61 pages • 2 hours read
Stephen KingUnder the Dome
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 23-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary: “Ants”
Barbie, Rusty, and the others reach the safe house without incident. The group discusses the alien generator, noting that it warns people to keep away (the radiation belt, the animal deaths). But Barbie argues that whoever is operating the generator has not gone to great lengths to completely hide it; it is as if the aliens want someone to find it. Julia and Barbie themselves touch the box and get a glimpse of the alien “leatherheads” on the other side. Barbie believes that they are laughing at the humans suffering under their Dome. He compares their apparent attitude to behavior that he saw from soldiers, including himself, in Iraq.
Rennie briefly mourns the loss of his son, Junior, but quickly returns to business. Visitors Day at the Dome is coming up, and Barbie has been freed. Carter turns the envelope with the VADER file in it over to Rennie; he wants to “be your guy, boss” (897). Rennie hopes to exploit the town’s fears further with Barbie out of jail. Rennie does not necessarily want the fugitives captured right away; their unknown whereabouts will serve as fuel to the fear that keeps the townspeople in his thrall.
Linda is still in town, providing cover for Rusty’s and Barbie’s escape. Thurston is with her, as are the children, Aidan and Alice Appleton, for whom he has been caring; Carolyn, his girlfriend, was killed in the melee at the town hall the previous night. Linda takes Thurston into her confidence. They will try to make it to the safe house as soon as possible. Meanwhile, those already at the McCoy farmhouse discuss their collective visions, all somehow having to do with Halloween. Joe’s mother, Claire, points out that Halloween is still five days away, but Barbie has a feeling that they might not have that long before something horrific happens.
Back at the safe house, Julia tells a story about being bullied as a child. She had always felt secure in her intelligence and superiority until some other girls knocked her down and took her pants, leaving her to walk home in her underwear. The lesson in humility stuck with her, as did the gesture from one of the girls. She returns to where Julia is hiding in the bushes, only in her underwear, and gives her an oversized sweater in which she could walk home. Julia believes that the aliens are playing a similar game with Chester’s Mill, teaching them a lesson both in cruelty and in humility. After she finishes her story, she and Barbie have sex.
Meanwhile, Andy Sanders has a premonition about the violence that is about to occur, and he grips his CLAUDETTE AK-47 even tighter. Ollie Dinsmore wakes up to find that his father has died by suicide; he is the only Dinsmore left. Linda Everett gets a visit from Carter Thibodeaux, who questions her about the whereabouts of her husband, Rusty. She feigns innocence, and he believes her—though he does extract some revenge by sexually assaulting her. Some military helicopters land outside the Dome near the safe house, and Cox delivers several industrial-grade fans that Barbie has asked him to bring.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Halloween Comes Early”
Linda, Thurston, and the children head to Burpee’s store to get the necessary rolls of lead to shield the car from radiation on their way to the safe house. They are interrupted by Rusty’s coworkers Twitch and Ginny, who is carrying Sammy’s baby; they too wish to go up to the safe house. As they leave, Linda spots Big Jim Rennie’s Hummer, but they quickly evade it.
Rennie has other things on his mind. First, he sends Chief Randolph and some other men out to the radio station to neutralize the Chef and Andy and to retrieve the propane tanks. Second, Visitors Day starts within a few hours, and Rennie wants to control the situation as much as possible. Rennie has deliberately understaffed the police supervision of the event, as well as kept out vendors with water and vehicles for evacuation of townspeople who get overheated or otherwise ill. He has also vetoed any personal vehicles from driving to the site.
The fugitives up on Black Ridge survey the scene with dread. They can feel the aliens watching, as well. The media amps up the drama at the scene, the potential reunions and thwarted contact. Several people die on reaching the perimeter; they are crushed or their electronic devices, like pacemakers, explode. The event quickly grows chaotic and out of control.
Meanwhile, Andy Sanders and the Chef prepare for the confrontation with the police. Chef ambushes the men who approach from the back of the property, easily killing all but two. One, Aubrey Towles, is determined to go back into the line of fire, using Mel Searles as his cover. Mel reluctantly agrees, and they start firing on Chef. At the front of the property, Andy Sanders shoots Chief Randolph and several other officers in his frenzy to get to Chef. As he reaches him, Mel opens fire, but before they die, they both press the button connected to the Chef’s improvised bomb: “The explosion was white and all-encompassing” (981).
When everyone realizes that something horrific has happened—the explosion has the effect of a nuclear bomb in the enclosed area under the Dome—people either accept their fate or run for cover. Rennie and Carter retreat to the fallout shelter underneath the town hall, while hundreds die almost instantaneously. Ollie Dinsmore runs for the potato cellar, burying himself under mounds of cool potatoes as the fire destroys nearly everything else. The fugitives are spared from the immediate aftermath—the fire took a different path—but the air has turned to poison from the fumes. They rush to the edge of the Dome, where Cox has set up the industrial fans, and try to breathe the scant fresh air that comes through.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Survivors”
After the bomb explodes, a few hundred survive, though most of those survivors succumb in the night to the toxic air. Ollie is one of those survivors, protected by the pile of potatoes. He has also found his dead grandfather’s old oxygen tank to help him breathe. Sloppy Sam has also survived, getting his oxygen from tanks delivered to him regularly after an erroneous diagnosis of emphysema. Rennie and Carter are still alive in the fallout shelter, though they quickly assess their chances if both of them are breathing the limited air. Barbie, Julia, Rusty, and most of the other fugitives make it through the night, as well, breathing the bit of fresh air that penetrates the barrier of the Dome with the help of the industrial fans.
Sam reaches the fugitives, describing a dream he had about Julia. Ollie, on the other side of town, is seen by a soldier named Ames; they are separated by the Dome, but Ames becomes increasingly invested in saving the boy—especially after he hears about the loss of Ollie’s entire family. Norrie’s grandfather, Ernie, has a heart attack; Rusty tries administering oxygen, but it is to no avail. Audrey, the Everett’s golden retriever, has died overnight, as well. Aiden Appleton, the five-year-old, also dies, along with Joe’s best friend, Benny.
Carter decides to kill Rennie, but the older man plays on Carter’s sympathies and turns on him. However, the generator begins to fail, and Rennie is not as adept at replacing the tanks as Carter was. Rennie’s heart starts to act up, and he begins to hallucinate. All the people he has murdered start whispering to him, and he sees his dead son, Junior, before he dies.
Julia decides that she must get back to the alien box.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Wear It Home, It’ll Look Like a Dress”
Equipped with air suctioned from the tires of the van, Julia and Barbie make their way back to the box. Sam drives them, cocooned in the breathable air that still exists in the enclosed van. Julia makes her way to the box and grips it hard. She sees the aliens, the leatherheads, and she is more convinced than ever that these are children, playing a dangerous and amoral game with their human captives. There is only one in the playroom now, and Julia appeals to it (or her) by sharing her story of youthful humiliation. She begs the young alien to release them from the poisoned Dome. Julia senses the alien’s lack of remorse, but she also feels something like pity emanating from the creature.
The box begins to lift, and with it, the Dome. Ollie is rescued by the soldier, Ames, while the remaining survivors of the fugitives—including Barbie, Julia, Rusty and Linda, Piper Libby, Joe and Norrie, and Rose Twitchell—gasp their first full breaths of untainted air. Sam, unfortunately, succumbs to the poison. Barbie tells Julia that he loves her for her act of bravery. He then takes a minute to speculate about the alien’s motivation for letting them go.
Chapters 23-26 Analysis
The opposition between “us” and “them” takes on an entirely new meaning as the dynamic changes: It is no longer merely Rennie’s oppressive police force versus Barbie’s resistance group; now, the residents of Chester’s Mill are pitted against an alien force that they do not understand. As Barbie points out, “There’s a they, and if they really wanted to keep us out, they could. They’re keeping the whole world out of Chester’s Mill” (887). Barbie observes not only that there is an identifiable adversary but also that they have technology beyond that of The Mill, and presumably the Earth. Thus, there must be a reason both for the Dome and for their discovery of the alien box. Further, as Rusty notes, the aliens are using a two-warning system to deter intruders: “Dead animals by day, a glowing belt of radiation by night” (886). However, as Barbie counters, “Couldn’t we say they’re actually pointing at it [the box]? Joe McClatchey and his friends were practically following a trail of breadcrumbs” (888). This indicates that the aliens want their technology to be discovered and that whatever they are doing would not be as satisfactory if their captives were unaware of the force behind it.
Ultimately, Barbie and his group speculate that the residents of The Mill are part of an experiment—though not a controlled scientific one. They are, in fact, like the ants in Rusty’s childhood story, in which he and friend used a magnifying glass to burn the ants for fun. This notion—that The Mill’s residents are like ants to the “leatherhead” aliens—is reinforced thematically throughout these chapters. For example, the crowds gathering for Visitors Day are seen “as ants” by Big Jim Rennie (908)—his constituents are of no more value to him than the humans are to the aliens. Later, Barbie points out that, while humans think they are an intelligent species, it is not at all clear that the aliens agree. He again uses the comparison with ants: “We know that ants are social insects—home builders, colony builders, amazing architects. They work hard, as we do. They bury their dead, as we do. […] We know all this, but we don’t assume that ants are intelligent” (913). After Julia tells her story of being bullied as a child, she insists that, despite her flaws (and, by extension, the inherent flaws in humankind), “I am not an ant, however. I am not an ant” (919). The experiment has gone too far. Julia will eventually confront one of the aliens, and her cries for compassion are heard.
The alien involvement explains, at least to an extent, why everything under the Dome has been exaggerated. In less than a week, Rennie has seized totalitarian control; there has been a riot at the grocery store; and several people have committed murder or died by suicide. As Linda Everett explains to herself, “Living under the Dome intensified everything” (901). This intensification also includes the many moments of Prophecy and Premonition: prophetic dreams, seizure-induced visions, and eerie premonitions are experienced by the townspeople. In others, like Rennie, Andy Sanders, and the Chef, this atmosphere amplifies already messianic religious beliefs. Rennie compares himself to Christ, while the Chef dreams of a righteous apocalypse, and Sanders becomes his willing acolyte in the intensity of his grief.
The explosion that destroys the town and kills nearly every citizen of Chester’s Mill seems divinely ordained—at least in the authorial sense. The ultimate authority here is the author, of course—he is Godlike, hovering over his creation—and the frequent breaking of the fourth wall reminds the reader that he is directing the action, the characters, and his readers alike. After the explosion, the author takes note of the destruction of the town he has created: “See them all, a whole town with its back to an invisible wall” (985). In this way, the author can be seen as more akin to the aliens than to his human characters. The novel itself then can take on the qualities of the Dome, trapping characters and wreaking havoc with their lives.
Only when Barbie and Julia—and by extension Sam, who drives them to the source box—beg the aliens for mercy is the town relieved of its suffering. The implication is that all three have amends to make—Barbie for his acts during the Iraq War; Julia for her arrogance and privilege; and Sam for his alcoholic misadventures—specifically through self-sacrificial heroism. The final chapter of the book is entitled “Wear It Home, It’ll Look Like a Dress,” which references the bully taking pity on Julia and handing her an oversized sweater in which to walk home. Julia claims that this phrase is what the alien said to her, meaning that the humans should take their lives in hand and wear them home with gratitude. Barbie thinks about this and reflects: “Pity was not love […] but if you were a child, giving clothes to someone who was naked had to be a step in the right direction” (1072).
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