator, King has been building suspense concerning the device. Finally, Rusty not only sees it firsthand, but conducts a couple of tentative experiments with it. The device is odd: although the radiation level has been just shy of the danger zone all the way up Black Ridge, from McCoy’s Orchard, the Geiger counter now reads the threat as zero, and the condition of a hale and hearty squirrel, living (or, at least, foraging) in the area testifies to the safety of the area--from radiation, at any rate. Unwisely, Rusty, perhaps emboldened by the zero reading and the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed rodent, “bent and touched the surface of the generator--if it was a generator.” Although he is wearing protective gloves, the result of his contact is immediate:

A strong shock immediately surged up his arm and through his body. He tried to pull back and couldn’t. His muscles were locked up tight. The Geiger counter gave a single bray, then fell silent. Rusty had no idea whether or not the needle swung into the danger zone, because he couldn’t move his eyes, either. The light was leaving the world, funneling out of it like water going down a bathtub drain, and he thought with sudden clam clarity: I’m going to die. . . (736).

However, Rusty doesn’t die. Instead, he has either a hallucination or makes a telepathic connection, albeit one way, with him as the receiver, with an extraterrestrial race--or so, at least, he believes, seeing “faces.” but not “human faces, and later he would not be sure they were faces at all. They were geometric solids that seemed to be padded in leather” with “diamond shapes on their sides” that “could have been ears.” These “heads--if they were heads--turned to each other. . . In [apparent] discussion,” and Rusty thinks he “heard laughter,” picturing children at play at the local grammar school his daughters attend (735)

Rusty removes his iron apron and lays it over the generator. The metal catches fire, blisters, and disintegrates Despite witnessing the apparent defensive capability of the device and having himself been shocked by it, Rusty, having removed his gloves, seizes the generator in his bare hands, anticipating another shock, a burn, or another telepathic connection to the aliens. Instead, “there was nothing” (737). Despite its relatively small size--a little bigger than the proverbial breadbox--the generator refuses to budge. As Rusty wonders what to do next, he hears a tremendous explosion, looks up, and sees that another airplane, this one a large passenger jet, has crashed into the dome.

As a result of the jet’s crashing into the barrier, the townspeople unite more and more, wearing blue armbands as a sign of their solidarity. This solidarity is necessary, of course, to secure Big Jim Rennie’s political base and power, and it happens just before the selectman gives his speech to the townspeople. In including this scene, King also takes the opportunity to philosophize about human behavior, suggesting that, for approximately fifty percent of a population, long-term trauma encourages acceptance in place of denial. Acceptance, in turn, succumbs to dependency, and dependency gives way to resignation:

Earlier that morning, perhaps fifteen percent of the town was wearing blue “solidarity” armbands; by sundown on this Wednesday in October, it will be twice that. When the sun comes up tomorrow, it will be over fifty percent of the population.
Denial gives way to acceptance; acceptance breeds dependence. Anyone who’s ever cared for a terminal patient will tell you that, too. . . .

They need someone to sit with them when the night is dark and the hours stretch out. They need someone to say, Sleep now, it will be better in the morning. I’m here, so sleep. Sleep now. Sleep and let me take care of everything.

Sleep (740).

For years, the townspeople of Chester’s Mill have been more or less content, most of the time, to let Big Jim Rennie take charge of their affairs, to look out for the supposed good of the town, to take care of them, both individually and collectively. Now that they are involved in a crisis beyond human reckoning, the townspeople seem prepared to accept his dictatorial leadership, depending upon his strength and courage, despite his corruption. King has set the stage for Big Jim’s gathering of greater and greater power unto himself during his upcoming speech before the accepting, dependent, and resigned citizenry of Chester’s Mill. Big Jim himself knows as much. As he stands outside Town Hall, having hurried forth to see what caused the great explosion that occurred as he was working on his speeches--”one to the cops tonight. . . [and] one to the entire town tomorrow night”--he observes the townspeople “staring up into the sky with their mouths gaped open,” and he thinks, “they looked like sheep dressed in human clothing. Tomorrow night they would crowd into the Town Hall and go baaa baaa baaa, when’ll it get better? And baaa baaa baaa, take care of us until it does. And he would” (741).

Meanwhile, since page 533, Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara has been in jail on trumped-up assault, rape, and murder charges. Apart from drinking from his toilet bowl, eating cereal upon which his jailers have spat and deposited nasal mucus, and bantering with his captors while he waits for Deputy Jackie Wettington to rescue him, he does precious little. Even before his incarceration, he didn’t do much other than cook at the local restaurant, get into a fight, and quell a riot. All in all, to say that Barbie is a passive protagonist is putting it mildly. Perhaps the fictional version of President Barack Hussein Obama erred in selecting Barbie as his official representative inside the dome. Alternatively, King may be saving Barbie’s heroic feats for the resolution of his massive story. If so, though, one has to wonder, at this point, whether the reader will care.

It is no longer either acceptable to readers from either an artistic standpoint or from a politically correct perspective to characterize dramatic personae on the basis of their physical appearance, so that physically unattractive characters are villains and beautiful people are heroes or heroines, as was the stereotypical practice of days gone by. However, King uses a similar approach, which is both aesthetically and socially acceptable (so far): he uses references to physical organs (his male characters often exhibit fear, for instance, by a tightening of, or a crawling sensation in, their testes and scrota, and, throughout Under the Dome, King references Big Jim’s heart condition--an Achilles’ heel, no doubt--as a means of suggesting his emotional state. An example occurs when he fears that the crashing jet may have been the detonation of an atomic bomb that could destroy the dome before Big Jim would like to have the barrier obliterated and the townspeople rescued. It is only when he understands that the explosion was that of an aircraft rather than a bomb that he begins to relax and his heart rate slows: “Big Jim felt a cautious sense of relief, and his triphammering heart slowed a bit. It was a plane. . . just a plane and not a nuke or some kind of super-missile. . . “ (740). However, when Colonel Cox is slow to get back to him in confirmation of the airliner’s identity, his heart rate again increases: “Big Jim’s heart had been slowing toward its normal speed (if a hundred and twenty beats per minute can be so characterized), but now it sped up again and took one of those looping misbeats. He coughed and pounded his chest. His heart seemed almost to settle, then went into a full-blown arrhythmia” (741). Since the heart symbolizes the spiritual, moral, and emotional aspects of the personality, King has chosen wisely in using Big Jim’s heart condition as a metaphor for his personal, political, and spiritual corruption.

Once again, although King cites George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (who, like Big Jim, has a bad heart) as his models for Big Jim, there are strong parallels in the selectman’s behavior to both President Obama and his chief advisor, Rahm Emmanuel. Like Emmanuel, Big Jim believes in never letting a crisis go to waste, and, like Obama, he uses such situations to further his own political base and personal power, acting in a tyrannical and self-righteous manner, believing that not only does he know what’s best for the town he governs but also that he is doing God’s will in doing so. The arrogance of Emmanuel, Obama, and Big Jim is another striking parallel between the situation “under the dome” and that in present-day America. Big Jim, who sees his fellow townspeople as “sheep,” thinks “Sheep need a shepherd,” and he believes that, “under certain circumstances, panic could be good. Under certain circumstances, it could--like food riots and acts of arson--have a beneficial effect.” (So might such conditions as a worldwide economic meltdown, worsened by runaway spending; a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan; the Gulf oil spill; international terrorism; a porous border and massive illegal immigration; and whatever “crisis” exists or can be invented next, it seems.) Like Obama, who seldom speaks without a carefully prepared speech projected onto a teleprompter, Big Jim also knows the value of prepared speeches. When Colonel Cox pleads with the selectman to make sure that the people of Chester’s Mill understand that the jetliner’s crash was “just an accident,” Big Jim thinks, “They’ll know what I tell them and believe what I want them to” (742).

Are such parallels intentional, showing that King’s political thought processes have matured beyond black-or-white, either-or fallacious form of partisan politics and the playing of an “us” liberals/Democrats against “them” conservatives/Republicans blame game, or are these parallels the result of mere coincidence, suggesting that King remains more an ideologue than an independent thinker? Is it possible that one of the world’s most popular writers hasn’t stretched his own political perspective beyond that of his college years when it was all the rage to “STICK IT TO THE MAN,” as young Joe McClatchey would have had his fellow students do in response to the descent of the dome? Is it possible that King, who shows himself to be fairly astute in his analysis and understanding of human behavior, could be so superficial and stereotypical in his perception of politics? It is possible, of course, but it’s not desirable. According to his own statements, Big Jim is modeled upon President Bush (the son) and Vice-President Chaney. That the same character could easily have been modeled upon President Obama and Rahm Emmanuel should teach King something, if it hasn’t already: the two-party system is more corrupt than Big Jim Rennie, offering little difference between the platforms and, therefore, voters’ alternatives. That’s what the Tea Party and the increasing ranks of moderates and independents without political party affiliation are all about. If it’s not what Under the Dome is all about, let’s hope that, in his next novel, King is sadder but wiser in the ways of the world.

News reaches Rusty from the hospital: both Big Jim, suffering from arrhythmia, and Junior, diagnosed with having a possible brain tumor, have been admitted to the medical facility. On their way back to Chester’s Mill from Black Ridge, Rusty swear his companions to silence concerning his discovery of the dome generator.

Rose Twitchell takes sandwiches to Barbie and, despite Melvin Searles’ presence, Barbie succeeds in relaying a message to his former employer: “Tell her [Deputy Jackie Wettington, who plans to break Barbie out of jail] I said you’re all right” (747), meaning that it’s all right for Jackie to share her secrets with Rose.

Andy Sanders and The Chef smoke methamphetamine while the latter lectures the former, based upon a wild interpretation of the book of Revelation., concerning their roles as “Christian soldiers” in the apocalypse that is to come on Halloween, if not earlier. Both men also vow never to let Big Jim and his cronies shut down their meth lab, as Big Jim has said he will do to get “rid of the evidence” of his illegal operation ((751).

As Barbie was drafted back into the Army as a colonel by presidential order, so is Deputy Jackie Wettington, a former sergeant, who’s been “stop-lossed” and assigned the “twofold” mission of rescuing Barbie from jail and of ousting Big Jim from his office as selectman-become-dictator. King loses this section of his novel by setting the stage for future developments involving a conflict between Barbie and Wettington and their followers and Big Jim and his camp. With Halloween coming early, perhaps, to Chester’s Mill and Rusty Everett’s discovery of the dome generator, things are likely to be lively, despite a relatively passive protagonist, Big Jim’s arrhythmia, and Junior’s glioma. After all, the reader has been warned, “that dead band song” is about to “play.”

Tyranny and Solidarity "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Romeo (“Rommie”) Burpie visits his department store, telling his clerks that he is conducting inventory. Instead, he loads up shopping carts with the radiation-protection items that Rusty Everett has requested for use in his pending visit to Black Ridge, where Joe McClatchey and his friends, Norrie Calvert and Benny Drake, believe the dome generator is located. His clerks wear blue armbands, which makes Rommie believe that they have been sworn in as special deputies. They assure him that they have not; the armbands are merely intended to show “solidarity” with the local firefighting and police departments. Rommie decides that he and Rusty should wear these bands, too, as “camouflage,” so Big Jim and his supporters will falsely assume that Rommie and Rusty, too, support him. After gathering the equipment that Rusty has requested, Rommie also hides several rifles in his store’s safe, in case Big Jim rounds up all the citizens’ weapons.

Meanwhile, Big Jim Rennie refuses to surrender his authority to Andrea Grinell, as Colonel Cox suggests when the Army officer makes contact with the selectman via telephone, even after Cox lets Big Jim know that the Army knows about his manufacture and dsitribuion of illegal drugs and promises not to prosecute the politician if he agrees to do so. Big Jim adopts Carter Thibodeau as his personal bodyguard, dispatching him with a message to Chief Randolph: fire Deputy Wettington. Big Jim also orders Thibodeau to instruct Deputy Stacey Moggin to assemble “every officer we’ve got on our roster” at Food Town supermarket, where Big Jim plans to deliver “another speech” in which he will “wind them up like Granddad’s pocketwatch [sic]”(707).

Fired, Jackie commiserates with the Reverend Piper Libby, and the two women compare notes, Jackie telling Piper about Rusty’s visit to the funeral home and his determination that a baseball was used to kill the Reverend Lester Coggins and that someone broke Brenda Perkins’ neck. (In an earlier scene, Rommie, who is quite the womanizer, vowed to avenge himself upon whoever killed Brenda, who was former girlfriend of his.) Jackie also notifies Piper of her plan to break Barbie out of jail. Jackie asks Piper to allow a meeting between eight trusted citizens who oppose Big Jim and Chief Police Pete Randolph at her parsonage that night. Among the invited are librarian Lssa Jamieson and retired Food Town manager Ernie Calvert. They complete their discussion as Helen Roux, Georgia’s mother, arrives at Piper's house for counseling concerning her daughter Georgia’s death at the hands of Georgia’s victim, Samantha Bushey.

Just as Big Jim’s enemies are choosing followers, Deputy Henry Morrison believes that Big Jim likewise plans to assemble a cadre of trusted lieutenants, eliminating Jackie and other officers whom the selectman thinks may be loyal to the former chief of police rather than to Police Chief Randolph and himself. Henry believes that he will be the next to be fired and that others who will be terminated will likely include Linda Everett and Stacey Moggin. As Linda Everett told her husband, Rusty, earlier, “There are sides, and you need to think about which one you’re on” (527). Both Big Jim and his enemies are clearly doing just this, preparing for war.

Except for an occasional mention of the depletion of gasoline and propane reserves, Stephen King does not devote much attention to the need to conserve natural resources, and, apart from a few brief mentions of pollution and environmental destruction, King does not belabor this theme of his novel. Plants and trees, his characters learn, are dying. The atmosphere inside the dome seems to be affected adversely by the presence of the barrier, to the outer side of which particulates of pollution cling. The air inside the dome is stale. Children (and a few adults) have seizures and hallucinate, perhaps as a result of the dome’s influence upon them. Animals seem to kill themselves for no discernable cause. A few of the residents of Chester’s Mill (Junior and his father, Big Jim Rennie, included), seem to be losing their minds. Additionally, King’s omniscient narrator clearly associates the dome with pollution and its effects as Rusty, Rommie, Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, and Benny Drake approach the site at which the children believe the dome’s generator is positioned:

But even away from the [dead, maggot-ridden] bear, the world smelled bad: smoky and heavy, as if the entire town of Chester’s Mill had become a large closed room. In addition to the odors of smoke and decaying animal, he [Rusty] could smell rotting plant life and a swampy stench that no doubt arose from the drying bed of the Prestile [Stream]. If only there was a wind, he thought, but there was just an occasional pallid puff of breeze that brought more bad smells. To the far west there were clouds--it was probably raining. . . over in New Hampshire--but when they reached the Dome, the clouds parted like a river dividing at a large outcropping of rock. Rusty had become increasingly doubtful about the possibility of rain under the Dome. . . (720).

This paragraph helps to reinforce the novel’s concern about the Earth’s pollution.

In investigating the site, Rusty and the others determine that the dome’s effect upon children (and some adults) in causing seizures and hallucinations works “like chickenpox” in the sense that it resembles a “mild sickness mostly suffered by children, who only” catch “it once” (721). As Rusty drives further into the orchard, he feels faint, and a strange change in perception overtakes him as he feels “as if his head were a telescope and he could see anything he wanted to see, no matter how far”; he sees “the dirt road perfectly well. Divinely well. Every stone and chip of mica,” and then, in the middle of the road, he sees a “skinny” man. . . made taller by an absurd red, white and blue stovepipe hat, comically crooked,” who wears “jeans and a tee-shirt that read SWEET HOME ALABAMA PLAY THAT DEAD BAND SONG.” The thought occurs to Rusty that he is seeing “not a man,” but “a Halloween dummy” with “green garden trowels for hands and a burlap head” with “stitched white crosses for eyes,” and then the hallucination, or vision, vanishes and all that remains are “just the road, the ridge, and the purple light, flashing at fifteen-second intervals, seeming to say Come on, come on, come on” (722).

The oddity of the scene keeps the reader reading, as does the repeated connection of such bizarre events to Halloween.

Outfitted in his makeshift radiation suit, Rusty leaves the others behind as he makes his way toward the radiation source.

In one of the novel’s more chilling scenes, Deputy Morrison comes across Junior Rennie, who has wet his pants. Junior is sitting on the curb, “rocking and back and forth” and talking what seems to be gibberish. (Actually, he is lamenting the deaths of his “girlfriends,“ Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders, whom he has killed: “They were my goolfreds,“ he says, adding, “I shilled them so I could fill them”) (727). Deputy Morrison, “alarmed as well as disgusted,” tries to get Junior on his feet so that the special deputy can accompany him back to the police station and sober up. However, once he sees Junior up close, Deputy Morrison is certain that, whatever Junior’s problem may be, it’s much worse than intoxication and that “Junior didn’t need to go to the station for coffee,” but “to the hospital”:

This time Junior turned, and Henry saw he wasn’t drunk. His left eye was bright red. Its pupil was too big. The left side of his mouth was pulled down, exposing some of his teeth. That frozen glare made Henry think momentarily of Mr. Sardonicus, a movie that had scared him as a kid (727).

Deputy Morrison seems to suspect that Junior may have confessed to having assaulted a woman, or worse, when Junior mutters “She just made me so franning mad!. . . I hit her with my knee to shed her ump, and she frew a tit!” However, rather than follow up on his suspicion, Deputy Morrison decides “he wouldn’t go there,” for “he had problems enough” (728). The deputy appears to lack the intestinal fortitude that, in Stephen King’s world, makes a character a hero. He is a moral coward whose failure to pursue his suspicions--suspicions concerning a police officer and not merely a civilian--are tantamount to criminal negligence since a possible crime is involved and its perpetrator, if perpetrator Junior had proved to be, is obviously a madman who may harm others yet again. Such dereliction of duty harms, not helps, others. Therefore, by King’s standards, Deputy Morrison, despite former chief of police Howard (“Duke”) Perkins’ high estimation of him, is one of the story’s villains.

As Rusty closes in on the suspected dome generator, the scene shifts to East Street Grammar School, where sisters Judy and Janelle Everett, snacking outdoors with their friend Deanna Carver, witness a bizarre sight--one similar to the sight that Rusty had seen during the momentary shift in perspective he’d experienced when he’d approached the site of the suspected dome generator, a dummy that librarian Lissa Jamieson put together as a Halloween lawn decoration:

The head was burlap with eyes that were white crosses made from thread. The hat was like the one the cat wore in the Dr. Seuss story. It had garden trowels for
hands (bad old clutchy-grabby hands, Janelle thought) and a shirt with something written on it. She didn’t understand what it meant, bust she could read the words: SWEET HOME ALABAMA PLAY THAT DEAD BAND SONG.

The children, already frightened of Halloween because of the nightmares and hallucinations they’ve had in which they have seen and heard dire warnings that “something bad was going to happen, something with a fire in it,” and there would be “no treats, only tricks” which are “mean” and bad,” are afraid that “it’s Halloween already” (735).

By tying the children’s nightmares and dreams of Halloween and the dummy that Lissa makes to the hallucinatory, possibly prophetic visions that Rusty has had (and to Phil [“The Chef’s”] claim that, on Halloween, he’s making an appearance as an angry Jesus), King creates a sense of imminent and widespread evil and suffering in which neither adult nor child will be safe. He closes out this scene with a bit of foreshadowing. To take her sister’s mind off the unsettling sight of the dummy and their memories of their dark visions concerning Halloween, Janelle suggests that she, Judy, and their friend go inside the schoolhouse and sing songs. “That’ll be nice,“ she declares. King’s omniscient narrator disagrees: “It usually was, but not that day. Even before the big bang in the sky, it wasn’t nice. Janelle kept thinking about the dummy with the white-cross eyes. And the somehow awful shirt: PLAY THE DEAD BAND SONG” (734).

There is definitely a sense of foreboding.

Knowledge, Ignorance, Surprises, and Suspense "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Earlier in the story, flowers that one of Linda and Rusty Everett’s daughters, Judy and Janelle, picked for their mother were dying, and now “the twin oaks in their front yard” apparently are dying as well, their “leaves hanging limp and moveless [sic], their bright colors fading to drab brown” (691). Like the fauna (and the human population, some members of which have had seizures and hallucinations and others of which appear to be going insane), even the flora under the dome is being adversely affected by the pollution-gathering barrier. The suggestion is that, if the dome remains in place much longer, cutting off the town from the rest of both nature and civilization, the consequences will be dire, indeed, for plants, animals, and human beings alike.

The evil spread by Big Jim Rennie and his cohorts is also having dire effects upon the people of Chester’s Mill. Two citizens, Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders, have been killed by Junior Rennie, and two others, the Reverend Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins, have been killed by Big Jim himself. Several townspeople were injured, some seriously, during the riot at, and looting of, Food Town. Samantha Bushey, beaten and raped by Special Deputies Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau, while Special Deputy Georgia Roux assists by holding the victim down and urging her colleagues on, shoots two of them (Frank and Georgia) before killing herself with the same handgun and leaving her eighteen-month-old son Little Walter a virtual orphan, given the indifference and madness of his methamphetamine-addicted father, Phil (“The Chef”). The descent of the dome has killed several animals and human beings as well, including Claudette Sanders, the late wife of First Selectman Andy Sanders and the father of the late Dodee. Rory Dinsmoore’s ill-advised attempt to shoot his way through the dome with a high-powered rifle cost him first an eye and then his life.

Adding to the horror of these deaths is the townspeople’s ignorance as to the cause of the dome and its descent and of the cause of the madness that grips some of the townspeople (The Chef, Junior, and Big Jim himself, among others). One cannot fight what one does not understand, and the inability to protect and defend oneself and others increases one’s sense of helplessness and desperation.

So far, the protagonist, Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara (jailed since page 533), and his supporters have discovered little of the truth behind the bizarre events that have transpired and continue to transpire in their town. Joe McClatchey and his friends Norrie Calvert and Benny Drake, using a Geiger counter supplied to them by Barbie before Barbara was jailed, have located what they believe may be the generator that created and sustains the dome. Physician’s assistant Rusty Everett, in having examined the bodies of the Reverend Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins, surmises that the former was struck by a baseball and that the latter’s neck was broken. The former chief of police and Brenda’s late husband, Howard (“Duke”) Perkins, an early victim of the dome, has compiled a file of incriminating evidence concerning Big Jim’s theft of public funds and manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. The townspeople also know that neither the direct hit of a pair of Cruise missiles nor the dousing of the dome with an experimental acid capable of melting solid rock had any effect on the barrier. In addition, they have a few fairly strong suspicions about some of the strange incidents that have happened since the dome’s descent. They suspect that Big Jim organized the Food Town riot as an excuse seize more power for himself and to further bolster the ranks of Chester’s Mill’s finest. They suspect that he is behind the arson that resulted in the burning down of newspaper owner and editor Julia Shumway’s business and residence. They suspect that Big Jim has framed Barbie for the murders of his and Junior’s victims. Samantha Bushey identified Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau, and Georgia Roux as her attackers, although they denied her allegations and have never been charged, arrested, or tried.

That’s what, to date, the townspeople know or suspect. They don’t know the origin or the nature of the dome, although there are plenty of theories as to how it came to be and who may be responsible for its descent. Some believe it is the work of extraterrestrials. Others think it is the result of a terrorist attack by a rogue nation. Still others suspect that the United States put the dome in place, using its own citizens as subjects of a sinister experiment. Perhaps the dome is the invention of a criminal genius, some suppose, or a living entity, others imagine.

Once again, the characters’ partial knowledge and total ignorance, coupled with rumors and suspicions (some founded, some not) increase their fear and sense of helplessness while, at the same time, heightening the story’s suspense.

But King also arouses the reader’s suspense by extending the population of the town in an unusual manner. In an earlier scene, King surprises the reader by including the dead among the living in his catalogue of the townspeople of Chester’s Mill who did not witness the phenomenon of the falling pink stars, as if he were suddenly writing a sequel to Our Town or Spoon River Anthology. The effect is startling, and shows that, even after all these years, King can surprise his readers.

Now, in a scene out of The Sixth Sense, one of his characters--and a canine one, at that--Horace, Julia Shumway’s Corgi, hears a voice as he eats popcorn spilled by Andrea Grinnell, with whom Horace and Julia are staying, following the loss of Julia’s home and business to the Molotov cocktails tossed by Big Jim’s henchmen. As the dog is eating the spilled popcorn he has found under an end table, he encounters the file of incriminating evidence against Big Jim Rennie that the late Police Chief Perkins had gathered. His widow, Brenda, at Barbie’s behest, had taken it to the third selectman for safekeeping. Andrea, in seeking to kick her addiction to pain pills cold turkey, had promptly forgotten her visitor’s visit. Apparently, both Andrea and Julia have also forgotten the file itself (since neither of them mentions it again or looks for it.) As Horace comes across the file, however, he hears the voice:

. . . Horace was actually standing on his mistress’ name (printed in the late Brenda Perkins’s neat hand) and hoovering up the first bits of a surprisingly rich treasure trove, when Andrea and Julia walked back into the living room.

A woman said, Take that to her.

Horace looked up, his ears pricking. That was not Julia or the other woman [Andrea]; it was a deadvoice [sic]. Horace, like all dogs, heard dead voices [sic] quite often, and
sometimes saw their owners. The dead were all around, but living people saw them
no more than they could smell most of the ten thousand aromas that surrounded
them every minute of every day.

Take that to Julia, she needs it, it’s hers (694).

Unfortunately, Horace is confused, thinking (yes, King’s mutts are quite good at cognitive activity, in their own doggy way, much as are the canines that frequent rival writer Dean Koontz’s cloyingly sentimental fiction), and the Corgi, able to distinguish between “peoplefood” [sic] and “floorfood” [sic], thinks that it is “ridiculous” to imagine that Julia would. . . eat anything that had been in his mouth,” and, in his confusion, the misplaced file remains undiscovered--at least, by the human characters--and Horace himself forgets “all about the dead voice [sic]” (695).

Why does King include this scene? Is it simply to remind the reader of the file’s existence and that it is still available to the enemies of Big Jim Rennie? If so, there are other, simpler and more expedient ways to accomplish this end. In fact, King has reminded the reader of the file’s existence, if not its specific location, several times already, through characters’ dialogue concerning the file. Obviously, King does not want the file to be discovered yet, because Julia was about to do just this when she turned away from the end table under which it lies, concerned about Andrea as the selectman began to make gagging sounds, prior to regurgitating her morning’s “raisin bun”:

She bent to look into the gap between the couch and the wall.

Before she could, the other woman began to make a gagging
noise. . . (695).

If the purpose of the scene isn’t for Julia to find the file, why did King write it? Why did he bring forth the ghost of Brenda Perkins to tell Horace to take the file to Julia? In regard to the answers to such questions, the reader, at this point, is left hanging, so to speak, but King has certainly raised the question as to why he has deliberately emphasized, once again, as he had in including the dead among the living in his listing of the names of those residents of Chester’s Mill who had not seen the fall of pink stars, a link between the living and the dead. He deliberately introduces an element of the supernatural when such an intrusion is not necessary to the telling of his story and is, in fact, even a bit disconcerting, requiring, as it does, yet an additional suspension of disbelief, beyond that needed to accept the sudden dropping down of a mysterious, transparent “dome“ over an entire town. In doing so, he sets up the expectation that, sooner or later, this connection between the living and the dead of Chester’s Mill will have narrative (and, perhaps, thematic) significance. Of course, in setting up the reader’s expectation that he will deliver on his implied promise to account for this link between the quick and the dead, King also generates a ton of suspense.

Medicine for Melancholy “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Andy Sanders goes to the Holy Redeemer Church to notify Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey that his wife, Samantha, committed suicide after killing two police officers. The selectman makes no mention of the fact that the police officers were responsible for her beating and rape: “even in his grief” over the loss of his daughter wife Claudette and his daughter Dorothy (“Dodee”), “Andy had no intention of bringing up the rape accusation” (670). Instead, Andy tells The Chef that Samantha probably killed the special deputies because “she was upset about the Dome” (670). They discuss the methamphetamine operation in which they have been involved with Big Jim Rennie, the late (murdered Reverend Lester Coggins), and others. The Chef shares Andy’s opinion that selling the illegal drug is wrong, although, The Chef says, making it “is God’s will” because “meth is medicine for melancholy” (670). The Chef invites the selectman to accompany him, saying “I’m going to change your life” (671).

In this scene, King offers some insights into the character of Andy Sanders. Like most of the town’s other power brokers, Andy is evil, despite his affable manner and his facile optimism. His evil lies in his willingness to go along to get along. Andy has few moral values. Andy explains to The Chef that, although Samantha has killed herself, all is not lost for The Chef, for his son by Samantha, Little Walter, survives. The omniscient narrator informs the reader that “even in his despair, Andy Sanders was a glass-half-full person” (669). Such optimism may seem admirable at first, but, upon consideration, it is superficial, given the circumstances (a double murder followed by a suicide and the leaving of a motherless child behind). His insistence upon seeing the good as well as the bad in this case is condescending; it is also evasive. Evil demands to be seen for what it is, without sugarcoating it by considering other, peripheral facts or incidents. It is good that Little Walter is “fine,” but his wellbeing has no real bearing upon Samantha’s having been beaten and raped or her murder of her attackers, followed by her suicide. Furthermore, Andy’s willingness to follow Big Jim’s lead, even when his colleague proposes or commits immoral or criminal acts results, in large measure, from Andy’s eagerness to please others--in this instance, Big Jim. One suspects that Andy likes to please others because doing so is the least demanding alternative; certainly, it would be much easier than standing up to as brash and bold a person as Big Jim.

The reader isn’t made privy to whether or not Andy was a good husband or a good father, but chances are that he was as agreeable to Claudette as he was permissive to Dodee, because Andy’s defining characteristics are his easygoingness, affability, and eagerness to please. Had he taken a stand more often, he probably wouldn’t have come to the bitter end in which he finds himself as a childless widower who has become the political rubber stamp for, and a criminal cohort of, Big Jim. His life’s choices and lack of principled action, his going along to get along, has brought him to a state of despair in which he was prepared to commit suicide, as his daughter did (albeit nonviolently, with pills, rather than with a handgun, which was Dodee‘s method of choice); to the point at which he must tell The Chef that he “can’t say” whether he wants The Chef to kill him; and to the point at which, it seems, he may be willing for The Chef to “change” his life (by introducing him to the sweet release of methamphetamine). In short, Andy Sanders is weak, both morally and in willpower. Being weak is not in itself evil, perhaps, but it becomes evil when it ends in the course of action that Andy has chosen for himself and, as a public official, indirectly for the people of the town he helps to govern.

For the same reason, The Chef is evil He cares about Samantha not because he loved her or even because he was married to her, but because she was proficient in making love “when she was stoned” (670). Even the news that his infant son is “fine” means nothing to him. When Andy gives him “the comforting news that ‘the child’ was fine,” “Chef “waved away Little Walter’s wellbeing” (669). During their talk, as they get high, The Chef connects Halloween to the second coming of Christ, providing a possible link (albeit a vague one) to the hallucinations the town’s children had while they were experiencing seizures, presumably due to the influence of the dome.

After smoking meth, Andy drives The Chef to the hospital, where he retrieves the body of his wife, taking it back to the Holy Redeemer Church, where he believes Jesus will make his return on Halloween, raising Samantha from the dead. Confused as the result of his long-term, hallucinatory addiction to methamphetamine, The Chef also says that he himself is “coming as Jesus,” on Halloween, and, as such, he adds, he is “pissed” (673).

Deputy Jackie Wettington resolves to break Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara out of jail the next night, and she delivers this message to him in a bowl of cereal. Later, Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie visits Barbie, trying to persuade him into signing a false confession, admitting to the beatings, rapes, and murders with which he is charged. Instead, Barbie informs Big Jim that he is aware of, and has evidence to prove, that Big Jim has been involved in the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine on a grand scale. If Big Jim waterboards Barbie to extract the confession , as the selectman threatens to do, Barbie will implicate him in this illegal activity and divulge the location of the files that former Police Chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins had compiled concerning the selectman’s criminal activity. Their meeting ends in a stalemate.

This scene reminds the reader of the flimsiness of the plot in regard to Barbie’s continued incarceration. More clear than ever, to Big Jim, is the threat that Barbie poses. It seems obviously wiser for Big Jim to have his prisoner shot as Barbie supposedly seeks to escape from custody than it is to allow his existence to continue to threaten the selectman. Wagering that he can bring matters to a close with a trial in which the innocent Barbie can be convicted and sentenced to death is a risk that is both foolish and unnecessary to take. Indeed, King’s omniscient narrator suggests as much in sharing Barbie’s thoughts on the matter with the reader: “He [Big Jim] left. They all left. Barbie sat on his bunk, sweating. He knew how close to the edge he was. Rennie had reasons to keep him alive, but not strong ones . . .” (686).

Another point that bothers the reader is the fact that, for someone whose past includes, as the novel hints, special operations experience, hand-to-hand fighting and probably martial arts instruction, and survivalist training, Barbie seems to be a rather passive protagonist. Although he was able to hold his own in a vicious street fight with Frank DeLesseps, Junior Rennie, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau in the parking lot of Dipper’s, the local discotheque, he has been a prisoner in the Chester’s Mill police station since page 533. Other than managing to hide his pocket knife inside his mattress and drinking from his toilet bowl, Barbie has done nothing but receive beatings, threats, and insults while the other townspeople go about the business of helping one another and seeking a way to shut off the generator that, they believe, has created and sustains the dome. One of the female deputies, Jackie Wettington, is willing to risk her own life to free Barbie, but Barbie, for his own part, is able to do nothing more than wait to be rescued. It seems unlikely that such a man would be the choice of the president of the United States to take charge of the situation under the dome, as the novel’s fictional version of Barrack Hussein Obama has done--unless, of course, the president wants Barbie to fail for political purposes of his own. Is the United States itself behind the appearance of the dome, as some of the citizens of Chester’s Mill believe? Another possibility is that Barbie himself has secret plans that necessitate his continued incarceration, but, even if he does, his imprisonment doesn’t depend upon him, but upon Big Jim Rennie, who controls the town, including the police and his incarceration is, therefore, undependable. Indeed, Big Jim has more reason, it seems, to kill Barbie than to keep him in jail. In any case, Barbie’s passivity becomes itself not only annoying but hard to believe. If his continued incarceration does have a purpose beyond Jim Rennie’s hope to conduct a “show trial,” King should provide a few hints, in the interest of verisimilitude, by way of foreshadowing; that he doesn’t do so suggests that there is no such plan.

A Plot Hole “Under the Dome”?

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

At 1,074 pages, Stephen King’s latest work, Under the Dome, isn’t a novel; it’s an experience!

Since the riot at the Food Town supermarket, much of the story’s action has concerned repercussions of this food fight and of other previous incidents that have occurred following the mysterious descent of the dome over Chester’s Mill, Maine.

Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie has seized the opportunity presented by this sudden crisis to seize more power for himself, becoming a dictator, always, he says, for the good of the town he serves. This “good” includes the two murders he’s committed, those of the Reverend Lester Coggins of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church, and Brenda, the elderly widow of former Police Chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins, who was an early casualty of the dome. By getting rid of the chief law enforcement officer of the community and replacing him with Pete Randolph, a fairly stupid, eager-to-please follower, Big Jim Rennie ensures that there is no law except that which he chooses to enforce for his own purposes. King thus returns Chester’s Mill to a more-or-less uncivilized state of the “noble savage” similar to that of which Jean-Jacques Rousseau waxes poetic and against which novelist William Golding, in Lord of the Flies, cautions.

Because King has a lot of ground to cover, he alternates between relatively short scenes that develop his multiple subplots and connect them to the central storyline. Perhaps for himself as much as for his reader, the author provides both a map of Chester’s Mill and a list of many of the characters who appear in the novel. This list is a handy way to keep track of the characters and their actions and of the plot in general.

By and by, this post will delve into a few implications of these actions; but, initially, it will be more concerned with summarizing the major events that have transpired since the food fight.

Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara has been jailed on the pretext that he is the killer of Angie McCain, Dorothy (“Dodee”) Sanders (First Selectman Andy Sanders’ daughter), Lester Coggins, and Brenda Perkins, whereas in fact the true killers are Big Jim and his son Junior. Andy visits Barbie in jail, raving at him for having murdered his daughter. (Andy’s wife Claudette was an early victim of the dome; the airplane in which she was taking flight instructions flew into it.)

Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell kicks her addiction to pain pills cold turkey.

Peter Randolph’s police force is bolstered by additional thuggish young recruits.

Henchmen of Big Jim burn down Julia Shumway’s newspaper and her home, which was located on the same building’s second floor. Homeless, Julia spends the night at Andrea’s house, sleeping on the couch with her dog, Horace. Although Big Jim sends his henchmen around town to collect the last edition of Julia’s newspaper, which questions Barbie’s guilt, a few of the issues are collected by townspeople, read, and passed around until the copies literally fall apart from the handling.

In the food fight, Special Deputy Georgia Roux, who assisted her colleagues Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau, in the beating and rape of Samantha Bushey, was severely injured and is in the hospital. After abandoning her eighteen-month-old son Little Walter (as both the baby and she herself were abandoned by her husband, Phil, who, a drug-crazed addict, now goes by the nickname “The Chef,” living at Big Jim‘s methamphetamine lab behind the Holy Redeemer Church), Samantha obtains a handgun, using it to kill both Georgia and her after-hours visitor Carter, before turning the same weapon upon herself and committing suicide.

Andy is about to commit suicide when he receives a telephone call from the hospital, asking him to come to the aid of the medical staff, as there has been a double murder and a suicide there.

English professor Thurston Marshall and his student-girlfriend Carolyn Sturgis take in orphans Alice and Aidan Appleton, and Thurston assists physician’s assistant Eric (“Rusty”) Everett at the hospital. Aidan experiences seizures during which they hallucinate about Halloween and pink stars that trail lines behind them.

Other children who have these same visions include boy genius “Scarecrow” Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, and Benny Drake, who, using a Geiger counter supplied by Barbie, discover, atop Black Ridge, beyond the McCoy apple orchard, what they believe is the generator that has created and sustains the dome. They report their discovery to Rusty. Later, pink stars fall over Chester’s Mill. Although it seems that these stars may have a paranormal or even a supernatural origin, they are explained as a meteor shower (“falling stars”), the pink color of which is an effect of the pollution adhering to the outer surface of the dome.

Having framed Barbie for multiple murders (and his friends for the arson that burned down the newspaper), Big Jim shuts down his methamphetamine operation, returning some of the stolen propane tanks that he’d used to fuel the works to the hospital. The men who return the tanks, chicken farmer Roger Killian, undertaker Stewart Bowie, and Stewart’s brother Fernald (“Fern”), see a “cryptic message” that “had been painted on the storage building behind the WCIK studios” near the Holy Redeemer Church. Referencing the book of Revelation’s prophecy that “the beast will be cast into a burning lake of fire,” the message calls upon its readers to “burn the wicked” and “purify the saintlie” (566), a directive which, the novel’s reader suspects, may have been painted by the mad meth addict Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey. Does The Chef himself intend to play the role of “purifier”? one wonders, believing himself to be an implement of divine wrath? The Chef has wired the storage shed that serves as the meth lab with explosives. Perhaps he also has other surprises in store for those whom he considers to be sinners.

A second attempt by the military to penetrate the dome, this time, with a pair of Cruise missiles, fails. The town remains cut off, an incubator for corruption and the empowerment of those who would benefit themselves by hurting, rather than helping, their neighbors.

Rusty, refusing to believe that Barbie murdered anyone, persuades his wife, Deputy Linda Everett, who has come around to his way of thinking after her initial suspicion of Barbie's guilt, to accompany him to the Bowie funeral home, where he examines the victims’ bodies while Deputy Stacey Moggin stands watch outside, ready to alert them over her walkie-talkie if anyone approaches the scene. Rusty discovers that Brenda died as the result of someone’s having broken her neck; however, his finding does not exonerate Barbie as the murderer.

A few things beyond the mere summary of the plot do merit mention in regard to the theory and practice of writing horror fiction, which is the purpose of this blog, after all.

One, already mentioned, is how King alternates between brief scenes to keep his reader apprised as to what is happening throughout town among his various characters, keeping the pace moving forward at a fairly rapid clip despite the scenes' heavy exposition, and dovetailing the main storyline with the novel’s many subplots. This technique also unifies the action. In fact, several times, King has his characters cross paths as they execute their own plans. For example, Rusty drives past both Joe McClatchey and, later Samantha Bushey. Another means of tying the action together is to have a character go to several other characters’ homes or places of business in succession, as Brenda Perkins does when she is seeking a safe place to keep the incriminating evidence that Howard Perkins had compiled against Big Jim and as Julia Shumway does in seeking a place to spend the night after her home and business are burned down.

Another point to consider is the characterization of Barbie as one who outmatches his adversaries. His captors fancy themselves accomplished inquisitors, as is seen in Junior Rennie's attempts to tempt Barbie with a glass of water to quench his thirst if Barbie will sign a confession, admitting he’s killed the murder victims. Barbie is aware of such tricks:

Barbie was. . . very thirsty, and it didn’t surprise him much when one of the new officers showed up with a glass of water in one hand and a sheet of paper with a pen attached to it in the other. Yes, it was how these things went; how they went in Fallujah, Takrit, Hilla, Mosul, and Baghdad. How they also now went in Chester’s Mill, it seemed (585).

He’s not only knowledgeable about such techniques; he’s presumably seen them used and has perhaps used them himself in the past, for “he had done interrogations in Iraq and knew how it worked over there” (584). However, Barbie also knows how resourceful the recipients of such torture can be, and he is able to adopt their practices to outwit his captors and survive his ordeal without succumbing to their devices:

. . . They ere amateurs at this: they had forgotten the toilet. Probably none of them had ever been in a country where even a little ditch water could look good when you were carrying ninety pounds of equipment and the temperature was forty-six Celsius. Barbie poured out the salt water [Junior had salted it, possibly by urinating in it] in the corner of the cell. Then he knelt in front of the toilet bowl like a man at his prayers and drank until he could feel his belly bulging (588).

A man who will drink water from the toilet bowl--and from a jailhouse stool, at that!--is a man who is resourceful enough, tough enough, and resolute enough to survive and, given the chance, triumph over even those as brawny, sadistic, and unscrupulous as his present enemies, Big Jim Rennie and Police Chief Randolph and his special deputies. This description of Barbie puts him in the same class as John Rambo.

It also suggests a problem, relating to the novel’s verisimilitude. Just before the description of Barbie’s drinking from the commode, the omniscient narrator shared the prisoner’s thought that “if he got out of this police station alive, it would be a miracle,” and, previously, King, several times, emphasized how easily Barbie might be shot under the pretext of his having tried to escape from custody. Even if he is a Rambo-like character, Barbie could easily enough be dispatched in this manner, and, if he’s truly violent enough to have raped two women and killed four individuals after beating three of them savagely, his attempt to escape would be credible to most of the townspeople and to the federal authorities as well. Surely, this would be the easiest and most certain way for Big Jim to dispose of the greatest threat to his continued position as selectman while, at the same time, covering up the murders that Big Jim and his son Junior have committed.

King seems aware of this potential plot hole, for, later, he has his characters discuss the situation; by the way, King adroitly sets the scene, identifying the participants in the action in its opening sentence: “There were four people in Rusty’s living room: Linda [Everett], Jackie [Wettington], Stacey Moggin, and Rusty [Everett] himself.” The topic of their conversation soon turns to Barbie’s plight:

“What if they kill him?” Rusty asked bluntly. “Shot while trying to escape?”

“I’m pretty sure that won’t happen,” Jackie said. “Big Jim wants a show-trial. That’s the talk at the station.” Stacey nodded. “They want to make people believe Barbie’s a spider spinning a vast web of conspiracy. Then they can execute him. But even moving at top speed, that’s days away. Weeks, if we’re lucky” (666).

It seems unlikely that Big Jim, a good planner in everything else, would take such a huge and unnecessary risk. By having Barbie killed as he allegedly attempts to escape from custody, Big Jim would still have framed him; in addition, he would have prevented a problematic trial, which would draw public scrutiny, both in Chester’s Mill and beyond, and could end in Barbie’s exoneration and Big Jim’s own proved culpability. No one knows how long it may be, if ever, before the dome is penetrated or destroyed, and each day that passes could create more opportunities for the discovery of the methamphetamine lab or of evidence for either Big Jim’s own or his son’s murder of their victims. The safer and more expedient measure would be to kill Barbie while the chance exists for them to do so rather than wait until a trial can be conducted on trumped-up evidence. Therefore, this situation is, if not a plot hole, a rather incredible state of affairs. The reader may well have to suspend his or her disbelief to accept it as possible. What makes the lack of verisimilitude even worse is that this situation is an important feature of the plot.

A final note on the text concerns King’s nimbleness in creating an eerie sense that something is amiss, something that is unsettlingly dark and deep. He does this masterfully in Desperation, when Sheriff Collie Entragian, possessed by the demon Tak, gives voice to strange declarations and is described as literally coming apart at the seams as the demon’s vitality consumes him from within. In Under the Dome, King’s omniscient narrator does something similar, with equally eerie effect, in describing the deterioration of Junior Rennie, who, until now, has merely been said to experience frequent tremendous, migraine-like headaches. As he attempts to goad Barbie into signing a false confession, Junior’s speech becomes more and more confused as he suffers another headache, and he is seen to have developed a limp:

The new officer was Junior Rennie.

“Well, look at you,” Junior said. “Don’t look quite so ready to beat guys up with your fancy Army tricks right now.” He raised the hand holding the sheet of paper and rubbed his left temple with the tips of his fingers. The paper rattled.

“You don’t look so good yourself.”

Junior dropped his hand. “I’m fine as rain.”

Now that was odd, Barbie thought; some people said right as rain and some said fine as paint, but none, as far as he knew, said fine as rain. It probably meant
nothing, but-- (585).

Having alerted the reader to the oddity of Junior’s speech, King supplies the reader with additional oddities of his speech, each of which is also unsettling, indicating, as they do, Junior’s loss of sanity. What is even more alarming is the fact that Junior is unaware both of his speaking nonsense at times, in passing, as it were, and of the slipping away of his reason.

Mixed in with Junior’s unintentionally absurd phrases are descriptions of his physical deterioration--his hand trembles, he has a massive headache, an “inflamed left eye” that leaks “tears at the corner,” and a pronounced limp--and Barbie’s thoughts concerning them:

Junior yodeled again. Some of the water in the glass spilled on his wrist. Were his hand shaking a little? And that inflamed left eye was leaking tears at the corner. Junior, what the hell’s wrong with you? Migraine? Something else. . . ?

It isn’t a migraine making him do that. At least not any migraine I ever heard of.


. . . “You guys come back with all sorts of problems. At least, that’s what I breed and see on TV. Right or false? True or wrong?” (586)


. . . “My theory is that you came back. . . [with] PTSS, STD, PMS, one of those. . . .”


. . . “. . . Think about getting. . . some food. Big old cheeseburger in paradise. Maybe a Coke. There’s some cold in the fridge upstairs. Wouldn’t you like a nice cone Cole?” (587)


. . . As he went upstairs, Barbie observed that Junior was limping a tiny but--or dragging. That was it, dragging to the left and pulling on the banister with his right hand to compensate. He wondered what Rusty Everett would think about such symptoms. . . (588).

Although it is difficult to overlook the rather glaring improbability that Big Jim would prefer to risk everything to conduct a “show-trial” than to kill Barbie as the prisoner allegedly seeks to escape, King’s description of Junior’s deterioration compensates for lack of believability. Characterization has long been one of King’s strong suits. Plotting usually is sound, too, although, in Big Jim’s failure to have Barbie killed when he has the chance to do so, an exception to the rule.

Morality “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Stephen King has been writing for a long time. His first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974. A natural-born storyteller, King has also learned a multitude of storytelling tricks over the years. I’ve mentioned a few already, in previous posts concerning Under the Dome. Here’s another: misdirection, or what I like to call the bait-and-switch technique.

Car dealers like Big Jim Rennie know and practice this trick, offering a limited number of low-price new cars to the public but announcing, when potential customers arrive, that all these vehicles have been sold; however, for just a little more (usually thousands of dollars), the dealership can put the buyer in a similar car. The low-price model is the bait; the switch occurs when the dealer offers to sell a different model for a higher price.

The bait-and-switch scene in Under the Dome to which I refer takes place shortly after the riot at Food Town (the “food fight,” as I like to call it). (Incidentally, the reader learned that the purpose of the riot was to provide the basis for beefing up the town’s police force by as many as eight additional special deputies; Big Jim wants his own well-armed militia, just as President Obama has called for his own private civilian police force, which, the president says, should be as well armed as the U. S. military.) During the riot, one of the thugs who works for Big Jim threw a rock that smashed Georgia Roux’s jaw and knocked out a quarter of her teeth. Torie McDonald collected the teeth and took them to Dr. Joe Boxer, the only dentist in Chester’s Mill, hoping that he could reimplant them. However, Joe, who works strictly on a cash basis, refuses to cooperate, unless he’s paid in advance, as always, for his services, even though he was just treated free of charge by physician’s assistant Rusty Everett for minor injuries that he’d sustained during the food fight. Joe is more concerned with getting home so he can stash the basketful of frozen waffles he’s stolen from the supermarket during the looting of the store than he is with helping a fellow resident of Chester’s Mill. Rusty, Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara, and high school history teacher Chaz Bender try to persuade Joe to perform the operations, even to the point of threatening him with violence. This incident comprises the bait portion of the bait-and-switch scene. The reader expects to see this conflict through to its conclusion, looking forward to seeing whether and how Rusty, Barbie, and Chaz persuade Joe to do the right thing.

The switch portion occurs as Chief Peter Randolph, accompanied by Deputies Freddy Denton, Jackie Wettington, and Linda Everett and Special Deputies Junior Rennie, Frank DeLesseps, Carter Thibodeau (the last two of whom are among the same men who, assisted by Georgia Roux, beat and raped Samantha Bushey) arrive, weapons drawn, to arrest Barbie--seven police officers to arrest one man! To prevent his being killed for “resisting arrest,” Barbie immediately raises his hands, surrendering, and keeps them raised even after Thibodeau charges forward and punches the captive in the stomach, doubling him over. The chief announces, “I’m arresting you for the murders of Angela McCain, Dorothy Sanders, Lester A. Coggins, and Brenda Perkins.” Angela and Dorothy (“Dodee”) were killed by Junior; Lester and Brenda, by Junior’s father, Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie, but Barbie is being framed for their murders. The colonel had anticipated his arrest on one trumped-up charge or another, although it is doubtful that he suspected he’d be taken into custody for the murders of four individuals.

The use of situational irony, which is what the bait-and-switch technique really amounts to, takes the reader by surprise enhancing the effect of the follow-on situation that is presented in lieu of the one that the initial situation suggests will occur. In this scene, King demonstrates that he is adroit at its use. So completely has he drawn the reader into the conflict between Joe, Rusty, Barbie, and Chaz, concerning the replacement of Georgia’s teeth that the reader is unprepared for the arrival and arrest of Barbie by Chester’s Mill’s finest (although Barbie himself has foreshadowed this incident several times well before this scene takes place).

As I mentioned in a previous post, the central theme of this novel seems to be provided in a quotation of Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” I also mentioned King’s tendency to divide his characters into two camps, so that there is a dichotomy of “us” against “them.” Often, in the past, such dualities have consisted of children vs. adults, of Democrats vs. Republicans, of women vs. men, of religious folk vs. secular folk, and although some such divisions continue in Under the Dome, King’s latest novel shows a maturation of his thinking concerning politics, religion, and social issues. He seems to have come to an understanding that the world is not so easily divisible into good and evil, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. He seems to have developed a broader, deeper view of life, in which even a Republican like Julia Shumway can be heroic; where adults can recognize children’s talents and treat them as individuals rather than as pesky stereotypes; where religious faith need not be grotesque and absurd; and where men and women, despite the battle of the sexes, can battle alongside one another, for either good or evil.

In the past, King has largely defined evil as a threat to the community. Many of his novels, from ’Salem’s Lot onward, have an invasion plot, in which the menace arrives from outside, to infect and corrupt a small town which, although not perfect, not Eden, has been, nevertheless, a good place to raise one’s children or in which to grow up. In Under the Dome, the evil doesn’t come from outside; the evil is already in Chester’s Mill, chiefly in the form of Big Jim Rennie, but in many others as well, including his son Junior; Pete Randolph, Deputy Frank Denton, and their special deputies Georgia Roux, Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau; in the drug addict Phil Bushey (“The Chef”) who abandoned his wife Samantha and their child Little Walter; in the apathetic dentist, Joe Boxer; and in Big Jim’s fellow selectmen, Andy Sanders and, to a lesser degree, the pain pills-addicted Andrea Grinnell. Through these individuals, King defines, or redefines, evil. Evil is a love of power, such as afflicts Big Jim Rennie. Evil is bullying others, a pastime, with fatal consequences, enjoyed by Junior Rennie and his cronies. Evil is Phil Bushey’s abandonment of his wife and son. Evil is emotional, physical, and sexual assault, such as Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau, with Georgia Roux’s assistance, committed against Samantha Bushey. Evil is siding with evil because it benefits oneself, as both Andy
Sanders and the Reverend Lester Coggins do in cooperating with Big Jim in his political and criminal undertakings. Evil is Joe Boxer’s callous indifference to human suffering, unless, of course, the one who is suffering can pay up front and in cash for Joe’s dental services. Evil is the love for power or self-aggrandizement, which frustrates the power of love.

At the end of the bait-and-switch scene, one of King’s characters summarizes the distinction between good and evil that is foundational to Under the Dome, and the difference is entirely pragmatic, even, perhaps, quantifiable at times. Goodness is helping others; evil is hurting others. Although philosophers, theologians, and social scientists may argue about what it means, exactly, to help someone else and what it means, exactly, to hurt someone else (can perceived help really be harmful, for example, as when one enables another person to remain in a condition, such as alcoholism or drug addiction, that is injurious to his or her health?) and whether, to help someone else, it may be necessary to also hurt him or her (as dentists and physicians must hurt patients on occasion in order to treat them), King’s distinction, voiced by Rusty Everett, concerning Barbie’s medical treatments of wounded rioters and looters, seems a good starting point for such a basic understanding of morality:

[Deputy Linda Everett says, to her husband, physician’s assistant Eric, or “Rusty,”] “Four people, Eric--didn’t you hear? He killed them, and he almost certainly raped at least two of the women. I helped take them out of the hearse at Bowie’s. I saw the stains.”

Rusty shook his head. “I just spent the morning with him, watching him help people, not hurt them” (526).

Perhaps, in this exchange, King suggests another instance of evil. Linda is confronted with two versions of Barbie: helpful or hurtful. The former is supported by the testimony of her husband, a physician’s assistant whose dedication to the community is unquestioned, if not unquestionable. The other version, that of the hurtful Barbie, is supported by the allegations of Chief Randolph and the likes of Special Deputy Frank DeLesseps, and Junior Rennie. The only evidence specified against Barbie is the discovery of his Army “dog tags in Angie McCain’s hand.” The evidence is enough to convince Linda, but not enough to persuade Rusty, who finds their discovery in the hand of one of Barbie’s alleged victims “convenient.” The willingness or unwillingness to believe allegations against someone is a matter of faith, and the conclusions to which one comes concerning such allegations is often a matter of choice rooted in human understanding, or in the understanding of human nature, and there is yet another of King’s divisions of “us” and “them” involved in this matter, as a brief discussion--or debate--between Linda and Rusty, as Barbie is being “hustled out to the Chief’s car and locked in the backseat with his hands still cuffed behind him,” makes clear:

She stopped. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you? Did you miss what just happened here?”

“Rusty, she was holding his dog tags!”

He nodded slowly. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

Her face, which had been both hurt and hopeful, now froze. She seemed to notice that her arms were still held out to him, and she lowered them.

“Four people,” she said, “three beaten almost beyond recognition. There are sides, and you need to think about which one you’re on.”

“So do you, honey,” Rusty said (527).

Although some of King’s dualistic divisions are more superficial than others and are based upon stereotypes, the moral distinction he makes at the end of his bait-and-switch scene stands out as one that is profound. Although not entirely free of difficulties and more or less debatable, his stance that one can determine good from evil based upon whether a person’s behavior is helpful or harmful to others is worthy of serious thought, as is his suggestion that choice itself, including the choice to believe or to disbelieve the potentially injurious allegations that people make against others as an action which can be hurtful and, therefore, evil, if it is based upon deceit, ignorance, naiveté, the need to please others, self-aggrandizement, an uncritical acceptance of others’ statements or evidence, or any of a number of other false foundations, is good or evil. The surety for such decisions, King suggests, is not merely knowledge of the facts (or alleged facts), the evidence, as it were, but also of the person. Linda is wrong to believe that Barbie is guilty of murder and rape because of the (planted) evidence she’s made aware of, whereas Rusty is right to believe in Barbie’s innocence, despite such “evidence,” for he has worked alongside the man and has seen, with his own eyes, Barbie’s compassion, courage, and commitment to helping, not hurting, others.

As is often the case with King’s fiction, there is much more to the action than a moment’s chill or thrill. What King’s chief rival, Dean Koontz, says, not about Under the Dome, and not about morality, but about the exercise of the intellect, is true of human behavior in general and, as King indicates, helps to separate good from evil and right from wrong: “Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.”