Tyranny and Solidarity "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Romeo (“Rommie”) Burpie visits his department store, telling his clerks that he is conducting inventory. Instead, he loads up shopping carts with the radiation-protection items that Rusty Everett has requested for use in his pending visit to Black Ridge, where Joe McClatchey and his friends, Norrie Calvert and Benny Drake, believe the dome generator is located. His clerks wear blue armbands, which makes Rommie believe that they have been sworn in as special deputies. They assure him that they have not; the armbands are merely intended to show “solidarity” with the local firefighting and police departments. Rommie decides that he and Rusty should wear these bands, too, as “camouflage,” so Big Jim and his supporters will falsely assume that Rommie and Rusty, too, support him. After gathering the equipment that Rusty has requested, Rommie also hides several rifles in his store’s safe, in case Big Jim rounds up all the citizens’ weapons.

Meanwhile, Big Jim Rennie refuses to surrender his authority to Andrea Grinell, as Colonel Cox suggests when the Army officer makes contact with the selectman via telephone, even after Cox lets Big Jim know that the Army knows about his manufacture and dsitribuion of illegal drugs and promises not to prosecute the politician if he agrees to do so. Big Jim adopts Carter Thibodeau as his personal bodyguard, dispatching him with a message to Chief Randolph: fire Deputy Wettington. Big Jim also orders Thibodeau to instruct Deputy Stacey Moggin to assemble “every officer we’ve got on our roster” at Food Town supermarket, where Big Jim plans to deliver “another speech” in which he will “wind them up like Granddad’s pocketwatch [sic]”(707).

Fired, Jackie commiserates with the Reverend Piper Libby, and the two women compare notes, Jackie telling Piper about Rusty’s visit to the funeral home and his determination that a baseball was used to kill the Reverend Lester Coggins and that someone broke Brenda Perkins’ neck. (In an earlier scene, Rommie, who is quite the womanizer, vowed to avenge himself upon whoever killed Brenda, who was former girlfriend of his.) Jackie also notifies Piper of her plan to break Barbie out of jail. Jackie asks Piper to allow a meeting between eight trusted citizens who oppose Big Jim and Chief Police Pete Randolph at her parsonage that night. Among the invited are librarian Lssa Jamieson and retired Food Town manager Ernie Calvert. They complete their discussion as Helen Roux, Georgia’s mother, arrives at Piper's house for counseling concerning her daughter Georgia’s death at the hands of Georgia’s victim, Samantha Bushey.

Just as Big Jim’s enemies are choosing followers, Deputy Henry Morrison believes that Big Jim likewise plans to assemble a cadre of trusted lieutenants, eliminating Jackie and other officers whom the selectman thinks may be loyal to the former chief of police rather than to Police Chief Randolph and himself. Henry believes that he will be the next to be fired and that others who will be terminated will likely include Linda Everett and Stacey Moggin. As Linda Everett told her husband, Rusty, earlier, “There are sides, and you need to think about which one you’re on” (527). Both Big Jim and his enemies are clearly doing just this, preparing for war.

Except for an occasional mention of the depletion of gasoline and propane reserves, Stephen King does not devote much attention to the need to conserve natural resources, and, apart from a few brief mentions of pollution and environmental destruction, King does not belabor this theme of his novel. Plants and trees, his characters learn, are dying. The atmosphere inside the dome seems to be affected adversely by the presence of the barrier, to the outer side of which particulates of pollution cling. The air inside the dome is stale. Children (and a few adults) have seizures and hallucinate, perhaps as a result of the dome’s influence upon them. Animals seem to kill themselves for no discernable cause. A few of the residents of Chester’s Mill (Junior and his father, Big Jim Rennie, included), seem to be losing their minds. Additionally, King’s omniscient narrator clearly associates the dome with pollution and its effects as Rusty, Rommie, Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, and Benny Drake approach the site at which the children believe the dome’s generator is positioned:

But even away from the [dead, maggot-ridden] bear, the world smelled bad: smoky and heavy, as if the entire town of Chester’s Mill had become a large closed room. In addition to the odors of smoke and decaying animal, he [Rusty] could smell rotting plant life and a swampy stench that no doubt arose from the drying bed of the Prestile [Stream]. If only there was a wind, he thought, but there was just an occasional pallid puff of breeze that brought more bad smells. To the far west there were clouds--it was probably raining. . . over in New Hampshire--but when they reached the Dome, the clouds parted like a river dividing at a large outcropping of rock. Rusty had become increasingly doubtful about the possibility of rain under the Dome. . . (720).

This paragraph helps to reinforce the novel’s concern about the Earth’s pollution.

In investigating the site, Rusty and the others determine that the dome’s effect upon children (and some adults) in causing seizures and hallucinations works “like chickenpox” in the sense that it resembles a “mild sickness mostly suffered by children, who only” catch “it once” (721). As Rusty drives further into the orchard, he feels faint, and a strange change in perception overtakes him as he feels “as if his head were a telescope and he could see anything he wanted to see, no matter how far”; he sees “the dirt road perfectly well. Divinely well. Every stone and chip of mica,” and then, in the middle of the road, he sees a “skinny” man. . . made taller by an absurd red, white and blue stovepipe hat, comically crooked,” who wears “jeans and a tee-shirt that read SWEET HOME ALABAMA PLAY THAT DEAD BAND SONG.” The thought occurs to Rusty that he is seeing “not a man,” but “a Halloween dummy” with “green garden trowels for hands and a burlap head” with “stitched white crosses for eyes,” and then the hallucination, or vision, vanishes and all that remains are “just the road, the ridge, and the purple light, flashing at fifteen-second intervals, seeming to say Come on, come on, come on” (722).

The oddity of the scene keeps the reader reading, as does the repeated connection of such bizarre events to Halloween.

Outfitted in his makeshift radiation suit, Rusty leaves the others behind as he makes his way toward the radiation source.

In one of the novel’s more chilling scenes, Deputy Morrison comes across Junior Rennie, who has wet his pants. Junior is sitting on the curb, “rocking and back and forth” and talking what seems to be gibberish. (Actually, he is lamenting the deaths of his “girlfriends,“ Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders, whom he has killed: “They were my goolfreds,“ he says, adding, “I shilled them so I could fill them”) (727). Deputy Morrison, “alarmed as well as disgusted,” tries to get Junior on his feet so that the special deputy can accompany him back to the police station and sober up. However, once he sees Junior up close, Deputy Morrison is certain that, whatever Junior’s problem may be, it’s much worse than intoxication and that “Junior didn’t need to go to the station for coffee,” but “to the hospital”:

This time Junior turned, and Henry saw he wasn’t drunk. His left eye was bright red. Its pupil was too big. The left side of his mouth was pulled down, exposing some of his teeth. That frozen glare made Henry think momentarily of Mr. Sardonicus, a movie that had scared him as a kid (727).

Deputy Morrison seems to suspect that Junior may have confessed to having assaulted a woman, or worse, when Junior mutters “She just made me so franning mad!. . . I hit her with my knee to shed her ump, and she frew a tit!” However, rather than follow up on his suspicion, Deputy Morrison decides “he wouldn’t go there,” for “he had problems enough” (728). The deputy appears to lack the intestinal fortitude that, in Stephen King’s world, makes a character a hero. He is a moral coward whose failure to pursue his suspicions--suspicions concerning a police officer and not merely a civilian--are tantamount to criminal negligence since a possible crime is involved and its perpetrator, if perpetrator Junior had proved to be, is obviously a madman who may harm others yet again. Such dereliction of duty harms, not helps, others. Therefore, by King’s standards, Deputy Morrison, despite former chief of police Howard (“Duke”) Perkins’ high estimation of him, is one of the story’s villains.

As Rusty closes in on the suspected dome generator, the scene shifts to East Street Grammar School, where sisters Judy and Janelle Everett, snacking outdoors with their friend Deanna Carver, witness a bizarre sight--one similar to the sight that Rusty had seen during the momentary shift in perspective he’d experienced when he’d approached the site of the suspected dome generator, a dummy that librarian Lissa Jamieson put together as a Halloween lawn decoration:

The head was burlap with eyes that were white crosses made from thread. The hat was like the one the cat wore in the Dr. Seuss story. It had garden trowels for
hands (bad old clutchy-grabby hands, Janelle thought) and a shirt with something written on it. She didn’t understand what it meant, bust she could read the words: SWEET HOME ALABAMA PLAY THAT DEAD BAND SONG.

The children, already frightened of Halloween because of the nightmares and hallucinations they’ve had in which they have seen and heard dire warnings that “something bad was going to happen, something with a fire in it,” and there would be “no treats, only tricks” which are “mean” and bad,” are afraid that “it’s Halloween already” (735).

By tying the children’s nightmares and dreams of Halloween and the dummy that Lissa makes to the hallucinatory, possibly prophetic visions that Rusty has had (and to Phil [“The Chef’s”] claim that, on Halloween, he’s making an appearance as an angry Jesus), King creates a sense of imminent and widespread evil and suffering in which neither adult nor child will be safe. He closes out this scene with a bit of foreshadowing. To take her sister’s mind off the unsettling sight of the dummy and their memories of their dark visions concerning Halloween, Janelle suggests that she, Judy, and their friend go inside the schoolhouse and sing songs. “That’ll be nice,“ she declares. King’s omniscient narrator disagrees: “It usually was, but not that day. Even before the big bang in the sky, it wasn’t nice. Janelle kept thinking about the dummy with the white-cross eyes. And the somehow awful shirt: PLAY THE DEAD BAND SONG” (734).

There is definitely a sense of foreboding.

Knowledge, Ignorance, Surprises, and Suspense "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Earlier in the story, flowers that one of Linda and Rusty Everett’s daughters, Judy and Janelle, picked for their mother were dying, and now “the twin oaks in their front yard” apparently are dying as well, their “leaves hanging limp and moveless [sic], their bright colors fading to drab brown” (691). Like the fauna (and the human population, some members of which have had seizures and hallucinations and others of which appear to be going insane), even the flora under the dome is being adversely affected by the pollution-gathering barrier. The suggestion is that, if the dome remains in place much longer, cutting off the town from the rest of both nature and civilization, the consequences will be dire, indeed, for plants, animals, and human beings alike.

The evil spread by Big Jim Rennie and his cohorts is also having dire effects upon the people of Chester’s Mill. Two citizens, Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders, have been killed by Junior Rennie, and two others, the Reverend Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins, have been killed by Big Jim himself. Several townspeople were injured, some seriously, during the riot at, and looting of, Food Town. Samantha Bushey, beaten and raped by Special Deputies Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau, while Special Deputy Georgia Roux assists by holding the victim down and urging her colleagues on, shoots two of them (Frank and Georgia) before killing herself with the same handgun and leaving her eighteen-month-old son Little Walter a virtual orphan, given the indifference and madness of his methamphetamine-addicted father, Phil (“The Chef”). The descent of the dome has killed several animals and human beings as well, including Claudette Sanders, the late wife of First Selectman Andy Sanders and the father of the late Dodee. Rory Dinsmoore’s ill-advised attempt to shoot his way through the dome with a high-powered rifle cost him first an eye and then his life.

Adding to the horror of these deaths is the townspeople’s ignorance as to the cause of the dome and its descent and of the cause of the madness that grips some of the townspeople (The Chef, Junior, and Big Jim himself, among others). One cannot fight what one does not understand, and the inability to protect and defend oneself and others increases one’s sense of helplessness and desperation.

So far, the protagonist, Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara (jailed since page 533), and his supporters have discovered little of the truth behind the bizarre events that have transpired and continue to transpire in their town. Joe McClatchey and his friends Norrie Calvert and Benny Drake, using a Geiger counter supplied to them by Barbie before Barbara was jailed, have located what they believe may be the generator that created and sustains the dome. Physician’s assistant Rusty Everett, in having examined the bodies of the Reverend Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins, surmises that the former was struck by a baseball and that the latter’s neck was broken. The former chief of police and Brenda’s late husband, Howard (“Duke”) Perkins, an early victim of the dome, has compiled a file of incriminating evidence concerning Big Jim’s theft of public funds and manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. The townspeople also know that neither the direct hit of a pair of Cruise missiles nor the dousing of the dome with an experimental acid capable of melting solid rock had any effect on the barrier. In addition, they have a few fairly strong suspicions about some of the strange incidents that have happened since the dome’s descent. They suspect that Big Jim organized the Food Town riot as an excuse seize more power for himself and to further bolster the ranks of Chester’s Mill’s finest. They suspect that he is behind the arson that resulted in the burning down of newspaper owner and editor Julia Shumway’s business and residence. They suspect that Big Jim has framed Barbie for the murders of his and Junior’s victims. Samantha Bushey identified Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau, and Georgia Roux as her attackers, although they denied her allegations and have never been charged, arrested, or tried.

That’s what, to date, the townspeople know or suspect. They don’t know the origin or the nature of the dome, although there are plenty of theories as to how it came to be and who may be responsible for its descent. Some believe it is the work of extraterrestrials. Others think it is the result of a terrorist attack by a rogue nation. Still others suspect that the United States put the dome in place, using its own citizens as subjects of a sinister experiment. Perhaps the dome is the invention of a criminal genius, some suppose, or a living entity, others imagine.

Once again, the characters’ partial knowledge and total ignorance, coupled with rumors and suspicions (some founded, some not) increase their fear and sense of helplessness while, at the same time, heightening the story’s suspense.

But King also arouses the reader’s suspense by extending the population of the town in an unusual manner. In an earlier scene, King surprises the reader by including the dead among the living in his catalogue of the townspeople of Chester’s Mill who did not witness the phenomenon of the falling pink stars, as if he were suddenly writing a sequel to Our Town or Spoon River Anthology. The effect is startling, and shows that, even after all these years, King can surprise his readers.

Now, in a scene out of The Sixth Sense, one of his characters--and a canine one, at that--Horace, Julia Shumway’s Corgi, hears a voice as he eats popcorn spilled by Andrea Grinnell, with whom Horace and Julia are staying, following the loss of Julia’s home and business to the Molotov cocktails tossed by Big Jim’s henchmen. As the dog is eating the spilled popcorn he has found under an end table, he encounters the file of incriminating evidence against Big Jim Rennie that the late Police Chief Perkins had gathered. His widow, Brenda, at Barbie’s behest, had taken it to the third selectman for safekeeping. Andrea, in seeking to kick her addiction to pain pills cold turkey, had promptly forgotten her visitor’s visit. Apparently, both Andrea and Julia have also forgotten the file itself (since neither of them mentions it again or looks for it.) As Horace comes across the file, however, he hears the voice:

. . . Horace was actually standing on his mistress’ name (printed in the late Brenda Perkins’s neat hand) and hoovering up the first bits of a surprisingly rich treasure trove, when Andrea and Julia walked back into the living room.

A woman said, Take that to her.

Horace looked up, his ears pricking. That was not Julia or the other woman [Andrea]; it was a deadvoice [sic]. Horace, like all dogs, heard dead voices [sic] quite often, and
sometimes saw their owners. The dead were all around, but living people saw them
no more than they could smell most of the ten thousand aromas that surrounded
them every minute of every day.

Take that to Julia, she needs it, it’s hers (694).

Unfortunately, Horace is confused, thinking (yes, King’s mutts are quite good at cognitive activity, in their own doggy way, much as are the canines that frequent rival writer Dean Koontz’s cloyingly sentimental fiction), and the Corgi, able to distinguish between “peoplefood” [sic] and “floorfood” [sic], thinks that it is “ridiculous” to imagine that Julia would. . . eat anything that had been in his mouth,” and, in his confusion, the misplaced file remains undiscovered--at least, by the human characters--and Horace himself forgets “all about the dead voice [sic]” (695).

Why does King include this scene? Is it simply to remind the reader of the file’s existence and that it is still available to the enemies of Big Jim Rennie? If so, there are other, simpler and more expedient ways to accomplish this end. In fact, King has reminded the reader of the file’s existence, if not its specific location, several times already, through characters’ dialogue concerning the file. Obviously, King does not want the file to be discovered yet, because Julia was about to do just this when she turned away from the end table under which it lies, concerned about Andrea as the selectman began to make gagging sounds, prior to regurgitating her morning’s “raisin bun”:

She bent to look into the gap between the couch and the wall.

Before she could, the other woman began to make a gagging
noise. . . (695).

If the purpose of the scene isn’t for Julia to find the file, why did King write it? Why did he bring forth the ghost of Brenda Perkins to tell Horace to take the file to Julia? In regard to the answers to such questions, the reader, at this point, is left hanging, so to speak, but King has certainly raised the question as to why he has deliberately emphasized, once again, as he had in including the dead among the living in his listing of the names of those residents of Chester’s Mill who had not seen the fall of pink stars, a link between the living and the dead. He deliberately introduces an element of the supernatural when such an intrusion is not necessary to the telling of his story and is, in fact, even a bit disconcerting, requiring, as it does, yet an additional suspension of disbelief, beyond that needed to accept the sudden dropping down of a mysterious, transparent “dome“ over an entire town. In doing so, he sets up the expectation that, sooner or later, this connection between the living and the dead of Chester’s Mill will have narrative (and, perhaps, thematic) significance. Of course, in setting up the reader’s expectation that he will deliver on his implied promise to account for this link between the quick and the dead, King also generates a ton of suspense.

Medicine for Melancholy “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Andy Sanders goes to the Holy Redeemer Church to notify Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey that his wife, Samantha, committed suicide after killing two police officers. The selectman makes no mention of the fact that the police officers were responsible for her beating and rape: “even in his grief” over the loss of his daughter wife Claudette and his daughter Dorothy (“Dodee”), “Andy had no intention of bringing up the rape accusation” (670). Instead, Andy tells The Chef that Samantha probably killed the special deputies because “she was upset about the Dome” (670). They discuss the methamphetamine operation in which they have been involved with Big Jim Rennie, the late (murdered Reverend Lester Coggins), and others. The Chef shares Andy’s opinion that selling the illegal drug is wrong, although, The Chef says, making it “is God’s will” because “meth is medicine for melancholy” (670). The Chef invites the selectman to accompany him, saying “I’m going to change your life” (671).

In this scene, King offers some insights into the character of Andy Sanders. Like most of the town’s other power brokers, Andy is evil, despite his affable manner and his facile optimism. His evil lies in his willingness to go along to get along. Andy has few moral values. Andy explains to The Chef that, although Samantha has killed herself, all is not lost for The Chef, for his son by Samantha, Little Walter, survives. The omniscient narrator informs the reader that “even in his despair, Andy Sanders was a glass-half-full person” (669). Such optimism may seem admirable at first, but, upon consideration, it is superficial, given the circumstances (a double murder followed by a suicide and the leaving of a motherless child behind). His insistence upon seeing the good as well as the bad in this case is condescending; it is also evasive. Evil demands to be seen for what it is, without sugarcoating it by considering other, peripheral facts or incidents. It is good that Little Walter is “fine,” but his wellbeing has no real bearing upon Samantha’s having been beaten and raped or her murder of her attackers, followed by her suicide. Furthermore, Andy’s willingness to follow Big Jim’s lead, even when his colleague proposes or commits immoral or criminal acts results, in large measure, from Andy’s eagerness to please others--in this instance, Big Jim. One suspects that Andy likes to please others because doing so is the least demanding alternative; certainly, it would be much easier than standing up to as brash and bold a person as Big Jim.

The reader isn’t made privy to whether or not Andy was a good husband or a good father, but chances are that he was as agreeable to Claudette as he was permissive to Dodee, because Andy’s defining characteristics are his easygoingness, affability, and eagerness to please. Had he taken a stand more often, he probably wouldn’t have come to the bitter end in which he finds himself as a childless widower who has become the political rubber stamp for, and a criminal cohort of, Big Jim. His life’s choices and lack of principled action, his going along to get along, has brought him to a state of despair in which he was prepared to commit suicide, as his daughter did (albeit nonviolently, with pills, rather than with a handgun, which was Dodee‘s method of choice); to the point at which he must tell The Chef that he “can’t say” whether he wants The Chef to kill him; and to the point at which, it seems, he may be willing for The Chef to “change” his life (by introducing him to the sweet release of methamphetamine). In short, Andy Sanders is weak, both morally and in willpower. Being weak is not in itself evil, perhaps, but it becomes evil when it ends in the course of action that Andy has chosen for himself and, as a public official, indirectly for the people of the town he helps to govern.

For the same reason, The Chef is evil He cares about Samantha not because he loved her or even because he was married to her, but because she was proficient in making love “when she was stoned” (670). Even the news that his infant son is “fine” means nothing to him. When Andy gives him “the comforting news that ‘the child’ was fine,” “Chef “waved away Little Walter’s wellbeing” (669). During their talk, as they get high, The Chef connects Halloween to the second coming of Christ, providing a possible link (albeit a vague one) to the hallucinations the town’s children had while they were experiencing seizures, presumably due to the influence of the dome.

After smoking meth, Andy drives The Chef to the hospital, where he retrieves the body of his wife, taking it back to the Holy Redeemer Church, where he believes Jesus will make his return on Halloween, raising Samantha from the dead. Confused as the result of his long-term, hallucinatory addiction to methamphetamine, The Chef also says that he himself is “coming as Jesus,” on Halloween, and, as such, he adds, he is “pissed” (673).

Deputy Jackie Wettington resolves to break Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara out of jail the next night, and she delivers this message to him in a bowl of cereal. Later, Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie visits Barbie, trying to persuade him into signing a false confession, admitting to the beatings, rapes, and murders with which he is charged. Instead, Barbie informs Big Jim that he is aware of, and has evidence to prove, that Big Jim has been involved in the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine on a grand scale. If Big Jim waterboards Barbie to extract the confession , as the selectman threatens to do, Barbie will implicate him in this illegal activity and divulge the location of the files that former Police Chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins had compiled concerning the selectman’s criminal activity. Their meeting ends in a stalemate.

This scene reminds the reader of the flimsiness of the plot in regard to Barbie’s continued incarceration. More clear than ever, to Big Jim, is the threat that Barbie poses. It seems obviously wiser for Big Jim to have his prisoner shot as Barbie supposedly seeks to escape from custody than it is to allow his existence to continue to threaten the selectman. Wagering that he can bring matters to a close with a trial in which the innocent Barbie can be convicted and sentenced to death is a risk that is both foolish and unnecessary to take. Indeed, King’s omniscient narrator suggests as much in sharing Barbie’s thoughts on the matter with the reader: “He [Big Jim] left. They all left. Barbie sat on his bunk, sweating. He knew how close to the edge he was. Rennie had reasons to keep him alive, but not strong ones . . .” (686).

Another point that bothers the reader is the fact that, for someone whose past includes, as the novel hints, special operations experience, hand-to-hand fighting and probably martial arts instruction, and survivalist training, Barbie seems to be a rather passive protagonist. Although he was able to hold his own in a vicious street fight with Frank DeLesseps, Junior Rennie, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau in the parking lot of Dipper’s, the local discotheque, he has been a prisoner in the Chester’s Mill police station since page 533. Other than managing to hide his pocket knife inside his mattress and drinking from his toilet bowl, Barbie has done nothing but receive beatings, threats, and insults while the other townspeople go about the business of helping one another and seeking a way to shut off the generator that, they believe, has created and sustains the dome. One of the female deputies, Jackie Wettington, is willing to risk her own life to free Barbie, but Barbie, for his own part, is able to do nothing more than wait to be rescued. It seems unlikely that such a man would be the choice of the president of the United States to take charge of the situation under the dome, as the novel’s fictional version of Barrack Hussein Obama has done--unless, of course, the president wants Barbie to fail for political purposes of his own. Is the United States itself behind the appearance of the dome, as some of the citizens of Chester’s Mill believe? Another possibility is that Barbie himself has secret plans that necessitate his continued incarceration, but, even if he does, his imprisonment doesn’t depend upon him, but upon Big Jim Rennie, who controls the town, including the police and his incarceration is, therefore, undependable. Indeed, Big Jim has more reason, it seems, to kill Barbie than to keep him in jail. In any case, Barbie’s passivity becomes itself not only annoying but hard to believe. If his continued incarceration does have a purpose beyond Jim Rennie’s hope to conduct a “show trial,” King should provide a few hints, in the interest of verisimilitude, by way of foreshadowing; that he doesn’t do so suggests that there is no such plan.

A Plot Hole “Under the Dome”?

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

At 1,074 pages, Stephen King’s latest work, Under the Dome, isn’t a novel; it’s an experience!

Since the riot at the Food Town supermarket, much of the story’s action has concerned repercussions of this food fight and of other previous incidents that have occurred following the mysterious descent of the dome over Chester’s Mill, Maine.

Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie has seized the opportunity presented by this sudden crisis to seize more power for himself, becoming a dictator, always, he says, for the good of the town he serves. This “good” includes the two murders he’s committed, those of the Reverend Lester Coggins of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church, and Brenda, the elderly widow of former Police Chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins, who was an early casualty of the dome. By getting rid of the chief law enforcement officer of the community and replacing him with Pete Randolph, a fairly stupid, eager-to-please follower, Big Jim Rennie ensures that there is no law except that which he chooses to enforce for his own purposes. King thus returns Chester’s Mill to a more-or-less uncivilized state of the “noble savage” similar to that of which Jean-Jacques Rousseau waxes poetic and against which novelist William Golding, in Lord of the Flies, cautions.

Because King has a lot of ground to cover, he alternates between relatively short scenes that develop his multiple subplots and connect them to the central storyline. Perhaps for himself as much as for his reader, the author provides both a map of Chester’s Mill and a list of many of the characters who appear in the novel. This list is a handy way to keep track of the characters and their actions and of the plot in general.

By and by, this post will delve into a few implications of these actions; but, initially, it will be more concerned with summarizing the major events that have transpired since the food fight.

Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara has been jailed on the pretext that he is the killer of Angie McCain, Dorothy (“Dodee”) Sanders (First Selectman Andy Sanders’ daughter), Lester Coggins, and Brenda Perkins, whereas in fact the true killers are Big Jim and his son Junior. Andy visits Barbie in jail, raving at him for having murdered his daughter. (Andy’s wife Claudette was an early victim of the dome; the airplane in which she was taking flight instructions flew into it.)

Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell kicks her addiction to pain pills cold turkey.

Peter Randolph’s police force is bolstered by additional thuggish young recruits.

Henchmen of Big Jim burn down Julia Shumway’s newspaper and her home, which was located on the same building’s second floor. Homeless, Julia spends the night at Andrea’s house, sleeping on the couch with her dog, Horace. Although Big Jim sends his henchmen around town to collect the last edition of Julia’s newspaper, which questions Barbie’s guilt, a few of the issues are collected by townspeople, read, and passed around until the copies literally fall apart from the handling.

In the food fight, Special Deputy Georgia Roux, who assisted her colleagues Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau, in the beating and rape of Samantha Bushey, was severely injured and is in the hospital. After abandoning her eighteen-month-old son Little Walter (as both the baby and she herself were abandoned by her husband, Phil, who, a drug-crazed addict, now goes by the nickname “The Chef,” living at Big Jim‘s methamphetamine lab behind the Holy Redeemer Church), Samantha obtains a handgun, using it to kill both Georgia and her after-hours visitor Carter, before turning the same weapon upon herself and committing suicide.

Andy is about to commit suicide when he receives a telephone call from the hospital, asking him to come to the aid of the medical staff, as there has been a double murder and a suicide there.

English professor Thurston Marshall and his student-girlfriend Carolyn Sturgis take in orphans Alice and Aidan Appleton, and Thurston assists physician’s assistant Eric (“Rusty”) Everett at the hospital. Aidan experiences seizures during which they hallucinate about Halloween and pink stars that trail lines behind them.

Other children who have these same visions include boy genius “Scarecrow” Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, and Benny Drake, who, using a Geiger counter supplied by Barbie, discover, atop Black Ridge, beyond the McCoy apple orchard, what they believe is the generator that has created and sustains the dome. They report their discovery to Rusty. Later, pink stars fall over Chester’s Mill. Although it seems that these stars may have a paranormal or even a supernatural origin, they are explained as a meteor shower (“falling stars”), the pink color of which is an effect of the pollution adhering to the outer surface of the dome.

Having framed Barbie for multiple murders (and his friends for the arson that burned down the newspaper), Big Jim shuts down his methamphetamine operation, returning some of the stolen propane tanks that he’d used to fuel the works to the hospital. The men who return the tanks, chicken farmer Roger Killian, undertaker Stewart Bowie, and Stewart’s brother Fernald (“Fern”), see a “cryptic message” that “had been painted on the storage building behind the WCIK studios” near the Holy Redeemer Church. Referencing the book of Revelation’s prophecy that “the beast will be cast into a burning lake of fire,” the message calls upon its readers to “burn the wicked” and “purify the saintlie” (566), a directive which, the novel’s reader suspects, may have been painted by the mad meth addict Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey. Does The Chef himself intend to play the role of “purifier”? one wonders, believing himself to be an implement of divine wrath? The Chef has wired the storage shed that serves as the meth lab with explosives. Perhaps he also has other surprises in store for those whom he considers to be sinners.

A second attempt by the military to penetrate the dome, this time, with a pair of Cruise missiles, fails. The town remains cut off, an incubator for corruption and the empowerment of those who would benefit themselves by hurting, rather than helping, their neighbors.

Rusty, refusing to believe that Barbie murdered anyone, persuades his wife, Deputy Linda Everett, who has come around to his way of thinking after her initial suspicion of Barbie's guilt, to accompany him to the Bowie funeral home, where he examines the victims’ bodies while Deputy Stacey Moggin stands watch outside, ready to alert them over her walkie-talkie if anyone approaches the scene. Rusty discovers that Brenda died as the result of someone’s having broken her neck; however, his finding does not exonerate Barbie as the murderer.

A few things beyond the mere summary of the plot do merit mention in regard to the theory and practice of writing horror fiction, which is the purpose of this blog, after all.

One, already mentioned, is how King alternates between brief scenes to keep his reader apprised as to what is happening throughout town among his various characters, keeping the pace moving forward at a fairly rapid clip despite the scenes' heavy exposition, and dovetailing the main storyline with the novel’s many subplots. This technique also unifies the action. In fact, several times, King has his characters cross paths as they execute their own plans. For example, Rusty drives past both Joe McClatchey and, later Samantha Bushey. Another means of tying the action together is to have a character go to several other characters’ homes or places of business in succession, as Brenda Perkins does when she is seeking a safe place to keep the incriminating evidence that Howard Perkins had compiled against Big Jim and as Julia Shumway does in seeking a place to spend the night after her home and business are burned down.

Another point to consider is the characterization of Barbie as one who outmatches his adversaries. His captors fancy themselves accomplished inquisitors, as is seen in Junior Rennie's attempts to tempt Barbie with a glass of water to quench his thirst if Barbie will sign a confession, admitting he’s killed the murder victims. Barbie is aware of such tricks:

Barbie was. . . very thirsty, and it didn’t surprise him much when one of the new officers showed up with a glass of water in one hand and a sheet of paper with a pen attached to it in the other. Yes, it was how these things went; how they went in Fallujah, Takrit, Hilla, Mosul, and Baghdad. How they also now went in Chester’s Mill, it seemed (585).

He’s not only knowledgeable about such techniques; he’s presumably seen them used and has perhaps used them himself in the past, for “he had done interrogations in Iraq and knew how it worked over there” (584). However, Barbie also knows how resourceful the recipients of such torture can be, and he is able to adopt their practices to outwit his captors and survive his ordeal without succumbing to their devices:

. . . They ere amateurs at this: they had forgotten the toilet. Probably none of them had ever been in a country where even a little ditch water could look good when you were carrying ninety pounds of equipment and the temperature was forty-six Celsius. Barbie poured out the salt water [Junior had salted it, possibly by urinating in it] in the corner of the cell. Then he knelt in front of the toilet bowl like a man at his prayers and drank until he could feel his belly bulging (588).

A man who will drink water from the toilet bowl--and from a jailhouse stool, at that!--is a man who is resourceful enough, tough enough, and resolute enough to survive and, given the chance, triumph over even those as brawny, sadistic, and unscrupulous as his present enemies, Big Jim Rennie and Police Chief Randolph and his special deputies. This description of Barbie puts him in the same class as John Rambo.

It also suggests a problem, relating to the novel’s verisimilitude. Just before the description of Barbie’s drinking from the commode, the omniscient narrator shared the prisoner’s thought that “if he got out of this police station alive, it would be a miracle,” and, previously, King, several times, emphasized how easily Barbie might be shot under the pretext of his having tried to escape from custody. Even if he is a Rambo-like character, Barbie could easily enough be dispatched in this manner, and, if he’s truly violent enough to have raped two women and killed four individuals after beating three of them savagely, his attempt to escape would be credible to most of the townspeople and to the federal authorities as well. Surely, this would be the easiest and most certain way for Big Jim to dispose of the greatest threat to his continued position as selectman while, at the same time, covering up the murders that Big Jim and his son Junior have committed.

King seems aware of this potential plot hole, for, later, he has his characters discuss the situation; by the way, King adroitly sets the scene, identifying the participants in the action in its opening sentence: “There were four people in Rusty’s living room: Linda [Everett], Jackie [Wettington], Stacey Moggin, and Rusty [Everett] himself.” The topic of their conversation soon turns to Barbie’s plight:

“What if they kill him?” Rusty asked bluntly. “Shot while trying to escape?”

“I’m pretty sure that won’t happen,” Jackie said. “Big Jim wants a show-trial. That’s the talk at the station.” Stacey nodded. “They want to make people believe Barbie’s a spider spinning a vast web of conspiracy. Then they can execute him. But even moving at top speed, that’s days away. Weeks, if we’re lucky” (666).

It seems unlikely that Big Jim, a good planner in everything else, would take such a huge and unnecessary risk. By having Barbie killed as he allegedly attempts to escape from custody, Big Jim would still have framed him; in addition, he would have prevented a problematic trial, which would draw public scrutiny, both in Chester’s Mill and beyond, and could end in Barbie’s exoneration and Big Jim’s own proved culpability. No one knows how long it may be, if ever, before the dome is penetrated or destroyed, and each day that passes could create more opportunities for the discovery of the methamphetamine lab or of evidence for either Big Jim’s own or his son’s murder of their victims. The safer and more expedient measure would be to kill Barbie while the chance exists for them to do so rather than wait until a trial can be conducted on trumped-up evidence. Therefore, this situation is, if not a plot hole, a rather incredible state of affairs. The reader may well have to suspend his or her disbelief to accept it as possible. What makes the lack of verisimilitude even worse is that this situation is an important feature of the plot.

A final note on the text concerns King’s nimbleness in creating an eerie sense that something is amiss, something that is unsettlingly dark and deep. He does this masterfully in Desperation, when Sheriff Collie Entragian, possessed by the demon Tak, gives voice to strange declarations and is described as literally coming apart at the seams as the demon’s vitality consumes him from within. In Under the Dome, King’s omniscient narrator does something similar, with equally eerie effect, in describing the deterioration of Junior Rennie, who, until now, has merely been said to experience frequent tremendous, migraine-like headaches. As he attempts to goad Barbie into signing a false confession, Junior’s speech becomes more and more confused as he suffers another headache, and he is seen to have developed a limp:

The new officer was Junior Rennie.

“Well, look at you,” Junior said. “Don’t look quite so ready to beat guys up with your fancy Army tricks right now.” He raised the hand holding the sheet of paper and rubbed his left temple with the tips of his fingers. The paper rattled.

“You don’t look so good yourself.”

Junior dropped his hand. “I’m fine as rain.”

Now that was odd, Barbie thought; some people said right as rain and some said fine as paint, but none, as far as he knew, said fine as rain. It probably meant
nothing, but-- (585).

Having alerted the reader to the oddity of Junior’s speech, King supplies the reader with additional oddities of his speech, each of which is also unsettling, indicating, as they do, Junior’s loss of sanity. What is even more alarming is the fact that Junior is unaware both of his speaking nonsense at times, in passing, as it were, and of the slipping away of his reason.

Mixed in with Junior’s unintentionally absurd phrases are descriptions of his physical deterioration--his hand trembles, he has a massive headache, an “inflamed left eye” that leaks “tears at the corner,” and a pronounced limp--and Barbie’s thoughts concerning them:

Junior yodeled again. Some of the water in the glass spilled on his wrist. Were his hand shaking a little? And that inflamed left eye was leaking tears at the corner. Junior, what the hell’s wrong with you? Migraine? Something else. . . ?

It isn’t a migraine making him do that. At least not any migraine I ever heard of.


. . . “You guys come back with all sorts of problems. At least, that’s what I breed and see on TV. Right or false? True or wrong?” (586)


. . . “My theory is that you came back. . . [with] PTSS, STD, PMS, one of those. . . .”


. . . “. . . Think about getting. . . some food. Big old cheeseburger in paradise. Maybe a Coke. There’s some cold in the fridge upstairs. Wouldn’t you like a nice cone Cole?” (587)


. . . As he went upstairs, Barbie observed that Junior was limping a tiny but--or dragging. That was it, dragging to the left and pulling on the banister with his right hand to compensate. He wondered what Rusty Everett would think about such symptoms. . . (588).

Although it is difficult to overlook the rather glaring improbability that Big Jim would prefer to risk everything to conduct a “show-trial” than to kill Barbie as the prisoner allegedly seeks to escape, King’s description of Junior’s deterioration compensates for lack of believability. Characterization has long been one of King’s strong suits. Plotting usually is sound, too, although, in Big Jim’s failure to have Barbie killed when he has the chance to do so, an exception to the rule.