Team Spirit “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Following the riot at Food Town, in which most of the injured are the police themselves, including several of the special deputies who raped Samantha Bushey, Brenda Perkins tries to put into effect the plan to blackmail Big Jim Rennie so as to thwart the selectman’s attempt to jail Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara on one trumped-up charge or another.

Unfortunately, since neither Julia Shumway, the owner and editor of the local newspaper nor Romeo Burpie, the owner of the largest independent department store in America, are home when she comes to call upon them to hide the incriminating documents that her late husband, former police chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins had compiled against Big Jim, she entrusts them to Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell. Attempting to kick her addiction to pain pills cold turkey, Andrea is in no shape to deal with such a responsibility. Soon after accepting the documents and agreeing to conceal them, Andrea passes out; when she awakens, she doesn’t remember Andrea’s visiting her.

For her own part, Brenda has hidden the laptop computer upon which her late husband had saved the original, electronic files inside her home safe, and, against the advice of Barbie, she decides to confront Big Jim by herself, accusing him of manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine. For her trouble, she receives death at the murderous hands of Big Jim.

Her belief that “Big Jim would” not “actually hurt her” is, the omniscient narrator points out, in a bit of the foreshadowing with which King’s novel is replete, “a dreadful miscalculation on her part, but understandable; she wasn’t the only one who clung to the notion that the world was as it had been before the Dome came down,” (488) a sentiment that echoes politicians’ own insistence that post-9/11 America is forever different than pre-9/11 America and that, as a result, changes have to be made and personal freedoms must be lost--for the good of the country, of course, just as everything that Big Jim does is (according to him) for the good of the town he governs.

Such a “miscalculation” has dire consequences for Brenda, as it may for Americans in general who, it appears, live “under the dome” of environmental terrorism (and political terrorism): “Brenda Perkins heard a bitter crack, like the breaking of a branch overloaded with ice, and followed the sound into a great darkness, trying to call her husband’s name as she went” (495). She is a damsel in distress, to be sure, but she is one without a rescuer or a defender.

The reader hopes that her fate doesn’t parallel Americans’ own, especially given the numerous parallels that King’s novel draws between current events in the United States (and around the world) and the incidents that occur in his massive story. As always, King’s work is something of a cautionary tale concerning real-world situations and events, many of the latest ones of our own devise. “It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma,” Edgar Allan Poe, in a technologically and politically less complicated time declared, “which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.” Let’s hope that the master of the macabre was right.

Under the Dome appears to offer a turning point in King’s understanding of politics, morality, and group dynamics. It seems to be a watershed novel, in which the author deepens and broadens his understanding of the complexities of civilization, culture, and society, no longer assuming the existence of simplistic dualities of Democrat vs. Republican, adult vs. child, or other forms of us vs. them. Watching current events from the relative safety of the Florida Keys seems to have taught him quite a bit about life during the time, “November 22, 2007-March 14, 2009,” that he wrote his latest novel. He’s a better storyteller because of his maturation, because he offers a more balanced perspective concerning the themes he takes up in this volume.

One of the themes of Under the Dome, common to many of King’s novels, is that it takes a village (or at least a group) to defeat the monster. In fact, one of the sections of Under the Dome has as its title “We All Support the Team.” Of course, in a contest, athletic or otherwise, one team must compete against another. In his early novels, the two teams were often heroic children (teens or preteens) and either corrupt, indifferent, or incompetent, usually unaware, adults. It was, consequently, the children who led the way and, usually, the children who defeated the monster.

There is a bit of this thinking in Under the Dome as well, as this exchange between Norrie Calvert, Joe McClatchey, and Benny Drake, who are smoking stolen cigarettes under Peace Bridge, when Norrie spots Brenda Perkins (whose death was recounted ea a couple of pages back but who is, courtesy of the miracle of the flashback, alive and well at the moment and approaching the children’s hideaway):

“Let’s get going,” Benny said.

“We can’t get going until she’s gone,” Norrie said.

Benny shrugged. “What’s the big deal? If she sees us, we’re just some kids goofing around the town common. And know what? She probably wouldn’t see us if she looked right at us. Adults never see kids.” He considered this. “Unless they’re on skateboards.”

“Or smoking,” Norrie added (502).

However, some adults are not only aware of children but also entrust them to accomplish vitally important tasks. Julia Shumway has convinced Joe’s mother to allow him and his friends to deliver a “gadget” that Barbie considers vital to their cause.

In general, in this matter, King appears to have matured as both a thinker and a writer, no longer dividing his fictional worlds into an “us“ against “them,” black-or-white dichotomy of innocence and experience, righteousness and evil, heroes and villains. Instead of an us-children against them-adults, he posits two teams of adults (or four, if one takes Big Jim’s view that “ants,” “grasshoppers,” and “locusts” make up the population of Chester’s Mill: on one side, the team of Dale Barbara, Julia Shumway, the late police chief Howard Perkins and his recently murdered widow Brenda, Romeo Burpie, and others, standing against the team of Big Jim Rennie, Andy Sanders, Pete Randolph, Junior Rennie, the late Lester Coggins, and their followers.

Big Jim explains the situation to Lester, just before killing him:

“Every town has its ants--which is good--and its grasshoppers, which aren’t so good but we can live with them because we understand them and we can make them do what’s in their own best interests, even if we have to squeeze em a little. But every town also has its locusts, just like in the Bible, and that’s what people like the Busheys are. On them we’ve got to bring the hammer down. . . “ (260).

The reader must take Big Jim’s analysis with a grain of salt, perhaps, because, obviously, he is the most corrupt of all the characters in Chester’s Mill. The context of the novel allows one to identify the groups named by Big Jim: the ants are the productive citizens, the hardworking blue-collar folks who produce the goods and provide the services that keeps the town’s economy humming; the grasshoppers are the merchants, entrepreneurs, and financiers who control and regulate the means of production, including human resources, profiting from the goods and services that the working class create; and the locusts are the poor and needy, often emotionally damaged, sometimes drug-addicted or alcoholic citizens who deplete the town’s treasury. In Machiavelli’s terms, the ants and the locusts are the masses; the business owners, the aristocrats; and the governing party (unmentioned by Big Jim except as “we”) are the monarch and his royal “family” and patrons.

Jimi Hendrix, or King’s quotation of the late musician, provides the perspective of Barbie’s team: “When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, the earth will know peace.” Barbie, Julia, and Romeo, like Howard and Brenda Perkins, act out of a true concern for justice, liberty, and respect for one’s fellow, all of which values stem, ultimately, from love (for if one has not love for oneself and one’s neighbor, neither justice, liberty, nor respect is likely to be considered of any importance; rather, one is more likely to operate according to the principles of Big Jim and his cronies.)

Big Jim’s understanding of the motivation of high school girls’ basketball clarifies the values he and his team members hold even more than his brief speech to Lester Coggins concerning ants, grasshoppers, and locusts. Big Jim is attracted to girls’ basketball because “young female players are invested in a team ethic that the boys,” being more interested in showing off their skills as individual players, “rarely match” (445). Because of this devotion, “The girls took the sport personally, and that made them better haters,” the omniscient narrator asserts, explaining that they “loathed losing. They took loss back to the locker room and brooded over it. More importantly, they loathed and hated it as a team. Big Jim often saw that hare rear its head. . . .” (446). (One need only recall Georgia Roux cheering on the town’s special deputies as they beat and raped Samantha Bushey to understand what King is describing; bullies often delight in their power to inflict pain and suffering on others and tend to band together as a pack, or “team,” against lone individuals. Corrupt politicians, King seems to suggest, are no different.)
A season-ticket holder, Big Jim frequently attends these games, and, in the process, he has chosen a champion worthy of his admiration:

Before 2004, the Lady Wildcats had made the state tournament only once in twenty years, that appearance a one-and-done affair against Buckfield. Then had come Hanna Compton. The greatest hater of all time, in Big Jim’s opinion. . . .

. . . Hanna had taken the game over with the single-minded brutality of Joseph Stalin taking over Russia, her black eyes glittering (and seemingly fixed upon some basketball Nirvana beyond the sight of normal mortals), her face locked in that eternal sneer that said, I’m better than you, I’m the best, get out of my way or I’ll run you. . . down. . . ( 446-447).

In his portrait of Hanna, whom Big Jim admires as the athlete par excellence, because of the girl’s “out-of-my face ‘tude” no less than for her amazing athletic prowess, King highlights the girl’s arrogance (“I’m better than you, I’m the best, get out of my way or I’ll run you. . . down”) as the key energizing element in her personality; it is this arrogance, or pride, that fuels both her hatred and her drive, and it is one that, sharing with her, Big Jim recognizes and respects. However, as a self-avowed Christian (a confession open to serious doubt), Big Jim should heed the Bible’s declaration that “pride goeth before a fall.”
　

Shades of Barack Hussein Obama “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Although in the letter by which he appoints Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara a colonel in the United States Army, the intuitional version of President Barack Hussein Obama promises to do all that he can, regardless of cost, to rescue the trapped members of Chester’s Mill, Maine, from the mysterious transparent dome that has descended over them, cutting off their community from the rest of the world, the chief executive’s attempts to do so, through the use of the nation’s military forces and best scientific minds, has not only negative, but ludicrous, effects. The two Cruise missiles that detonate against the barrier merely start fires on either side of the dome, and the super-strong experimental acid with which the barrier is later doused is simply absorbed by the unharmed dome.

Meanwhile, pollutants collect upon the outer surface of the barrier, and its interior is polluted by the smoke that the townspeople produce when they must revert to the use of wood in their stoves as their reserves of propane dwindle. Gasoline is also in short supply. Food and water supplies may be next to show shortages. Clearly, “the bastard” who “had signed” the letter “himself, using all three of his names, including the terrorist one in the middle” (i. e. Hussein), the president who holds office in Under the Dome, is obviously intended to be Obama, and he is depicted as running an operation every bit as incompetent as the Gulf oil leak cleanup mission, despite his soaring rhetoric and his solemn vow that “we will never abandon you. Our firmest promise, based on our finest ideals, is simple: No man, woman, or child left behind. Every resource we need to employ in order to end your confinement will be employed. Every dollar we need to spend will be spent” (269).

In a conversation with Colonel Cox, Julia Shumway sums up the effectiveness of the Cruise missiles this way: “Watched them hit. And bounce off. They lit a fine fire on your side--.” Likewise, “one of the older gentlemen who had been running tests” after the acid was doused on the dome sums up the effect of this attempt to liberate the trapped townspeople by saying, concerning the acid, “The thing that isn’t there [i. e., the dome] ate it up.” The military’s failures, do not inspire confidence among the townspeople.

Big Jim Rennie also parallels Obama at times. He doesn’t listen to his advisors. When the chief of police, Peter Randolph, suggests that closing the town’s supermarket, Food City, and convenience store, Gas and Grocery, might be a mistake, since the action could cause panic among the townspeople, Big Jim refuses to her of it: “’Closed up,’ he repeated. ‘Both of them. Tight as ticks.’” (Didn’t Obama summarily and single-handedly order the cessation of oil drilling operations in the Gulf, following the leak of the British Petroleum leak?) Moreover, Big Jim declares, “And when they reopen, we’ll be the ones handing out supplies. Stuff will last longer, and the distribution will be fairer. I’ll announce a rationing plan.” (It sounds as if, like Obama, Big Jim plans to spread the wealth around a little and take charge of the citizenry’s needs for food, if not yet health care.) Rham Emmanuel counseled Obama not to pass up the opportunity a crisis provides to effect what otherwise might not be doable, and Big Jim, in a similar fashion, plans to capitalize on the crisis that the dome’s isolation of the town he governs represents: When First Selectman Andy Sanders expresses reservations about their “authority to close down businesses,” Big Jim replies in a manner similar to Obama’s assertions about his own expansion of presidential powers during both the financial crisis and the Gulf Oil crisis he faces: “In a crisis like this, we not only have the authority, we have the responsibility.” Again, just as Obama spoke of his perceived need to marshal a civilian police force as well funded as the U. S. military to keep order in a world beset by terrorism, Big Jim tells Chief Randolph, “We may have to increase the size of our police force quite a bit if this crisis doesn’t end soon. Yes, quite a bit” (449-450).

King himself is a devoted liberal who, until his creation of Republican Julia Shumway, had little positive to say about the Grand Old Party and its members. In a rather puerile fashion, and in simplistic black-and-white terms, he seems to have believed Democrats were the pure-hearted good guys and that Republicans were the black-hearted black hats. He hedges his bets even with Julia, having Dale Barbara remark that she isn’t much like the typical members of her party. His novel makes several references to CNN and its reporters and commentators, but none to Fox News and its journalists and pundits. He compares an unshaven Big Jim to Richard Nixon. His heart is clearly still with the Democrats, but, with Julia, there is a tiny concession, at last, to the notion, however unlikely, that maybe not every last Republican everywhere is the devil in disguise. Politically, King seems to be maturing in his views. If so, better late than never.

Possibly because he is willing (to some extent, at least) to see Republicans as individuals rather than as stereotypes, he has also perceived some of the contradictions between Obama’s speech and his behavior, between his words and his deeds, between his promises and his actions, and that he had incorporated these perceptions in his characterizations of both his fictional version of Obama and the bombastic Big Jim Rennie. Another possibility is that these parallels are unintended. Critics have long ago found that not every implication of a writer’s work is a conscious and deliberate, which is to say, an intentional, statement in his or her writing. Lots of ideas are accidents, as it were, rather than intended deliveries, born of unconscious, or even repressed, thoughts and impulses. Be that as it may, there seems to be more than a few caricatures of Barack Hussein Obama in King’s characterizations of the president’s fictional counterpart and Under the Dome’s Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie.

Throughout Under the Dome, Big Jim claims that all that he does is for the good off the town he governs, despite the fact that his often illegal activities line his own pockets and maintain or expand his personal power and influence. Most recently, Big Jim insisted that the town’s only two sources of food supplies, Food Town and Gas and Groceries, be shut down, causing a panic--and, indeed, a riot--among the townspeople. As a leader, he has said time and again, it is his duty to provide for the public welfare, even when doing so is unpopular. Recently, President Obama insulted Nevadans, nd, indeed, all Americans by telling them, in a speech in Las Vegas (a place, according to him, which is to be avoided as a devil’s playground, unless one is Barack Hussein Obama, of course, or one of the other of the nation’s privileged elite), that both he and Senator Harry Reid, for whom he was stumping, knew that the passage of the health care reform act (as they call it) was “unpopular” among the unwashed masses, but that they persisted in defying the will of the American people because “it was the right thing to do,” as if only the supposed representatives of the people, and not the people themselves, know what is morally correct. Moreover, Obama has shut down the oil industry, putting thousands out of work in a brutal economy, part of the collapse of which is his own fault, as a former senator, just as its prolonged continuance is largely his fault as president. During his speech, Obama also championed more of the prescriptions for economic recovery that economists contend will only worsen the country’s (and the world’s) dire economic situation and that the vast majority of the American public does not want. Like Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie, Obama and his team are loathe to let a good crisis, even a manufactured one, go to waste.

A final parallel: Big Jim manufactures and distributes methamphetamines. Didn’t the president admit to using cocaine?

Pink Stars and Theories “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

The military has a new approach to taking down the dome: “an experimental acid” that is powerful enough to “burn a hole two miles deep in bedrock.” At 9:00 PM, the “hydrofluoric compound” is to be poured over the dome “where Motton Road crosses. . . Into Harlow,” Colonel Cox tells Julia Shumway, asking her to deliver his message to Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara.

Unwisely, the Reverend Piper confronts Samantha Bushey’s attackers, Frank DeLesseps, Carter Thibodeau, Melvin Searles, and Georgia Roux, who dislocate her shoulder and shoot her dog, Clover. The commotion attracts diners, including Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara, who arrive just in time to see the pastor being arrested. Barbie yanks Piper’s arm back into its socket, and the Chief of Police allows her to go to the hospital, ordering her to return tomorrow for questioning: those whom she confronted have accused her of assault, just as she has accused them of raping Samantha Bushey (or in Georgia’s case, accessory to rape).

Physician’s assistant Rusty Everett, meanwhile, confronts Big Jim Rennie concerning how a hospital propane tank has come to be installed in the town hall’s supply shed. Probably, Rusty’s confrontation of Big Jim is no wiser than Piper’s confrontation of Samantha’s attackers. In any case, it gains nothing, for Big Jim says he has no knowledge as to how the propane tank ended up in the town hall’s supply shed, any more than he knows where the rest of the hospital’s surplus propane might be. He interrupts his meeting with Rusty to answer a summons from the police chief, promising to “investigate” the matter that Rusty has raised.

The fall of streaming pink stars occurs, just as the children, during their seizures, foresaw, and King devotes several scenes to this phenomenon, presenting it from the perspectives of various characters to ensure that the event is as spectacular and awe-inspiring to the reader as it is to the residents of Chester’s Mill who witness it. First, the town librarian, Lissa Jamieson, and the newspaper owner and editor Julie Shumway see the fall of the stars, reporting what they observe to Colonel Cox, with whom they are in contact through the dome as the military prepares o douse the barrier with the world’s strongest acid: “they had smeared out of clear focus and turned pink. The Milky Way had turned into a bubblegum spill across the greater dome of the night (433). Twitch grabs Rusty Everett as the physician’s assistant is getting apple juice for his latest patient, the Reverend Piper Libby, and drags him outside the hospital to observe the heavens: “It was filled with blazing pink stars, and may appeared to be falling, leaving long, almost fluorescent trails behind them” (435). Rusty feels a chill along his spine as he recalls that “Judy foresaw this. . . ‘The pink stars are falling in lines’” (436). Likewise, in their borrowed house, Thurston Marshall and Carolyn Sturges, who have assumed custody of the Appleton orphans, Alice and Aidan, witness the falling pink stars that Aidan had also foreseen during his seizure: “Alice and Aidan Appleton were asleep when the pink stars began falling, but Thurston Marshall and Carolyn Sturges weren’t. They stood in the backyard of the Dumagen house and watched them come down in brilliant pink lines. Some of the lines crisscrossed each other, and when this happened, pink runes seemed to stand out in the sky before fading” (436).

The phenomenon might seem paranormal, or even supernatural, but, both Colonel Cox and Thurston Marshall assure their listeners, Julia Shumway and Carolyn Sturges, respectively, that the incident has a natural explanation. “As it comes north,” the colonel tells Julia, “the jet [stream] passes over a lot of cities and manufacturing towns. What it picks up over those locations is collecting on the Dome instead of being whisked north to Canada and the Arctic. There’s enough of it now to have created a kind of optical filter. I’m sure it’s not dangerous” (434). The reader may not be as certain, especially since King touts his novel as a cautionary tale concerning the effects of unbridled environmental pollution. Julia isn’t as certain, either, for she says, “Not yet,” asking, “What about in a week, or a month? Are you going to hose down our airspace at thirty thousand feet when it starts getting dark in here?” Carolyn is also concerned about the falling pink stars. “Is it the end of the world?” she asks Thurston. He assures her that it is not, and that there is a perfectly natural explanation for the phenomenon: “it’s a meteor swarm” that they are “seeing. . . through a film of dust and particulate matter, Pollution, in other words. It’s changed the color” of the swarm. Uh, oh!

There’s one thing that Thurston is unable to answer, though. Carolyn asks him how Aidan could have foreseen this event during his seizure, to which question “Thurston only shook his head” (436). To emphasize the mystery of Aidan’s prophetic vision, Carolyn repeats her question, not once, but twice: “How could he know this was coming? How could he know?”

She gets no answer.

Of course, no one knows where the dome comes from, either, or why it has descended.

King includes two additional scenes in which characters observe the fall of pink stars. Most, if not all of the residents of Chester’s Mill observe the strange phenomenon, including Leo Lamoine, “a faithful member of the late Reverend Coggins’ Holy Redeemer congregation,” who interprets the event as the advent of the Apocalypse; Sloppy Sam Verdreaux, who has been discharged from jail; police officer Rube Libby; Willow and Tommy Anderson; Rose Twitchell and Anson Wheeler, of Sweetbriar Rose’s; Norrie Calvert, Benny Drake, and their parents; Jack Cale, “the current manager of Food City” and Ernie Calvert, “the previous manager”; Stewart and Fernald Bowie, of the local mortuary; Henry Morrison and police officer Jackie Wettington; Chaz Bender, a high school history teacher; Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie; Chief Randolph; First Selectman Andy Sanders; Special Deputies (and rapists) Carter Thibodeau, Melvin Searles, Frank DeLesseps, and Georgia Roux; and widower Jack Evans. Other townspeople sleep through the meteor storm: Rusty Everett’s “Little Js,” Piper Libby, Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell, The Chef, and Brenda Perkins. Curiously, the omniscient narrator informs the reader that “the dead also do not see” the phenomenon, so Myra Evans, Duke Perkins, Chuck Thompson, Claudine Sanders, all of whom are “tucked away in the Bowie Funeral Home”; Dr. Haskell, Mr. Carty, and Rory Disnmore, who are “in the morgue of Catherine Russell Hospital; and Lester Coggins, Dodee Sanders, and Angie McCain, who “are still hanging out in the McCain pantry,” with Junior Rennie seated “between Dodee and Angie, holding their hands” miss the fall of the pink stars,

King’s catalogue of the townspeople, the waking, the sleeping, and the dead alike, is unusual. Not only does it remind the reader of the novel’s larger cast of characters, but it also suggests that the story has reached its turning point. Assembling the entire cast intimates that something portentous looms just ahead. There is an eerie sense of change and doom, created largely through the mentioning of the names of both those the reader has met and those who are yet unfamiliar, as if the narrator were calling the reader’s attention to those who will live, those who may die, and those who have already met their deaths. It is as if the reader is given a final glimpse of Chester Mill’s populace, right before a major cataclysm takes place. Something ominous is about to happen, the falling stars suggest, as does the naming of the names of the townspeople and the suicide of Jack Evans, whose self-inflicted death, the reader is told, “will not be the least” (439).

Suspense is high.

While the stars fall, the military douses the dome with the experimental acid. The dome “eats” the acid, and leaves no residue other than “trace minerals. . . soil and airborne pollutants’: according to the scientists on the scene, “spectrographic analysis” indicates that the dome “isn’t there” (441). The government entertains a number of possible theories as to the barrier’s origin, however, despite their ignorance of its composition: it could be the “creation” of extraterrestrial beings, a genius, “the work of a renegade country,” or even “a living thing,” such as “some kind of E. coli hybrid” (441-442). Julia Shumway offers another possibility: “‘Colonel Cox,” Julia said quietly, ‘are we something’s experiment? Because that’s what I feel like’” (442).

Suspense remains high.

Seizures “Under the Dome”: Unity and Suspense

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Several of the characters in Stephen King’s latest novel, Under the Dome, suffer seizures. Some are thought to be petite mal epileptic seizures; others are presumed to be cause by too much exposure to the sun; still others are said to result from too much excitement. (Only later does physician’s assistant Rusty Everett suggest that the seizures may be “a side effect of whatever force is powering the Dome” [396]).

Among the children who experience such seizures are sisters Judy and Janelle Everett, Little Walter Bushey, and Aidan Appleton. Judy, Janelle, and Little Walter are children of Chester’s Mill residents Linda Everett and Samantha (“Sammy”) Bushey; and Aidan is the orphan son of an out-of-town mother who is killed by the descent of the dome.

Their seizures are accompanied by murmurings about strange visions. “Stop Halloween,” Janelle warns, “you have to stop Halloween.” Judy reports, “The pink stars are falling,” adding “it’s so dark and everything smells bad” (389). Little Walter hasn’t had a visionary experience, as far as anyone knows, but, at only 18 months, he may not be able to articulate any such hallucination or prophecy if he has had one. Nevertheless, the reader learns, from Ginny Tomlinson, a nurse at the local hospital to which Sammy took her son after his crib collapsed (and she herself had been gang-raped): Little Walter, she tells the Reverend Piper Libby, is “your basic healthy eighteen-month-old, but he gave us quite a scare. He had a mini-seizure. It was probably exposure to the sun. Plus dehydration. . . hunger. . .” (384). (It is also from Ginny that the pastor learns that Sammy was raped; the pastor quickly accomplishes what no one else has been able to do, extracting from Sammy the names of her rapists.)

A few pages later, Aidan has the same bizarre vision as he experiences a seizure:

“He’s having some kind of seizure,” Carolyn [Sturges] said. “Probably from overexcitement. I think he’ll come out of it if we just give him a few m--”

“The pink stars are falling,” Aidan said. “They make lines behind them. It’s pretty. It’s scary. Everyone is watching. No treats, only tricks. Hard to breathe. He calls himself the Chef. It’s his . He’s the one” (391).

Upon recovering, none of the children remembers seeing, hearing, smelling, or saying anything unusual. However, their seizures and their hallucinations, like the migraine headaches that Junior Rennie suffers, suggest that something is very bad, indeed, in Chester’s Mill and that, as bad as things may be, events are likely to get worse soon. Halloween and pink stars point to something sinister. According to Aidan, the Chef is the one responsible for the coming catastrophe, whatever it might be. The last time the reader encountered the Chef, he was lurking about inside the methamphetamine laboratory that Big Jim Rennie and Andy Sanders operate behind Christ the Holy Redeemer Church. The pastor of the church was also a partner in the manufacture and sale of the illegal drug before Big Jim killed him. Police officers Jackie Wettington and Linda Everett, who had checked on the church, the parsonage, and the church’s radio station missed the Chef:

A door neither woman had noticed eased open at the back of the studio. Inside were more blinking lights--a galaxy of them. The room was little more than a cubby choked with wires, splitters, routers, and electronic boxes. You would have said there was no room for a man. But The Chef was beyond skinny; he was emaciated. His eyes were only glitters sunk deep in his skull. His skin was pale and blotchy. His lips folded loosely inward over gums that had lost most of their teeth. His shirt and pants were filthy, and his hips were naked wings; Chef’s underwear days were now just a memory. It is doubtful that Sammy would have recognized her missing husband. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one hand (he could eat only soft things now) and a Glock 9 in the other.

He went to the window overlooking the parking lot, thinking he’d rush out and kill the intruders if they were still there; he had almost done it while they were inside. Only he’d been afraid. Because demons couldn’t actually be killed. When their human bodies died, they just flew into another host. When they were between bodies, the demons looked like blackbirds. Chef had seen this in vivid dreams that came on the increasingly rare occasions when he slept.

They were gone, however. His atman had been too strong for them.

Rennie had told him he had to shut down out back, and Chef Bushey had, but he might have to start up some cookers again, because there had been a big shipment to Boston a week ago and he was almost out of product. He needed smoke. It was what his atman fed on these days.

But for now he had enough. He had given up on the blues music that had been so important to him [as he had given up on sex, too, according to Samantha, his wife, in favor of his drug of choice] in his Phil Bushey stage of life--B. B. King, Koko and Hound Dog Taylor, Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf, even the immortal Little Walter. . . he had even pretty much given up on moving his bowels, had been constipated since July. But that was okay. What humiliated the body fed the atman.

He checked the parking lot and the road beyond once more to make sure the demons weren’t lurking, then tucked the automatic into his belt at the small of his back and
headed for the storage shed, which was actually more of a factory these days. A
factory that was shut down, but he could and would fix that if necessary.

Chef went to get his pipe (320-321).

Judy, Janelle, Aidan, and Little Walter are not the only ones to have had seizures, the reader later is told: according to the omniscient narrator,

During the first fifty-five hours of the Dome’s existence, over two dozen children suffered seizures. Some, like those of the Everett girls, were noted. Many more were not, and in the days ahead the seizure activity would rapidly taper down to nothing. Rusty would compare this to the minor shocks people experienced when they came too close to the Dome. The first time, you got that almost electric frisson that stiffened the hair on the back of your neck; after that, most people felt nothing. It was as if they had been inoculated (424-425).

King associates characters through their sharing of a common environment, through their sharing of a common experience, and through such relationships to one another as those of family, friendship, and business. In addition, a few are associated with one another more particularly than others. For example, not only do Judy, Janelle, Aidan, and Little Walter share the common environment of Chester’s Mill, but they are also connected by the seizures they suffer and by the resulting hallucinations they experience. Samantha and her son Little Walter are also connected to Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey, the one whose “fault” some yet-to-occur catastrophe related to Halloween and the falling of pink stars it is (according to Aidan). They are a family, and, the reader suspects, they will somehow oppose one another during the future incidents of which the children, during their seizures, seem to predict will occur.

In one case, a character--Junior Rennie--is associated also with the dead, both the “girlfriends” he has killed and whose company he keeps, in the dark pantry of one’s home, and the Pastor Lester Coggins, whose body he has hidden with those of Angela McCain and Dodee Sanders after his father killed the pastor. There are hints of necrophilia between Junior and the female corpses. Junior suffers frequent migraines, and he often retreats to the makeshift tomb when such a headache seizes him, and he always feels better, he asserts, after spending time with his “girlfriends.” Not only do such associations unify the plot of King’s sprawling novel, but they also add to the story’s suspense.

Other loose threads of the plot also intrigue the reader. What, if anything, will happen to Samantha Bushey? Her attackers warned her not to tell anyone about the brutal assaults they committed against her; nevertheless, Sammy identified them to the Reverend Piper Libby. Will the children be cured of whatever causes their seizures? Will Big Jim Rennie succeed in his bid to wrest more power from the community’s residents? Will he and his son Junior get away with the murders they’ve committed? Will Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell be able to beat her addiction to pain pills? Will Big Jim and Junior be able to frame Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara for the murder of the Reverend Lester Coggins? Will Barbie connect the stolen propane tanks with Big Jim’s methamphetamine manufacturing operation? Will the dome ever be destroyed? These questions, and those related to the ethical issues that King raises early in his novel, are at least as compelling as a video game, a TV program, a movie, or surfing the Internet.
　
It isn’t long before Judy’s visionary experience proves prophetic. . . .

Stephen King Meets Niccolo Machiavelli “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Big Jim Rennie, observing his dejected townspeople, comments upon the military’s failed attempt to blast through the dome covering Chester’ Mill, Maine, with a pair of Cruise missiles, his remark sounding like something critics of President Obama might say concerning the real-world commander in chief: “Take a good look, pal--this is what incompetency, false hope, and too much information gets you.”

The federal government has failed to deliver the citizens of the small town from their captivity, just as, in real life, Obama has failed to deliver the citizens of the southern United States from the effects of British Petroleum’s Gulf Oil leak. The crisis in Chester’s Mill is one that Big Jim means to capitalize upon, just as Rahm Emmanuel advised President Obama to take full advantage of every crisis, lest it go to “waste.”

However, there is another lens through which to interpret the political machinations in Stephen King’s latest novel, one provided by non other than the Machiavellian mastermind Niccolo Machiavelli himself, who, in The Discourses (1519), contends that monarchy devolves into tyranny; aristocracy, into oligarchy; and “popular government,” such as democracy, into licentiousness. In fact, these dissolutions occur, again and again, in a “circle,” monarchy-tyranny giving way to aristocracy-oligarchy, aristocracy-oligarchy succumbing to democracy-licentiousness, and so on, continuously, unless and until the three types of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are included in one and the same system, each a check and a balance to the other: Presumably, the American founding fathers had such a strategy in mind when they established the United States federal government, wherein a president fulfills the role of the monarch, the congress is a stand-in for the aristocracy, and the “popular government” is made up of the masses.

Applying this formula to the government of Chester’s Mill, Maine, Big Jim Rennie is the tyrant, and Colonel Barbara, Julie Shumway, Brenda Perkins, and their followers represent the aristocracy whom Machiavelli characterizes as “those citizens who, surpassing the others in grandeur of soul, in wealth, and in courage,” are unwilling to “submit to the outrages and excesses” of the tyrant and who gather unto themselves “the masses” to “rid themselves” of the tyrant. However, there is a transitional period between the overthrow of a tyranny and the subsequent government “in strict accordance with the laws. . . established” by the victorious aristocracy. This is the period of time with which Under the Dome is concerned--the transitional period wherein the aristocrats begin to assert themselves against the town’s tyrant. The allegiance of “the masses” is divided between the tyrant and the aristocracy and subject to vacillation.

Such is the case in Chester’s Mill. Some retain loyalty to Big Jim Rennie, the tyrant; others have formed an allegiance with Colonel Dale Barbara, Julie Shumway, and Brenda Perkins. For example, when Big Jim orders Barbie to discontinue the video feed from the expected point of the missiles’ impact to television screens upon which the masses crowding the interior of Dippy’s nightclub hope to see for themselves the effect of the federal government’s attempt to demolish the dome and rescue them, Barbie puts the issue to the people: “The video deal out here on Little Bitch Road is entirely my responsibility,” he tells the crowd, “and as you may have gathered, there has been a difference of opinion between myself and Selectman Rennie about whether or not to continue the feed.” The crowd is not pleased to hear that the official wants the feed discontinued: “This time the ripple was louder and not happy,” and Will Freeman, “owner and operator of the local Toyota dealership (and no friend of James Rennie) spoke directly to the TV. ‘Leave it alone, Jimmy, or there’s gonna be a new Selectman in The Mill by the end of the week’” (338).

The people are behind Barbie at the moment, but Big Jim is counting upon them returning to his fold if the missiles fail to demolish the dome, and, when the missiles do fail to liberate the townspeople, it seems that the wily old politician is correct (as is Barbie, for that matter), for “those who had watched the Air Force’s failed attempt to punch through the Dome left Dipper’s pretty much as Barbie had imagined: slowly, with their heads down, not talking much. . . some crying.” Moreover, their rebelliousness seems to have evaporated: “Three town police cars were parked across the road from Dipper’s, and half a dozen cops stood leaning against them, ready for trouble. But there was no trouble” (351). Disappointed at the federal government’s failure to rescue them from the crisis, the townspeople are dejected, demoralized, and despondent, rather than rebellious, disobedient, and defiant. One suspects they will be more amenable to whatever Big Jim suggests in the immediate future. Score: Tyranny, 1; Aristocracy, 0.

When Barbie earlier suggests that Julia run against Big Jim when they “call for elections,” it is clear that she doesn’t underestimate the power that the tyrannical selectman exercises over the town and its residents. She regards Barbie “pityingly,” as she asks him, “Do you think Jim Rennie is going to allow elections as long as the Dome is in place? What world are you living in, my friend?’” Barbie responds with the courage and resolve of the aristocrat who’s had enough and means to marshal “the masses” against the tyrant: “Don’t underestimate the will of the town, Julia.”

The battle lines are clearly drawn, with the tyrant Big Jim Rennie and his cronies on one side; the aristocracy, comprised of Colonel Dale Barbara, newspaper owner and editor Julia Shumway, Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell, and the police chief’s widow Brenda Perkins, on the other; and the townspeople in the middle. Machiavelli wrote the ending of the story in 1519. According to him, tyranny will be overthrown by the aristocracy, which, in due time, will itself devolve into an oligarchy, the circle circling onward forevermore unless and until the checks and balances of a three-branched system of monarchy-aristocracy-and-popular government is established.

It will be interesting to see whether Machiavelli’s analysis is borne out by the denouement of Under the Dome.

Plodding on “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In case the reader missed it, Stephen King once again has one of the characters of Under the Dome remind him or her that, now that Chester’s Mill has been isolated by the descent of a mysterious transparent dome, pretty much anything is possible. In answer to Julia Shumway’s question as to whether the town’s police force is likely to close down the publication of her newspaper, the novel’s hero, Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara, replies, “That’s not going to happen.” However, the omniscient narrator suggests that it may happen, that anything may happen: “But he wondered. If this went on long enough, he supposed every day in Chester’s Mill would become Anything Can Happen Day” (226).

Quite a few things do happen. After Rory Dinsmore blinds himself in an attempt to shatter the dome with a high-powered rifle shot, he dies in the operating room. His death is followed, thirty four minutes later, by that of the hospital’s chief surgeon, who dies of a heart attack. By presidential order, Barbie is drafted back into the Army and promoted to the rank of colonel. He is told to declare martial law and seize authority from the local government’s representatives, Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie included. Barbie convinces Brenda, the late police chief’s wife, to help him gain access to the town hall’s fallout shelter so that he can steal the Geiger counter stored therein , and she volunteers to assemble a contingent of others, herself and Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell joining Barbie to announce the news to the other selectmen.

And, oh, yes, the military has decided to launch a Cruise missile at the dome at 1300 hours (1:00 in the afternoon, civilian time); it is preprogrammed to impact against the barrier at an elevation of five feet just “where the Dome cuts Little Bitch Road” (249). The expected outcome? Either the missile will be repelled by the dome or much of the town will be obliterated, along with the dome itself.

Second Selectman Rennie (“Big Jim”) reluctantly accepts the president’s appointment of Colonel Dale Barbara (“Barbie”) as his “man on the spot,” and the commander-in-chief’s orders that Big Jim cooperate fully with Barbara--at least until Big Jim learns whether the missile will destroy the dome, as the military hopes.

Four of the town’s newly deputized special deputies, Mel Searles, Frankie DeLesseps, Carter Thibodeau, and Georgia Roux, visit Samantha (“Sammy”) Bushey, a woman whom DeLesseps claims sassed him earlier that day. Their ostensible mission is to teach Sammy to respect the police. In reality, they come to assault her, both physically and sexually.

Later that night, “Big Jim” murders the Reverend Lester Coggins when, taking Rory Disnmore’s blindness as a sign from God that he must confess his sins--and those of Big Jim--namely, their operation of a methamphetamine lab behind their church. Big Jim is assisted, after the fact, by his son Junior, who wraps the pastor’s corpse in a tarpaulin and secretes it with the bodies of Junior’s own victims, Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders. Ironically, Big Jim decides that he and his partners in crime should shut down their meth lab until the dome is destroyed.

Most of this section of the novel is devoted to chronicling the sociopolitical and emotional effects of the isolation that has descended upon the town of Chester’s Mill in the form of the transparent dome. However, this novel seems to represent a departure of sorts in the thinking of its author. Previously, King, a self-avowed liberal who enthusiastically supports left-wing causes and appears to consider the Republican party just short of demonic, seems to take a more moderate approach to politics. His protagonist’s major supporter is the Republican owner and editor of the local newspaper, Julia Shumway, whom King depicts as intelligent, fearless, and tenacious. On more than a few occasions, her fast thinking, courageous resistance to Big Jim Rennie saves Dale Barbara from being jailed or worse, and she is intent upon publishing the truth concerning both the events which transpire outside and inside the dome.

Published in January 2010, Under the Dome appeared before the Gulf Oil crisis that has tested Barack Hussein Obama’s competence in responding to a catastrophe even larger and more destructive than Hurricane Katrina. President Bush’s response to the latter was poor, to say the least, but most critics, including many Democrats, agree that President Obama’s response to the former has been much worse. The question of Obama’s competence as commander-in-chief is important to Under the Dome, an ecological novel, because it is President Obama who assumes command of the situation that is central to the novel--freeing the citizens of Chester’s Mill, Maine, from the mysterious barrier that has cut them off from the rest of the world. As King makes clear, the president who signs the executive order drafting and promoting Dale Barbara to U. S. Army colonel and putting him in charge as the federal government’s liaison with the local civilian authorities is signed by “the bastard. . . himself. . . using all three of his names, including the terrorist one in the middle [i. e., Hussein]” (270).

In the novel, Obama’s solution is to fire a Cruise missile at the dome. Given the outcome of Rory Dinsmore’s firing of his high-powered rifle at the barrier (the loss of his eye to a ricocheting bullet and no harm at all to the dome), Obama’s solution seems ill-advised, and, if it doesn’t work, Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie has sworn to take the president’s failure as an indication that he himself needs to retain authority. “It may work,” he agrees with Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell. On the other hand, he declares,

“if it doesn’t we’re on our own, and a commander in chief who can’t help his citizens isn’t worth a squirt of warm pee in a cold chamber pot, as far as I’m concerned! If it doesn’t work, and if they don’t blow us all to Glory, somebody is going to have to take hold in this town. Is it going to be some drifter the President taps with his magic wand, or is it going to be the elected officials already in place? (277).

For Big Jim, the value of a leader lies in his or her ability to protect the people he serves, much as the chieftain of a band of warriors‘ value--and authority (as in Beowulf, for example)--lies in his ability to protect and conquer: “Do you know what a commander is, Andrea? Someone who merits loyalty and obedience because he can provide the resources to help those in need. It’s supposed to be a fair trade” (277).

It will be interesting to see whether the Cruise missile attack succeeds or fails. In the novel, as in actual life, much of President Obama’s title to “loyalty and obedience” seems to be predicated upon his ability to “provide the resources to help those in need.” Many consider his response to the Gulf Oil crisis conclusive proof that Obama lacks this ability, and the looming November election promises to unseat many incumbent Congressmen and Senators, especially of the Democratic persuasion, who support President Obama. If the fictional Obama’s handling of the dome crisis parallels his handling of the Gulf Oil crisis, it seems safe to say that Big Jim Rennie won’t be stepping down as one of “the elected officials already in place” in Chester’s Mill, Maine.

Whatever happens next in Under the Dome, this much, at least, seems fairly clear: like the rest of the country and its citizenry, King seems to have moved more toward the middle of the political spectrum, which is distrustful of politicians in general, at every level of authority, and he appears to consider Republicans human rather than demonic and Democrats as perhaps capable of the corruption, dishonesty, and abuse that, heretofore, he has reserved for members of the Grand Old Party.

So far, Christian fundamentalism hasn’t fared as well. With King’s bias against it in full swing, as shown by his characterization of the Reverend Lester Coggins as a primitive believer given to self-flagellation (with a Bible, no less) and the seeking after signs as well as hypocrisy, self-delusion, and even criminal activity. Whether the Congo Church and its pastor will fare any better than the leader of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church remains to be seen.

On page 342, the Cruise missile explodes against the dome, with the result that the reader has anticipated. (The book is, after all, 1,074 pages; if the missile had destroyed the dome, I would have ended within a few pages after 342). King’s description of the failure is cool, though:

They heard it come: a growing otherworldly hum from the western edge of town, a mmmm that rose to MMMMMM in a space of seconds. On the big-screen TV they saw almost nothing, until half an hour later, long after the missile had failed. For those still remaining in the roadhouse, Benny Drake was able to slow the recording down until it was advancing frame by frame. They saw the missile come slewing around what was known as Little Bitch Bend. It was no more than four feet off the ground, almost kissing its own blurred shadow. In the next frame, the Fasthawk, tipped with a blast-fragmentation warhead designed to explode on contact was frozen midair about where the Marines’ bivouac had been.

In the next frames, the screen filled with a white so bright it made the watchers shade their eyes. Then, as the white began to fade, they saw the missile fragments--so many black dashes against the diminishing blast--and a huge scorch mark where the red X [on the dome] had been. The missile had hit its spot exactly.

A second Cruise missile is followed, with the same result.

Obviously, the military’s solution to the problem represented by Chester’ Mill’s isolation beneath the mysterious barrier, which the president (a fictitious version of Barack Hussein Obama) approved, has failed, which makes an earlier scene between Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie, newspaper editor Julie Shumway, and Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara all the more ominous, for, in the brief exchange between them, when Big Jim sought to shut down the videocam link by which the missile’s impact was delivered to his constituents, the people of Chester’s Mill, as they looked on from the safe distance of the Dipper’s nightclub, the selectman threatened both Shumway and Barbara.

Now that the missile has failed to solve the problem of the dome, the reader can count upon Big Jim to carry out his threat. If the plot seems a bit too contrived and predictable, it’s probably too late for many readers to discontinue the narrative at this point, 343 pages into the story. However, one begins to wonder whether the novel can deliver on its association with Lord of the Flies or do justice to its exploration of the half dozen or so issues it has raised.

There’s but one way to know, and that’s to plod on. . . .

Social Protest vs. (a) Religious Tolerance or (b) Hellfire Under the Dome

Copyrigjt 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Two forces which conflict with the authoritarian regime that arises in Chester’s Mill, Maine, in the wake of the descent of the dome, a transparent barrier that cuts the town off from outer, surrounding world in Stephen King’s latest novel Under the Dome, are the band of social protesters whom the town’s boy genius, 13-year-old “Scarecrow” Joe McClatchey, organizes and the congregations of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church, pastured by the Reverend Lester Coggins, and the Congo Church, pastured by the Reverend Piper Libby.

None of these organizations, the reader is apt to think, seems likely to stand up to Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie; Police Chief Randolph; Jim’s sadistic son, Special Deputy Junior Rennie; or the U. S. military forces that guard the perimeter of the town.

McClatchey’s Committee to Free Chester’s Mill offers outdated political platitudes such as “FIGHT THE POWER!” and “STICK IT TO THE MAN!” Coggins preaches that the town’s isolation under the dome is the consequence of unconfessed sin. Libby encourages her congregation to “love one another,” characterizing the descent of the dome as a mystery like the affliction to which Job was subjected.

“In times of crisis,” King’s omniscient narrator informs the reader, “folks are apt to fall back on the familiar for comfort”; consequently, “there were no surprises for the faithful in Chester’s Mill that morning; Piper Libby preached hope at the Congo, and Lester Coggins preached hellfire at Christ the Holy Redeemer. Both churches were packed” (192). Of course, McClatchey’s message--“STICK IT TO THE MAN!”--is familiar, too, in quite another way, recalling similar sentiments from the 1960s, when political protest was all the rage.

Against these traditional, or “familial,” approaches to crisis, that of social protest (“STICK IT TO THE MAN!“) and religious tolerance (“love one another”) or “hellfire,” King suggests a third alternative--the one that most of his fiction also implicitly endorses: the banding together of the community--or whatever part of it will band together--against a common foe. So far, at page 192, this is a small band, indeed: former Army captain and current short-order cook Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara; Julie Shumway, the Republican owner and editor of the local newspaper, Democrat; and, possibly, Brenda, the widow of slain police chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins, who has not yet been enlisted in the community’s cause.

In times past (for example, in Insomnia), King seems to have been more liberal in his ideology than he appears to be today. ‘Salem’s Lot takes issue with disbelief and hypocrisy among the clergy. Since Firestarter, he has been leery of government authority; in Insomnia, he all but champions abortion as a fundamental feminist human right. In Needful Things and, to a lesser extent, Christine, he offers some rather obvious critiques of capitalism. (Needful Things is also highly critical of Christianity’s get-rich-quick prosperity brand of preaching, and was, in fact, according to King himself, inspired by the excesses of Jim Bakker).

In Desperation, though, which is perhaps King’s most religious novel to date, he seems to have reached a turning point and, indeed, a maturation in his thinking about religious faith. On an individual, personal level, such faith, as exercised on the part of Desperation’s David Carver and John Marinville, trust in God can, indeed, move mountains, King suggests, although, in the process, the faithful themselves are apt to be among those hurt the most, both physically and emotionally. If God promises his followers a garden, it’s no longer the Garden of Eden, it appears, but the Garden of Gethsemane.

With nearly 900 pages left to go, I’m not clear yet as to whether Under the Dome will separate the wheat (Piper Libby’s brand of the faith) from the chaff (Lester Coggin’s brand of Christianity), showing the reader what’s fake faith and what’s the real deal (or, perhaps, why both versions of the gospel message offered by these churches is only partially complete and sustainable). Regardless of the outcome of this line of thought, one form of resistance to tyranny that seems likely to stand is the one that is suggested again and again by King’s fiction: it takes a village to stick it to the monster, whether the monster is a nightmarish fiend or a disturbed fellow human being.

Capitalism doesn‘t escape implied censure, either, because, sure enough, in the next scene, which follows hard upon the heels of the papering of Chester’s Mill with posters announcing the Committee to Free Chester’s Mill’s upcoming protest, King introduces Romeo Burpee, who, as the owner of “the largest and most profitable indie department store in the entire state,” hopes to profit from the protest and the churches’ meetings by selling his overstock at “the biggest damn cookout and field day this town has ever seen” (197).

For Burpee, who is always on the lookout for “the main chance,” entrepreneurial capitalism is synonymous, at times, at least, with opportunism, and, when the opportunity presents itself, he is quick to capitalize upon it, as “ruthlessly” as possible. It seems that opportunistic capitalism can save the day no more easily than social protest for the sake of social protest or the preaching of organized religion, either in its gentle-as-a-dove or its serpents-of-hell formulation.

And, now, back to the marathon that is Under the Dome. . . .