Under the Dome

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