There’s No Place like Dome:
Spoiler Alert: review of Stephen King's latest epic “Under the Dome”
By Ludmila Rishkova
October 14, 2010
An Impenetrable Dome descends upon Chester’s Mill, injuring some of its inhabitants, trapping others and leaving them to fend for themselves with hardly any fresh air and no outside help.
Those who do attempt to help from the outside are overridden by Chester’s Mill second selectman and used-car dealer Big Jim Rennie who takes control of the town slowly but surely, like a fat spider weaving a web for his lair. Big Jim’s reply to outside forces, army included, is “What are you going to do?” To Jim Rennie, long term consequences are not important: a dangerous situation that foreshadows the future turn of events quite well.
And yet, King is not a suspense writer, which is why his readers are rarely left wondering what kind of crazy thing will happen next. But the readers are anxious indeed, and the reason the reader is always on a cliff-hanger is because King is a master of mise-en-scene. The reader always knows what will happen next, he just can’t believe it actually will.
What King sets up Under the Dome is horrifying and yet believable as it reflects humanity under its worst and best light. And, although he’s often pegged as a “Horror” writer, which is true to an extent, King’s success is mainly due to his observational and sociological skills. He writes about things that really scare us because he knows what they are. While there are always Monsters up front in his novels such as It, Cujo, Christine, Big Jim Rennie from the Dome, the real monsters that get us are the ones he pens in subtext. They are the monsters from our daily life. Cancer is one of them. ACV due to excessive fatness or fitness is another. The latter even rhymes like a child’s riddle, which is precisely what the Dome proves to be. And it’s a cruel game indeed.
The smudged surface of the Dome colors the stars a magic pink color. The air grows rancid, the vegetation grows limp, animals kill themselves. Problems thrive and multiply.
Under the Dome there are no rules but Big Jim Rennie’s rules, and these serve and police his own interest. As far as monsters go, Big Jim is a fabulous villain, evil through and through, without an ounce of him for the reader to like. And yet, his failing heart, his prodigal son Junior, his unfailing belief that among all the cotton-picking bastards out there, he’s the one who can take care of Chester’s Mill, all this makes him so god-damn human that it is hard not to believe he’s real.Big Jim’s son Junior is another monster. He is more tragic than his father, precisely because there is an ounce of goodness in him and although the reader will never care for him, little Aidan and Alice Appleton – Dome orphans – certainly do. To them, Junior is a saviour, a handsome young police officer, not the tumor-stricken rapist, murderer, love-starved monster the readers have come to know.
Besides the big monsters, there are little ones. Ones that lurk within each character trapped Under the Dome, including Colonel and short-order cook Dale Barbara, Barbie. The good and the bad are all heroes in their own story, and while Dale Barbara dislikes his heroic role in Chester’s Mill, Big Jim Rennie craves it.
All this is to say that no one in the town of Chester’s Mill thinks of themselves as being bad. And yet, but a handful of people survive by the time the reader turns the last page of the novel. This is where the novel’s magic, believable element, and the story’s backbone reside. This is how every character plays in a personal adventure that becomes part of a greater whole and allows them to fail or achieve their goals.
The good moments aren’t lacking either. Among all the rape, murder, violence, and fear it feels so good to see a simple smiling face. Moments such as Rose Twitchell’s delight at realizing that Barbie hasn’t left town after all is a moment of relief and hope: another driving element of the novel.
Norrie Calvert’s unabashed love and amazement at Grandpa Ernie Calvert’s car-jacking skills is a gem.
The odd partnership between The Chef – music lover, skeletal methamphetamine cook, estranged husband and widower of Sammy Bushey and father to dopey Little Walter - and Andy Sanders –first selectman, dull bulb, loving widower of Claudette Sanders and bereaved father of Dodee, Jim Rennie’s scapegoat, late bloomer in the methamphetamine world – is filled with care, understanding, and loss-induced love for one another.
Even Junior Rennie longs for the memory of when Alice Appleton wrapped her arms around him and was truthfully grateful for his being there.
And yet, while the villains, victims and simple folk are essential to any story, it cannot go on without heroes. Sides are created. Julia Shumway, the republican editor of Chester’s Mill’s Democrat, Barbie, and Rusty Everett, the physician’s assistant at Cathy Russel, Chester’s Mill hospital, end up on the ‘good’ side, fighting ‘bad guys’ for their rights, and fighting for their lives. The ‘bad guys’, as mentioned earlier, are Jim Rennie and Police Posse redolent of Hitler Youth and the Clockwork Orange Droogs.
The choosing of sides, although not an option at first, ends up being necessary to survival, and then the reader is sucked into a Lord of the Flies-like saga. The hero and villain share the same roots, and human nature, when left to itself, does appalling things to its own kind. Lord of the Flies isn’t the only comparison, there is definitely a Shakespearean moment in Big Jim Rennie’s finale that reminds us of Macbeth and his torment. Rennie is not Macbeth, of course, and Lady Macbeth is replaced by his son Junior. The language is not the same either. King does not steal, but rather like a good writer he borrows and gives it back new.
The novel is a gem (weighing at least two pounds), and like any gem it has its polished sides and its rougher patches. They contribute to make it what it is, not an attempt at social comment, not an emulation of bygone novels, not a political comment, but simply a very good story. King’s fans will know and remember that a good King story is never about a rabid dog, an evil hotel, a possessed car or an impenetrable dome. A good King story is always a ‘What If’ story, and the ‘what if’ always absorbs those involved: character and reader. They are the ones who make it matter.