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61 pages 2 hours read

Stephen King

Under the Dome

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Themes

Corruption and Control

Throughout the novel, anytime a character utters the phrase “for the good of the town”—a favorite of Big Jim Rennie’s—the reader knows that what follows is most certainly the opposite. For example, the phrase is invoked when Rennie discusses his financial malfeasance, his appropriation of the town’s propane supply, his illegal drug manufacturing, and his decisions after the Dome descends. Rennie and his sycophants speak the phrase to justify their thinly veiled plans to control the town and to bolster their own power. Their corruption is barely obscured by their hollow appeals to civic virtue and small-town values, and their blatant hypocrisy is equal to their bad faith actions. Rennie remains the head of this faction throughout the novel.

Rennie’s corruption predates the descent of the Dome. He has long been engaged in the mishandling of the town’s revenues and resources to fund his own drug-manufacturing enterprise, paying “good money to make [any charges] go away” (709). The isolation experienced under the Dome simply gives Rennie more opportunity to carry out his corrupt actions with impunity. All of this—the financial misdeeds, the drug operation, the autocratic power grab—is couched in the rhetoric of “the greater good.” When First Selectman Andy Sanders questions their motivations, he thinks about what Rennie might say: “If he asked Big Jim, Andy knew what the answer would be: the ends sometimes justify the means” (256). However, the endeavor seems mostly to have saved the men who are conspiring in the manufacture of meth, including Sanders and Rennie: “Without the cash income from the meth, his [Sanders’s] drugstore would have gone under six years ago. The same with the funeral home. The same—probably, although the man beside him would never admit it—with Jim Rennie’s Used Cars” (256). Rennie himself tries to dispel Andy’s moral quandary by calling upon religious sentiment. He suggests that God has punished America in the past, for example, its misguided foray into Vietnam and “losing her spiritual way”; however, the Dome is not “punishing Chester’s Mill because we didn’t want to end up just another moribund wide spot in the road” (257). Their corruption is righteous corruption—it is “for the good of the town.”

Later, however, Rennie will suggest that the Dome is God’s will, that Rennie’s position of power is God’s will. While newcomers like Barbie do not always understand Rennie’s motivations, they are aware of the threat posed by his increasingly authoritarian moves. When Barbie suggests Rennie might be dangerous, longtime resident Rusty Everett knows exactly what Barbie means: “I’ve been hearing that about Big Jim for the ten thousand or so years he’s been running this town. He either tells people to get lost or pleads patience. ‘For the good of the town,’ he says” (395). He knows that Rennie has been stealing propane from the town—from the hospital, no less—and that his plans for the town include nothing short of total control. Rennie convinces his acolytes, like chicken farmer Roger Killian, to commit unspeakable acts of violence and intimidation by convincing them that their work is for the greater good: “It’s the town I’m doing this for,” Roger thinks, “The good of the town” (462). Rennie has asked him, along with his sons, to incite the riot at Food City.

Rennie himself is aware, at certain moments, that his actions are not for the good of the town but for personal enrichment and individual power: “It was the main reason he had never even considered leaving The Mill. In the wider world he might have made more money, but wealth was the short beer of existence. Power was champagne” (448). Thus, he commandeers the town’s propane tanks and engineers the Food City riot, putting him and his shady police force in charge of food and fuel, doling out rations as they see fit. He sets himself up to be the petty tyrant of a tiny kingdom. His downfall is unsurprising, and it is foreshadowed by an ironic scene after the Democrat’s offices are torched—on Rennie’s orders, of course. Chief Randolph tells Rennie to go home and rest; the town needs him, now more than ever. Rennie “was moved by this. He gripped Randolph’s arm and squeezed. ‘I’d give my life for this town. That’s how much I love it’” (636). In the end, that is exactly what Rennie does: He gives his life for the definite “good of the town.”

Prophecy and Premonition

One of the many side effects of living under the Dome is the proliferation of paranoia, prophecy, and premonition among The Mill’s residents—children, especially, seem to be sensitive to the mild seizures that produce visions of burning pumpkins and falling pink stars. While the phenomenon is never fully explained, the author hints that the alien technology used to generate the Dome also produces a kind of electrical current or neurological disruption that leaves behind a heightened ability to read the future. These visions, in turn, serve to feed the fear that infects the populace trapped under the Dome and encourage the mob mentality that makes Barbie an easy scapegoat and Rennie a viable leader. They also enhance the religious radicalism espoused by the Chef and his newfound follower, Andy Sanders (the drugs lubricate the way, of course)—not to mention Rennie’s increasing belief that God’s will has created this unprecedented situation and Reverend Coggins’s conversation with God Himself.

In response to the stress of the Dome, Coggins flagellates himself, asking for forgiveness for his sins of colluding with Rennie on the drug lab. He believes he hears God speaking directly to him: “Lookest thou for the blinded one who has gone mad. When you see him, you must tell your congregation what Rennie has been up to out here, and your part in it” (162). When young Rory Dinsmore blinds himself trying to shoot a hole in the Dome, Coggins believes he has received a sign from God. He thus confronts Rennie, setting in motion his own murder. This will eventually give Rennie fuel with which to fan the flames of revenge among the townspeople against his chosen scapegoat, Barbie.

The children of the town, including Janelle and Judy Everett, experience seizures wherein they witness horror associated with Halloween. Janelle shouts to her father, Rusty, “Stop Halloween, Daddy! You have to stop Halloween!” (172). Other children experience similar visions of burning pumpkins and scarecrows; later, when the adults reach the alien box, they too have these prophetic experiences. Other supernatural moments predict the falling of pink stars. The author notes that “[d]uring the first fifty-five hours of the Dome’s existence, over two dozen children suffered seizures” (424), wherein they saw death and destruction on a major scale. This all foreshadows the intentions of the Chef, while serving to ramp up the rising action: “The Chef had understood. First came the pink stars; then came the purifying fire; then the trial would end” (426). This realization comes after his own seizure, leading the way to his decision to explode the bomb that will kill most of the town.

For Rennie, these premonitions manifest themselves as further justification for his actions and his desire to seize power. He tells Colonel Cox that “the Dome is God’s will,” and he believes this “in his deepest heart. […] As he believed it was God’s will that he take this town and carry it through the weeks, months, and years ahead” (711). Yet, ultimately, Rennie’s vision fails, just as his heart fails; he will not live to witness the liberation of the town. Instead, Sloppy Sam Verdreaux’s dream about Julia—wherein he sees her survive, perched in the center of the town, covered in copies of her defunct newspaper—will come (partially) true. Julia survives, along with Barbie and a handful of other townspeople, after the Chef detonates his purifying fires. The author employs these various prophecies and premonitions as symbolic devices to amplify suspense and to point the reader toward his inevitable conclusions.

The Dissolution of Democracy

The fabric of society dissolves, almost immediately, under the invisible, impenetrable Dome. The author shows how easily democratic values diminish in the face of unprecedented events, which represents an anxiety over the strength of due process and the rule of law, particularly during extraordinary threats. King is writing in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, while the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are still ongoing. His work examines how the pressure of an unforeseen (and unpredictable) peril can quickly unravel democratic values and civil society, pitting citizens against one another and propelling bad actors to positions of power.

The urgency with which the townspeople, and Barbie, recognize that they are “cut off” from larger society is underscored by the multiple times the phrase is used: from page 84, when Barbie thinks “they [a]re cut off,” to page 96, when Barbie realizes that even the flow of information is being controlled, to page 98, when the media begins explaining to the world “that an unexplained force had cut off a small town in western Maine,” the reader must reckon with the sheer and sudden force of The Mill’s isolation. This social separation quickly devolves into an establishment of different factions and an “us versus them” mentality that leaves little room for civil discourse. Early in the saga of the Dome, Big Jim Rennie asks the newspaper editor, “Whose side are you on here, Julia?” (221). To which she tartly replies, “‘Are there sides, James? Other than over there’—she pointed at the watching soldiers [on the other side of the Dome]—‘and in here?’” (222). Julia recognizes that if the citizens trapped under the Dome do not work together, then their problems will multiply rapidly. Rennie, on the other hand, recognizes that sowing division among the townspeople, as well as spreading fear, will work to his advantage.

Rennie clearly uses whatever resources are at his disposal, like the uninitiated and renegade police force that he cobbles together, to suspend democratic principles. When the police invade Thurston Marshall’s and Carolyn Sturgis’s vacation cottage, they give no concessions to trivial matters such as personal rights and illegal searches: “But what you two […] don’t get is that you aren’t in the United States of America anymore,” Junior shouts at them. “You’re in the Kingdom of Chester now, and if you don’t behave, you’re going to end up in the Dungeons of Chester” (303). Democracy gives way to brute force and intimidation. Jackie Wettington, a veteran officer of the police force, now corrupted by Rennie’s untrained recruits, notes that “those kids now outnumber us” (312). With a simple observation, she makes the chilling recognition that the moral authority of law enforcement has been completely co-opted. Julia comes to the same realization as she doubts the efficacy of the president’s appointment of Barbie to lead the town through the crisis: “[T]hat’s not going to happen no matter what your Colonel Cox and the President of the United States may want” (349). Under the Dome, a democratic chain of command matters not at all.

The town quickly devolves into a dystopia, where riots among neighbors at the grocery store are par for the course, if still shocking: Julia “watched her town lose its mind, and afterward she would never be the same person” (465). At this point, the Dome has only been in place for less than three days, but as is noted much later in the book, the effect of the Dome intensifies every experience, emotion, and event. Rennie is aware that closing Food City will lead to a riot—indeed, he even employs a couple of people to ensure that the crowd is incited to revolt. The more chaotic the events and the more fearful the residents, the more Big Jim Rennie can consolidate his cruel power. Miranda rights are suspended (539); the police chief admits, “I guess legal is whatever we decide it is” (553); and Barbie explicitly compares his treatment in jail to that of “enhanced interrogation” in Iraq (685). Chester’s Mill is no longer a functioning democracy under the Dome. Ironically, Rennie, in his last moments, realizes the futility of his efforts to exploit the situation: “But none of it mattered, not under the Dome” (1039). The dissolution of society via the suspension of democracy even undoes its primary architect.

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