A "Watershed Moment" "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

On their way up Black Ridge, King’s characters deduce, as best they can, the nature of the situation in which the descent of the dome has involved them. They surmise that the radiation belt, like the animals’ cadavers, is but window dressing, meant to discourage human trespass upon the area in which the dome’s generator is located. It didn’t stop Joe McClatchey and his friends Norrie Calvert and Benny Drake because they are kids. Barbie, finally doing something useful after cooling his heels in the local jail for roughly a third of the novel, employs a teleological argument of sorts, but one geared toward aliens rather than toward God: the existence of the dome generator implies the existence of its creators, an extraterrestrial “they” who are technologically sophisticated enough to keep “the whole world out of Chester’s Mill” and, therefore, capable of preventing their party from trespassing upon the dome’s sanctuary, should they have wished to do so. Therefore, it seems likely that the aliens want them to enter the area: “If they wanted to keep us away from their box, why not put a mini-Dome around it?” (887) Others suggest other deterrents that the dome’s inventors could have opted to use, including “a harmonic sound that would cook our brains like chicken legs in a microwave” (Rusty Everett) or “radiation” (Ernie Calvert). (None of the characters rebuke Ernie for bringing up radiation as Colonel Cox censured the FOX News correspondent who asked about the possibility that the dome was being protected in this manner.)

Rusty, who suddenly seems a more primitive thinker than he has been shown to be in the past, asks why a barrier of any kind is needed to protect the dome generator, recalling that he’d been unable to lift or even move it. (Has Rusty forgotten about machines such as cranes? the reader wonders.) Jackie seems a bit more astute: “If they’re protecting it, there must be some way of destroying it or turning it off.” Instead, the aliens appear to want them to approach the “box.” They seem, in fact, to be “pointing to it,” Barbie says, rather than protecting it (888). Finally getting with the program, Rusty adds that it appears almost as if the aliens were daring them to approach the dome generator: “‘Here it is you puny earthlings,’ Rusty said. ‘What can you do about it, ye who are brave enough to approach?’” If the reader hadn’t thought of this eventuality, he or she does now, thanks to King’s characters’ making the question clear.

After they pass through the “glow-belt” that surrounds the mountaintop upon which the dome generator is located, Jackie Wettington undergoes a seizure during which she cries out, in italics, “He’s holding up a cross and everything’s burning!” and “The world is burning! THE PEOPLE ARE BURNING!” When she comes out of the seizure, she says, “everything was on fire. It was day, but it was dark. People were b-b-burning” (889). She also offers more details about the man with the cross: “A big white cross. It was on a string, or a piece of rawhide. It was on his chest. His bare chest. Then he held it up in front of his face” (890). Ernie also had an erotic vision of his wife on their honeymoon. No doubt, in Jackie’s case (and perhaps in Ernie’s as well), these hallucinations will foreshadow future incidents in the story’s action. Foreshadowing by way of hallucination: the reader must hand it to King; the master storyteller knows how to add glamour to the most mundane purposes of his plot.

For the reader who likes to keep a headcount, King creates a reunion scene as Barbie, Rusty, Ernie, and Jackie arrive at the once-abandoned McCoy cabin, joining up with their confederates, who have now been joined by the two former employees, Pete Freeman and Tony Guay, of the defunct Democrat newspaper: Romeo Burpee, Julia Shumway, Piper Libby, Lissa Jamieson, Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, Benny Drake, Claire McClatchey, Rose Twitchell, Joanie Calvert, and Julia’s Corgi, Horace. Unless there is a Judas Iscariot or a Benedict Arnold among the company, this small group represents King’s traditional chosen ones, the elect who will sacrifice much, including their lives, if need be, to save the day and to reestablish the status quo. As is typical in King’s fiction, they make up a cross-section of their community, respectively, an Army colonel (and former cook), a physician’s assistant, a retired supermarket manager, a former deputy, a former news photographer, a former sports reporter, a department store owner, a former newspaper owner and editor, a pastor, a librarian, three kids, a mother, a restaurant owner, a grandmother, and a dog. These are the salt of the earth, the just plain folks, who, in King’s fiction, are the true heroes of their community. It is upon them, rather than the United States government or its economic, political, and military capabilities, that the fate of the world depends. If, to use an analogy that some of King’s characters used earlier in the story, a town may be thought of as a body, Big Jim Rennie may be the community’s head, but this band of citizens are its blood, muscles, nerves, bones, and internal organs, the entrails of freedom and the innards of democracy.

While waiting for Barbie, Rusty, Ernie, and Jackie to arrive, the rest of the party, almost rapturous, had gone to the dome generator, where they’d seen a never-before-seen symbol and had visions of the extraterrestrials, whom Julia describes as “faces without faces” and as “high faces,” although she does not reject Rusty’s description of the extraterrestrials as “leatherheads,” either, saying, “Yes, I suppose you could call them that” (891). Rusty is ashamed as he recalls how he and his friend Georgie had used Georgie’s magnifying glass to set fire to ants. He and Georgia later fought over Georgie’s wanting to set more ants afire, and Rusty broke his friend’s magnifying glass. Ernie says that Rusty need not agonize over something he did as a child, recalling, without sharing his recollection with the others, as Rusty does, how he and his friends had set fire to a cat’s tail, just to watch the animal run. However, Rusty sees a parallel between the story he tells and the situation he and the rest of Chester’s Mill face: he broke the magnifying glass “on purpose,” he says, “the way I’d like to break that box [the dome generator], if I could. Because now we’re the ants and that’s the magnifying glass” (893). Rusty’s confession makes the others remember cruel acts they had committed against others, and Barbie says he wants to see the dome generator “for himself” (892). Rusty accompanies him.

The title of this section of the novel is “Ants,” and, alerted by Rusty’s confession of having tortured ants with his friend’s magnifying glass to the similarity of the ants’ situation and that of Chester’s Mill’s residents, the reader may expect that this section (pages 885-937) will focus, rather like sunlight concentrated into a single point, upon the suffering that results from the townspeople’s captors’ cruelty. The aliens seem to be intent upon causing as much pain and suffering among the populace they have trapped under the dome as possible. The dome is a magnifying glass in that it enlarges the view of human suffering both by condensing it and by intensifying it on an isolated and confined sample of humanity. The townspeople of Chester’s Mill are specimens. The dome also magnifies humanity’s inhumanity of, by, and to itself by its own members, showing the effects of their isolation from civilization, larger society, and culture. The dome may also represent horror fiction, in a sense, for the horror writer, like the inventors of the dome (the horror genre) often trap an isolated group of people in a dire situation that leads to their anguish, suffering, grief, despair, and death, for the entertainment of readers with a monstrous appetite for such entertaining fare. It is fun, the child thinks, to watch the death agonies of ants which one has oneself set afire with sunlight brought to an incendiary point by a magnifying glass held over a colony of their victims. King suggests that we humans are also ants when we are fried alive beneath the lens of horror fiction. Therefore, the dome, which is a metaphor for both the earth and the human condition, as it exists in and of itself, in its natural state, may also be regarded as a metaphor for the very experience that results from the writing and the reading of horror fiction. The writer places the dome; his characters struggle beneath the transparent barrier; and the reader is amused by the spectacle of the characters’ agony.

Having been notified of his son’s murder, Big Jim Rennie cradles Junior’s head on his lap and sings a lullaby to his son’s corpse. He intends to pin Junior’s death and the deaths of the other police officers on Barbie. He thinks that he loved his son, despite the fact that he had been prepared to “sacrifice” Junior for his own ends, comparing his decision to do so to God’s sacrifice of his own son, Jesus, on the cross. Big Jim’s comparison of Junior to Jesus and of himself to God the Father shows how mad he has become, although he sees nothing amiss in his comparison. His heart continues to splutter and to stutter, and Big Jim reminds himself to visit Andy Sanders’ pharmacy to get the medication that he needs for his heart as soon as he gets a chance to do so, although, he believes, more important matters require his attention at present. Now that Junior is dead, Big Jim informally adopts his bodyguard, Carter Thibodeau as a surrogate son.

Carter gives Big Jim the file of incriminating evidence against the selectman that the special deputy retrieved from the Town Hall meeting after Andrea Grinnell was killed, telling the politician that he wants to be Big Jim’s “guy.” The two men agree that Chief Randolph is a “joke” (897), and the chief has just offended Big Jim by stopping by for orders as to how to control the crowd at the press conference scheduled for tomorrow’s Dome Visitors’ day without paying him the respect of offering his condolences regarding Junior’s death. It seems that the chief may soon be out of a job (and possibly dead), replaced by Carter, Big Jim’s bodyguard and most trusted lieutenant. Big Jim and Carter return to the Town Hall, where they plan to burn the documents in the file.

At the dome generator, or “box,” Barbie has visions of the aliens who, he believes, have created the dome, believing that they are light-years away from Earth, on their own planet, enjoying the spectacle of the townspeople’s grief and suffering. The aliens are laughing at their pain. The scene in his vision switches to “the gym in Fallujah,” where he sees himself, the leader of an interrogating team, abusing prisoners who planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that killed Barbie’s fellow soldiers. During the interrogation, questioning is replaced by torture, which results in one of his men’s killing one of the tortured. He leaves the scene, badly shaken, agreeing with Rusty that the sadistic aliens may be children of their species. Rusty asks Romeo Burpee whether any of the lead rolls from his department store remain available. Rommie tells him that there are more on hand.

Grief-stricken over the loss of his student-girlfriend, Carolyn Sturges, who was shot to death during Big Jim’s speech at the Town hall, Thurston Marshall visits Linda Everett, who is taking care of both her own daughters, Judy and Janelle, and the children, Alice and Aidan Appleton, for whom Thurston and Carolyn were caring.

After telling Thurston of Junior’s death, Linda also informs him of the rescue of Barbie and Rusty, of the dome generator, and of the conspirators’ hiding out in the abandoned McCoy residence atop Black Ridge, suggesting that, after stopping at Burpee’s department store to pick up a lead roll, they join the others there, the next day, with Judy, Janelle, Alice, and Aidan.

All those among the men, women, and children at the McCoy residence who have had hallucinations (most of them horrific) during seizures or at the dome generator recall what they had seen or heard. Clearly, something terrible seems to be forecast for Halloween, which, Barbie suggests, may be coming earlier than the thirty-first, which is, as Claire points out, “still five days away” according to the calendar (905). A Freudian explanation is offered, by Rusty, for his having seen the same dummy that Lissa Jamieson displayed at the library: “‘Relax people, I probably saw the dummy before all this happened, and my subconscious just coughed it back up.” However, when Piper asks him whether he recalls seeing it before his hallucination occurred, Rusty admits that he does not, declining to “add that he hadn’t picked up the girls at school,” which is opposite the library, “since very early in the month,” when it is unlikely that Halloween decorations or displays would have been in place (904).

At the Town Hall, Big Jim burns the incriminating files and has Carter stuff the empty envelope with blank photocopy paper. They will say that Andrea Grinnell, had been hallucinating during her withdrawal from her addiction to pain pills, about her having proof of Big Jim’s criminal activities and that the envelope she’d waved around at the Town Hall meeting had contained nothing but blank sheets of paper. As Junior inventories the propane tanks stored in the Town Hall’s bomb shelter, Stewart Bowie telephones Big Jim, offering him his condolences and promising to do his utmost in preparing the selectman’s son for burial. Big Jim confirms Stewart’s guess that the raid on the methamphetamine lab behind the Holy Redeemer Church is still going forward at noon tomorrow, as planned, and that Stewart, his brother Fern, Deputy Fred Denton, Roger Killian, and Special Deputy Melvin Searles will carry out the operation against Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey and selectman Andy Sanders.

After Big Jim lays out plans for how Chief Randolph should conduct police operations during tomorrow’s Dome Visitors’ Day, he asks Carter Thibodeau whether “the Bushey girl. . . was good” (911), referencing Carter’s participation in her rape. This question, like many of the other seemingly peripheral or incidental comments by Big Jim remind the reader of how truly diabolical this self-confessed man of God is, a technique of characterization that King handles with his usual narrative adroitness. Especially since the reader has come to sympathize with Samantha, who turned out to be a likeable character despite he weaknesses, Big Jim’s insensitive question, followed by Carter’s sexist response and the selectman’s raucous laughter further alienate the reader from the antagonist, the grudging admiration for whom, the reader is apt to find, slowly but surely continues to evaporate. However, this question-and-answer bantering, like Carter’s declaration of his admiration for Big Jim and his methods, probably further solidifies the bond between the now-childless selectman and his surrogate son.

Romance (of a sort) blossoms between Barbie and Julia Shumway as they sit side by side in the woods outside their hideaway cabin, the colonel’s hand upon the newspaperwoman’s breast, talking about morality, extraterrestrial life, the joys of sadism, and “watershed moments,” or turning points, in people’s lives. Julia tells Barbie about one that happened in her own life, during fourth grade: a conscientious girl who planned to attend Princeton University to prepare for taking over her family’s newspaper business, she was the envy of her peers; one day, after tattling on another student, four girls ambushed and took her to the bandstand, where they insulted, spit on, beat, and stripped her. Later, one of her attackers, Kayla Bevins, returned and gave Julia a sweater, telling her to “wear it home; it’ll look like a dress” (917). The beating and the humiliation she felt made her feel “smaller. . . and smaller.. . and smaller. Until the bandstand floor was like a great flat desert and I was an insect stuck in the middle of it. Dying in the middle of it” (916) Julia took Kayla’s advice, wearing the sweater home, where her parents, worried, were awaiting her late return from school.

During Julia’s account of her “watershed moment,” Barbie asks her whether she’d felt as if she were “an ant under a magnifying glass” (916), and she replies, a bit later, “I am not an ant” (919). The incident changed her life. She continued to excel, she tells Barbie, but not in as blatant manner, and she cultivated the friendships of other girls from less economically stable backgrounds than her own--or her father’s own--even purposely throwing her appointment as her class’ valedictorian by reducing the level of her academic work “just enough to make sure Carlene Plummer would win instead of me” (919). She also went to Bates University instead of Princeton. She never told on her attackers, she tells Barbie, because she thought she had “bought and paid” for their treatment because of her prim and proper calling attention to herself and her need to stand out from, and to be considered superior to, the other girls in her school. It was because of this incident, she says, that she became, “in large part,” who she is today (919), a defiant, courageous, woman of the people who demands truth and justice, even at great personal risk and suffering, and who insists upon exposing corruption and wrongdoing, political and otherwise. The scene closes with Barbie and Julia making love, an act which signifies their political and personal compatibility and seals their intimate bond with one another. If Barbie and Julia had seemed a bit one-dimensional and even unfeeling up to now, they take on greater depth and humanity in this scene. Julia’s response to her humiliating beating suggests the difference between the “ants” of whom Big Jim speaks, when he uses this metaphor rather than that of humans as sheep, and human beings, too: overcoming adversity and trauma by a defiant regard for truth and justice that may be costly to oneself and require a change in personal conduct but allows one to transcend the moment by helping, rather than hurting, others.

Moving Chess Pieces "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Much of the next section of King’s novel is dedicated to moving his chess pieces into place in preparation for the coming showdown between the forces of good and the forces of evil. In a series of usually brief scenes, he sets up the action to come.

The friends of Barbie gather at the Congo Church for their planned meeting. As they pray, the pastor, Piper Libby, who is “no longer sure just who” (or even whom) she is “talking to when” she herself prays, surveys the faithful, who make up the village that King so often finds it takes to thwart the threat that has raised its ugly head in his novel; all are present but Colonel Barbara and physician’s assistant Rusty Everett:

. . . two recently fired lady cops, a retired supermarket manager, a newspaperwoman who no longer had a newspaper, a librarian, the owner of the local restaurant, a Dome-widow who couldn’t stop spinning the wedding ring on her finger, the local department store tycoon, and three uncharacteristically solemn-faced kids sitting scrunched together on the sofa (807).

Twelve are present and to others are absent, making those who will spearhead the attack on evil, represented by Big Jim Rennie, Chief Randolph, and their cronies in one camp and Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey and Andy Sanders in another (and possibly the extraterrestrials or whoever created the dome in a third). The small party recalls such traditional storylines as Moses against Pharaoh, David against Goliath, or Samson against the Philistines. Except for the combat skills and military knowledge of Barbie and the police experience of the two former police officers, the underdogs don’t seem to have much going for them except their love of their community, a love of freedom, a belief and trust in God, and a willingness to fight for their values and faith. They seem hopelessly outmatched by the resourceful, efficient, and determined criminal Big Jim Rennie and who- or whatever invented the dome. The reader is interested in seeing how (not so much whether) the small band of citizens will succeed.

The fellowship fills one another in on the situation as they are able to piece it together, and former deputy Jackie Wettington offers a possible cause for the aberrant behavior of Big Jim and Junior, suggesting that they share “the same wild strain of behavior--something genetic--coming out under pressure” (808). As they discuss their plans, an intimacy develops among the conspirators, and they ask one another to call them by their first names. A feeling of solidarity emerges among them that is as strong, if not stronger, the reader suspects, as the solidarity among Jim Rennie’s supporters. After springing Barbie and Rusty from jail, the conspirators decide to use the abandoned McCoy residence atop Black Ridge, where the dome generator is, as their safe house so they can protect the generator from Big Jim, should he try to gain access to the device. Joe McClatchey recommends that they find a way to return the Geiger counter to the town hall’s bomb shelter so that, should Big Jim and his men attempt to attack the McCoy place, they will be frightened away by the Geiger counter’s warning, ignorant of the fact that the radiation at the Black Ridge site is “just a belt” through which they “could drive right through. . . without any protection at all and not get hurt” (813)

Julia’s dog Horace, left with Andrea Grinnell, again hears the voice of the dead Brenda Perkins, urging the Corgi to take the incriminating file concerning Big Jim’s illegal activities to Andrea. The selectman recalls the newspaperwoman’s earlier visit and opens the envelope so that “most of Big Jim Rennie’s secrets” fall “out into her lap” (816).

King surprises the reader by Andrea’s choice not to reveal to Julia that Horace found the file of evidence that Brenda’s husband, Police Chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins had been compiling against Big Jim. Instead, Andrea loads a pistol, intending to murder her fellow selectman as soon as she gets the chance to do so.

Junior, having awakened in his hospital room is so sick that even he is aware of it, despite the fact that he is not suffering from one of his many, frequent headaches:

There was a suspicious weakness all down the left side of his body, and sometimes spit slipped from that side of his mouth. If he wiped it away with his left hand, sometimes he felt skin against skin and sometimes he couldn’t. In addition to this, there was a dark keyhole shape, quite large, floating in the left side of his vision. As if something had torn inside that eyeball. He supposed it had (824).

Junior hallucinates, and he is not always able to recognize these breaks with reality, As a result, he comes to believe that his father, Big Jim, has conspired with Thurston Marshall to poison him. Paranoid, Junior thinks only Alice and Aidan Appleton are trustworthy; everyone else is out to get him. He plans to kill Barbie and his father before kidnapping and becoming the caretaker for the Appleton children. Once he becomes their surrogate father, Junior believes, God will extend his lifetime, preventing his death from “thallium poisoning” (826). Better yet, he decides, he will take the children to the McCain pantry, in which he’d stored the bodies of Angie McCain, Dodee Sanders, and Lester Coggins.

Awakened by pain caused by the injuries she’d sustained during the food fight at the Food Town supermarket, Henrietta Clavard, released from the hospital to finish recuperating at home, hears the lamentations of her neighbor’s dog, Buddy. She is joined in her investigation of the incident by Douglas Twitchell, who is passing by, and they discover Henrietta’s neighbors (Buddy’s owners) dead; like an increasing number of other Chester’s Mill residents, the elderly couple has committed suicide.

Big Jim, having checked out of the hospital, meets with several of his lieutenants at Sweetbriar Rose: Police Chief Peter Randolph, Deputy Freddy Denton, and Special Deputies Melvin Searles and Carter Thibodeau, his bodyguard. Once again, for a character who is modeled upon Dick Chaney and George W. Bush, Big Jim seems a great deal like Barack Hussein Obama: “he had already started drafting a list of executive orders, which he would begin putting into effect as soon as he was granted full executive powers” (832). During their luncheon, Big Jim sets up the raid on the methamphetamine lab. Colonel C ox calls to deliver the news that there is radiation atop Black Ridge.

Claire McClatchey wants to accompany the others to break Barnie and Rusty out of jail. Her son and Jackie Wettington dissuade her.

As Rose, Ernie, and Norrie, drive to Jim Rennie’s Used Cars, King’s omniscient narrator reminds the reader that the environment under the dome is continuing to deteriorate:

“The air smells so bad,” Norrie said.

“It’s the Prestile, honey,” Rose said. “It’s turned into a big old stinky marsh where it used to run into Motton.” She knew it was more than just the smell of the dying river, but didn’t say so. They had to breathe, so there was no point in worrying about what they might be breathing in. . . (836).

After Ernie steals a van from Jim Rennie’s Used Cars, he, Norrie, and Romeo load it and Romeo’s Escalante with supplies: rifles, lead rolls, food, masking tape, and other items.

Ollie Dinsmore, tossing rocks at the dome, laments his mother’s suicidal death.

Junior Rennie leaves the hospital. Instead of killing his father first, Junior, thinking more clearly and feeling better (his limp has vanished and the keyhole shape in his left eye is smaller), decides to kill Barbie first instead, since Big Jim’s speech will provide “good cover” (849). He is still hallucinating, though: he sees a wolf in the house he shares with his father and imagines that he is now the wolf, having become a werewolf. His limp returns, too. He leaves the house, laughing at a joke he never understood and the punch line to which he’s forgotten.

Carolyn Sturges packs sandwiches for her charges, Alice and Aidan Appleton, who want to attend Big Jim’s speech.

Andrea’s appearance is much better, although she hasn’t finished undergoing her withdrawal from pain pill addiction. She stows her .38 and the file of incriminating evidence against Big Jim in her purse, intent upon killing the villain “in front of this whole town” (852).

The townspeople begin to arrive for Big Jim’s speech. Linda, with her police radio in a pocket of her dress, sits with Andrea. The Appleton children introduce themselves to the women and vice versa.

Big Kim gives Chief Randolph and Special Deputy Thibodeau instructions as to how to enter the stage and what to expect concerning the agenda: prayer, National Anthem, speech, and vote, concluding “This is going to be fine.” King’s omniscient narrator overrules Big Jim, though, announcing “He was certainly wrong about that” (856), providing foreshadowing that maintains--indeed, to a degree, increases--suspense.

As the Star-Spangled Banner begins to play inside the Town Hall, Barbie’s rescue team swings into operation, Rose Twitchell, Claire McClatchey, Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, Benny Drake, Lissa Jamieson, and Joanie Calvert taking Rose’s car and the Sweetbriar van to the McCoy cabin atop Black Ridge while Ernie Calvert serves as the “wheelman” (857) for Jackie Wettington and Romeo Burpee, who use the van that Ernie stole from Big Jim’s used car lot as the getaway vehicle after the former deputy and the department store owner have liberated Colonel Barbara and physician’s assistant Rusty Everett from the Chester’s Mill police station.

During his speech, after reminding his audience that Barbie has been arrested “for the murders of Brenda Perkins, Lester Coggins, and . . . Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders,” Big Jim explains the origin of the dome (not, of course, that his explanation is likely to be trustworthy):

“What you do not know,” Big Jim continued, “is that the Dome is the result of a conspiracy perpetuated by an elite group of rogue scientists and covertly funded by a government splinter group. We are guinea pigs in an experiment, my fellow townspeople, and Dale Barbara was the man designated to chart and guide that experiment’s course from the inside!” (860)

Big Jim also informs pins his own methamphetamine operation and identifies Colonel Cox as an impersonator who is really a part of the conspiracy of “rogue scientists” and “government splinter group” members. His speech has the desired effect; it enrages his audience. Then, Big Jim tells them that, should they want Barbie shot, it will be by “police firing squad,” not by lynching (861).

Junior starts for the police station, to kill Barbie.

Big Jim warns his listeners not to believe whatever Colonel Cox says during the Dome Visitors’ Day tomorrow, cautioning them that the supposed military man may even say that Big Jim himself headed the methamphetamine operation, to which Andrea Grinnell declares, “You did” (862). She presents Big Jim’s audience with a challenge of sorts, arguing:

“You people need to put your fears aside for a moment. . . . When you do, you’ll see that the story he’s telling is ludicrous. Jim Rennie thinks you can be stampeded like cattle in a thunderstorm. I’ve lived with you all my life, and I think he’s wrong” (862).

When Big Jim orders her evicted from the town meeting and escorted home or to the hospital, the people surprise him by insisting that she be allowed to speak, too, since “she’s a town official, too” (863). Andrea holds the file of incriminating evidence against Big Jim aloft, so the audience can see it, but as she starts to explain the envelope’s contents, she gets the “shakes” (864), her revolver falls from her purse, and she is shot to death by Special Deputy Thibodeau, who also steals her envelope, hiding it under his shirt. Carolyn Sturges is shot and killed by Deputy Freddy Denton.

At the police station, Junior shoots his way past the deputies on duty, killing all three--Rupert Libby (Piper’s cousin), Stacey Moggin, and Mickey Wardlaw, reloads using Stacey’s ammunition, and goes downstairs, to the cells, to kill Barbie.

On his way to Barbie’s cell, Junior notices Rusty Everett. Before he can kill the physician’s assistant, however, Barbie calls to Junior, taunting him by saying, “I got you, didn’t I? I got you good!” and flipping him off with both middle fingers. As Junior shoos round after round of ammunition at Barbie, the colonel manages to dodge the terminally ill assassin’s aim, taunting him all the while. As Junior closes in for the kill and Barbie remembers the knife he’s hidden inside his mattress, Barbie hears Rusty cry, “Get him!” (877) and the soldier wonders which side the physician’s assistant is on.

Although Rusty came across as brave in the earlier scene in which he relocated his own dislocated fingers, he is terrified of the mad, monstrous Junior. Shamefully, “Rusty stepped backward, thinking that perhaps Junior would miss him on his way by. And perhaps kill himself after finishing with Barbie.” Rusty is ashamed of himself for thinking these thoughts: “He knew these were craven thoughts, but he also knew they were practical thoughts. He could do nothing for Barbie, but he might be able to survive himself” (871). Certainly, the reader loses some respect for Rusty, because of his display of cowardice, but the reader also realizes that the physician’s assistant, unlike Barbie, is a civilian, not a military man trained in survival tactics and close combat skills. Unlike Barbie, Rusty has never served in the military, much less in combat. Therefore, his fear is understandable, whereas Barbie’s own fear (he sweat and shook when Deputy Ollie Ortega had threatened to shoot him) is less forgivable, as is his “forgetting” about the knife he’d hidden inside his bunk’s mattress. It seems most unlikely that a man with blacks ops training, hand-to-hand fighting training, and combat experience would forget such a vitally important fact. King’s soldier does, however, and this forgetfulness could easily have cost him both his life and Rusty’s.

Fortunately, during Junior’s attack, Jackie Wettington and Romeo Burpee entered the police station and, seeing the dead deputies, hastened down to the cells, where the former deputy shoots and kills Junior before the selectman’s son can assassinate Barbie. It was to them, unseen by Barbie, that Rusty had been shouting “Get him!,” meaning Junior, not Barbie, of course.

Deputy Freddy Denton and Special Deputy Melvin Searles enter the police station just as Romeo Burpee comes upstairs. Holding the bogus lawmen at gunpoint, Rommie orders them into a cell downstairs.

Barbie, Rusty, Jackie, and Ernie wave to police officers outside the Town Hall as they drive their stolen van out of town, “headed toward Black Ridge” (881).

King’s omniscient narrator keeps the reader reading by concluding many of these brief scenes with a sentence or two that foreshadows imminent violence, conflict, or catastrophe:

. . . at least if she’s with the rest of the town, she’s safe.

That was what he thought before the gunfire started (859).



Later she would wonder how many lives might have been saved if she had told Rommie okay, let’s roll (862).

In the pandemonium, no one heard the shots from next door (867).

“Ah, Jesus,” Rusty said. “We’re in trouble.”

“I know,” Barbie said (867).



“Hello, Baaarbie,” he called down the stairs. “I know what you did to me, and I’m coming for you. If you’ve got a prayer to say, better make it a quick one” (870).



“Close your eyes, Fusty,” Junior said. “It’ll be better that way” (871).



Before the next gunshot came, Barbie had just time to think, Jesus Christ, Everett, whose side are you on? (877)



What his collapsing body revealed was Dale Barbara himself, crouching on his bunk with the carefully secreted knife in his hand. He never had a chance to open it (877).



“Let’s get out of here while we still can,” Everett said (880).

By the way, and for the record, Barbie, who was jailed on page 533 of the novel, finally gets out of his cell (thanks to his rescuers) on page 877 or thereabout, making him Jim Rennie’s prisoner for an approximate count of 344 pages, or 32 percent of the entire story! During this large portion of the novel, Rusty Everett has filled in as the protagonist, apparently, because King’s omniscient narrator (or maybe it’s the voice of the extraterrestrial invaders who may be the inventors of the dome and the cause of all the mischief) declare, when they state as much when they observe that “for the time being, these two men--our heroes, I suppose--are sitting on their bunks and playing Twenty Questions. It’s Rusty’s turn to guess” (802). The existence of two “heroes,” alternating as the story’s central and most important characters makes them both, in effect, protagonists, a feat that seems impossible, even for Stephen King, since, according to the very concept of the protagonist’s being the story’s main character suggests that he or she must also be the only such type of character in the story, for “main” means “chief,” and there is only one chief in any enterprise, a work of fiction included. King’s wanting his reader to believe that there are two “main” characters in his novel betrays another of the narrative’s problematic and confusing elements.

The Universal and the Particular “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

After smoking more methamphetamine, Andy Sanders has a seizure, during which he sees two orange trucks approaching WCIK radio station and the meth lab that he and Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey occupy behind the station. Whether the prophetic hallucination is the result of the drug or the dome is questionable, but The Chef accepts the vision as intelligence, and he and Andy plan to resist the approaching men’s attempt to take more propane from the site, murdering them, if necessary.

Earlier, through Linda Everett, Stephen King announced one of the themes of Under the Dome. He had her say that there are sides and that everyone needs to decide which side he or she will serve. He reiterates this idea, emphasizing that no one is exempt from this choice: “they were all involved, weren’t they? Under the Dome, involvement was no longer a matter of choice” (793), Claire McClatchey thinks, and, later, the omniscient narrator declares, “Claire opened her mouth to say she didn’t want to get involved, then didn’t. Because there was no choice” (794).

The “sides” of which she spoke were those of law and order versus lawlessness and disorder, but King, in commenting upon his apocalyptic novel’s title, suggests that the same is true for each and every reader, for each and every American, for each and every human being: “We’re all under the dome,” since we are alone, as far as anyone knows, on the planet Earth. We’re all in it together, he implies, and we all have to decide which side we will join in the battle against--what? Law and order versus lawlessness and disorder? Good versus evil?

Law and order versus lawlessness and disorder would be dichotomies large enough to support a 1,074-page novel, but King’s either-or is more pedestrian, more localized, and more ideological. His characters and his omniscient narrator, as his spokespersons, have time and again pointed out the enemies and the heroes. The villains are corrupt, unscrupulous, self-serving, and hypocritical politicians like Big Jim Rennie who use their strengths and talents to hurt, not help, their fellows, and his heroes are those who use their strengths and talents to help, not hurt, their fellows.

This seems a sound basis for developing a practical and pragmatic morality, and, as such, is perhaps as good as it gets in a secular society that is distrustful of, and seeks to thwart, even the idea of the desirability of divinely sanctioned morals. Although Desperation shows that King is capable of appreciating the power of God and of faith (although not in a wholly traditional way), Under the Dome, like several of his earlier works, such as Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, and Needful Things, show Christianity to be a dangerous breeding ground for fanaticism, repression, and violence, rather than as a force for good.

Unfortunately, Under the Dome also divides good and evil according to a second criterion, which is based upon his characters’ political beliefs rather than the helpful or harmful effects of their behavior. In Under the Dome, the heroes are largely liberals and Democrats who watch and listen faithfully to CNN, believing its newscasts to be unswervingly accurate and trustworthy. If it’s “CNN BREAKING NEWS,” it is also, for King and his characters, CNN BREAKING TRUTH. Julie Shumway, the token good Republican in Under the Dome (and, indeed, it seems, in all of King’s fiction) is more a Republican in name only, or RINO, perhaps, because she is told that she’s not all that bad as Republicans go.

I have spoken of King’s partisan politics in earlier posts concerning Under the Dome, but reiterate my complaint in this one because King himself makes this distinction between good liberal/Democrat and bad conservative/Republican again and again throughout his novel, having, he himself admits, modeled Big Jim Rennie, heart condition and all, it appears, upon former Vice-President Dick Chaney and President George W. Bush. The fact that Big Jim’s power grab in the wake of a crisis--or series of crises, some of his own making--could have been modeled more easily upon Barack Hussein Obama suggests how superficial and flimsy King’s political biases really are, although King himself seems unaware of this weakness.

Like Rham Emmanuel and President Obama, Big Jim believes that a crisis should never be allowed to go to waste: “Really, there was nothing like a scene of destruction,“ Big Jim thinks, “to get people playing follow-the-leader” (800). King would have been better off in writing a novel that he wants compared to Lord of the Flies being less the political partisan and more the universal moralist.

Of course, with King, where narrative itself is concerned, politics and other peripheral matters aside, the good often outweighs the bad. He is one hell of a good storyteller, and, of course, that’s what the reader is seeking in purchasing his work.

When Roger Killian, Stewart Bowie, and fern Bowie arrive in the orange trucks that Andy Sanders saw in the vision that accompanied his seizure, The Chef, backed up by Andy, turns them men back, confiscating one of their trucks and delivering the message to Big Jim that the methamphetamine lab is now theirs. After the men leave, The Chef tells Andy that, from now on, WCIK radio will be playing music much different than traditional Christian songs, hymns, and gospel music.

Hearing of the conduct of The Chef and Andy, Big Jim decides that he will lead an attack upon them after he speaks to the police and the people of Chester’s Mill, blaming Barbie’s followers for the methamphetamine operation as well as the arson involving Julia Shumway’s newspaper and residence, just as he has already charged Barbie himself with beating, raping, and murdering citizens of the town. The final paragraph of this scene sums up the character of Big Jim better than many pages might. The selectman says goodbye to his son, Junior, who has a malignant brain tumor: “He started out of the room, then went back and kissed his sleeping son’s cheek. Getting rid of Junior might become necessary, but for the time being, that too could wait” (800).

In Under the Dome, more so than in many of his other novels, it seems, upon one’s initial thought, that King’s omniscient narrator makes his presence known to the reader, not only speaking directly to him or her, but also paraphrasing T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, the effect of which is reminiscent of the stage manager’s address to the audience of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town or Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology:

Another night is falling on the little town of Chester’s Mill; another night under the Dome. But there is no rest for us; we have two meetings to attend, and we also ought to check up on Horace the Corgi before we sleep. Horace is keeping Andrea Grinell company tonight, and although he is for the moment biding his time, he has not forgotten the popcorn between the couch and the wall.

So let us go then, you and I, while the evening spreads out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table. Let us go while the first discolored stars begin to show overhead. This is the only town in a four-state area where they’re out tonight. Rain has overspread northern New England, and cable-news viewers will soon be treated [via CNN, the reader may be assured] to some remarkable satellite photographs showing a hole in the clouds that exactly mimics the sock-shape of Chester’s Mill. Here the stars shine down, but now they’re dirty stars because the Dome is dirty (801).

This (apparent) emphatic calling of attention to the omniscient narrator as an entity rather than as an objective and descriptive, impersonal voice is similar to the effect that King created by assembling his cast of characters at the midpoint of his novel, as if they were actors answering an encore. These techniques, well known to both playwrights and novelists, are not frequently used by either, not in modern times, at least, because they call attention to the artificiality of the story, to its fictitious nature, disturbing the reader’s suspension of disbelief by reminding him or her that the narrative is invented, a chronicle of merely imaginary events.

The example, quoted above, is not the only instance of King’s (apparent) omniscient narrator’s intrusion of himself into the novel he’s narrating, nor is it the sole instance of his paraphrasing Eliot, for the narrator interrupts his tale several more times during this scene. After a brief mention of CNN’s meteorologist Reynolds Wolf commenting upon the “fascinating phenomenon” caused by the backing up of rain clouds against the dome, the narrator again puts himself front and center:

That’s enough cable news; let us float through certain half-deserted streets [Eliot again], past the Congo church and the parsonage (the meeting there hasn’t started yet, but Piper has loaded up the big coffee urn, and Julia is making sandwiches by the light of a hissing Coleman lamp), past the McCain house surrounded by its sad sag of yellow police tape, down Town Common Hill past the Town Hall, where janitor Al Timmons and a couple of his friends are cleaning and sprucing up for the special town meeting tomorrow night, past War Memorial Plaza, where the statue of Lucien Calvert (Norrie’s great-grandfather; I probably don’t have to tell you that) keeps his long watch.

We’ll stop for a quick check on Barbie and Rusty, shall we? There’ll be no problem getting downstairs; there are only three cops in the ready room, and Stacey Moggin, who’s on the desk, is sleeping with her head pillowed on her forearm. The rest of the PD is at Food City, listening to Big Jim’s latest stemwinder [sic], but it wouldn’t matter if they were all here, because we are invisible. They would feel no more than a faint draft as we glide past them.

There’s not much to see in the Coop, because hope is invisible as we are. The two men having nothing to do but wait until tomorrow night, and hope that things break their way. Rusty’s hand hurts, but the pain isn’t as bad as he thought it might be, and the swelling isn’t as bad as he feared. Also, Stacey Moggin, God bless her heart, snuck him a couple of Excedrin around five PM.

For the time being, these two men--our heroes, I suppose--are sitting on their bunks and playing Twenty Questions. It’s Rusty’s turn to guess (802).

After another dramatic segment, wherein Barbie and Rusty are brought forward, so to speak, to speak for themselves, and the reader sees that, indeed, quite literally speaking, the inmates actually are playing Twenty Questions, King again reverts to what appears to be the direct intrusion of his omniscient narrator into the story he is telling:

We’ll leave the to shift the weight of the next twenty-four hours as best they can, shall we? Let us make our way past the still-shimmering heap of ashes that used to be the Democrat. . . (802-803).

The voice, the reader begins to suspect, is actually not that of the omniscient narrator, but that of the entities whom Rusty had discerned, in his vision at the site of the dome generator of the “leather faces,” the suspected aliens the physician’s assistant believes they are, who invented and operate the dome that keeps the town of Chester’s Mill imprisoned and cut off from the rest of the world outside the barrier. If this is the case, the use of a second omniscient narrator, that of the extraterrestrials (or presumed extraterrestrials) in addition to the conventional, narrative omniscient narrator, is extraordinary.

Why does King employ it? Some of the more obvious reasons are that the technique, being rare, adds interest to what might otherwise be drier, duller exposition; it allows King to remind the reader of the pair of meetings yet to come; of the incriminating file concerning Big Jim’s corruption, which is still available, under the end table with the spilled popcorn in Andrea’s living room and of many other narrative threads and subplots; and it reinforces the theme that pollution has an undesirable and dangerous effect upon those who live under the dome (a metaphor for the planet Earth, the atmosphere of which is the “dome”). These are minor gains, though, when the cost is a disturbance of the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief.

What bigger benefits does King enjoy as a result of having called attention to the presence of his behind-the-scenes omniscient narrator in such a blatant way? Certainly, the technique, calling attention to the artificiality of King’s narrative, as a fictional construction, as it does, suggests that the town under the dome is itself something of an artificial construct--that is, the world, the planet Earth, although it is a natural object, is also an artificial phenomenon: it’s culture is a human artifact, as are the nations, societies, and communities that make up the human-designed and engineered aspect of the planet.

King’s inclusion of the intrusive alien intelligence (if that is what it turns out to be--I am writing these blog entries as a reader, as I read the novel, as an example of the sort of dialogue, as it were, that occurs between the reader and the literary work as he or she imagines it to be) alongside of, or in place of, the conventional, narrative omniscient narrator, is an astonishing one and, as such, one that must be regarded as intentional and deliberate.

It invites the reader to step outside him- or herself, as it were, and, indeed, outside his or her own consciousness not only as an individual but as a human being, to see his or her world (or, at least, that part of it that is Chester’s Mill, Maine) from the more universal perspective of an invading extraterrestrial intelligence, as C. S. Lewis does, for example, in The Screwtape Letters, as Jonathan Swift does in Gulliver’s Travels, and as Thornton Wilder does in Our Town (and many others have in other works as well). This is an appropriate level, whether considered from the vantage point of a global perspective, such as all humanity’s would be, or the perspective of an extraterrestrial intelligence. However, its relationship to that of the traditional, narrative omniscient narrator is unclear and perhaps problematic.  (It remains problematic--perhaps even more so--if I am wrong in assuming that this omniscient point of view is not that of alien intruders, but the established narrative one, because the voice in which this viewpoint is delivered differs vastly from the established one, which causes a good deal of unnecessary confusion if it is not a separate and distinct narraor's voice--i. e., the aliens'.)

Something else is problematic as well. King invites the reader to step outside him- or herself and, indeed, the human race and to view Chester’s Mill (and the planet) as a curious and, yes, polluted affair, but, at the same time, he remains extraordinarily provincial in his “us” liberals/Democrats/CNN aficionados (the good guys), versus “them” conservatives/Republicans/FOX News fans (the bad guys). Once again, King’s vision as an artist is itself bifurcated. He wants to think globally, but his sympathies (and perceptions) are local.

Still, he is a compelling storyteller, and, as always, the reader reads on.

A Peculiar Form of Suspense “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Julia Shumway and Jackie Wettington have something in common: a crush on Colonel James O. Cox, whom they consider good-looking (Julia) and forceful (Jackie). For her part, Rose Twitchell prefers CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer, who “can,” as far as she’s concerned, “eat crackers in my bed anytime” he wishes (765). King’s own admiration for the journalist is clear, as is his respect for CNN. Everyone, it appears, from the patrons of Dippy’s Roadhouse and the clientele of Sweetbriar Rose restaurant watch the news channel, as does Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie, the novel’s antagonist. Any newscasts that occur during Under the Dome’s action are those that are transmitted by CNN. Even the hospital staff listen to CNN. It’s tuned in, with John Roberts broadcasting, when Rusty Everett has his run-in with Big Jim. Indeed, on the rare occasion that King refers at all to his beloved CNN’s chief rival, FOX News, it is with derision. For example, when one of the FOX News team dares to ask Colonel Cox a question during the press conference that the military man calls, one of King’s characters is delighted to see the journalist put in his place. The colonel has just told the press corps that the Army has “established a no-go-zone around the Dome” because of a concern that “the Dome might have” unrecognized “harmful effects” in addition to the hazards that it is known to possess:

“Are you talking about radiation, Colonel?” someone called.

Cox froze him with a glance, and when he seemed to consider the reporter properly chastised (not Wolfie, Rose was pleased to see, but that half-bald, no-spin yapper from FOX News), he went on (762).

The reader is apt to note, with dismay, that King apparently does believe, after all, in a simple, black-and-white world in which the good guys are his guys (Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Barbara Starr, John Roberts) and the bad guys are not. It is regrettable that someone who’s written so many books for so long, about so many issues, albeit through the medium of fiction, rather than as a journalist, would still perceive politics, journalism, social, and military matters in such an unsophisticated manner.

Like his character, Linda Everett, he apparently believes that “there are sides“--two of them--in news reporting, at least, just as it is clear that he has definitely chosen his side. Obviously, King has every right to take sides--Under the Dome is his novel, after all, and its world is his world--but the reader who doesn’t share his biases is apt to resent his arrogance in assuming that CNN is respectable and that FOX News is the home of “yappers.” Moreover, such a reader is likely to wonder how such biases affect the thought processes of his characters, one of whom admits to having an almost romantic crush on Blitzer. Is one reading a liberal/Democrat novel or a non-partisan novel? If it’s not necessary to insert a particular political point of view into the story, one has to wonder why King does so. The term “self-indulgent” comes to mind, as it does, in the reading of such novels as Lisey’s Story and Duma Key. Please, Mr. King, the reader might want to plead, especially if he or she is a moderate, a conservative, an independent, or a Republican, just tell the story; a paean to CNN and the liberal point of view is not needed or particularly desired.

During “CNN BREAKING NEWS,“ Colonel Cox‘s press conference is announced. The colonel has called the conference to make life difficult for Big Jim and to frustrate the selectman’s push for increased political power as he, like Rahm Emmanuel, seeks to take full advantage of the crisis represented by the mysterious dome’s descent over the isolated town of Chester’s Mill, Maine. He does so by announcing a Dome Visitors’ Day and by calling upon Big Jim to answer such questions from the press corps (or from those who are allowed to ask questions), such as whether there are “any plans to add a press conference” (asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer); why Big Jim, rather than Colonel Barbara, is in charge under the dome (asked by Wolf Blizer); whether Big Jim would bother to attend such a press conference when he is reportedly involved in criminal activities or “financial mismanagement” (asked by NBC’s Lester Holt); whether it is true that Colonel Barbara has been arrested for serial murders (asked by CBS’ Rita Braver); and whether Barbie could have been “jailed to keep him from taking control as the President ordered” (asked by PBS’ Ray Suarez). (No questions are accepted from FOX News representatives. Apparently, Colonel Cox found the one about radiation impertinent.)

Following the press conference that Julia, Jackie, Rose, and others of Barbie’s supporters watch at Sweetbriar Rose, King’s omniscient narrator transports the reader to the jail, where Barbie is allowed to interact with Deputy Manuel Ortega, lest the reader forget completely about the passive protagonist. In this scene, Barbie comes off as even weaker and more ineffective than he has seemed so far. In fact, during the scene when he was shown as willing to drink from the cell’s toilet bowl rather than to faint from dehydration and the omniscient narrator shared with the reader Barbie’s past training in black ops, hand-to-hand combat, and interrogation techniques, referencing his service in Iraq, Barbie, who single-handedly bested four tough thugs in the parking lot outside Dippy’s Roadhouse, seemed as rough and ready as John Rambo.

Since then, however, much of the military toughness of the colonel has seemingly dulled. He’s been in jail since page 533, mostly being verbally and physically abused and subjected to the childish pranks of his jailers (who have salted his drinking water, for example, and contaminated his cereal with spit and boogers). He’s succeeded in very little otherwise, except to have stashed his pocketknife inside his bunk’s mattress. During this scene, Ortega, upset by Colonel Cox’s press conference (and, no doubt, by Wolf Blitzer’s questions), threatens Barbie with his .45, leaving Barbie shaken and sweating: “Barbie leaned back against the wall and let out a breath. There was sweat on his forehead. The hand he lifted to wipe it off was shaking” (768).

Barbie looks weaker yet because of the reader’s inevitable comparison of him, the passive protagonist, with Big Jim Rennie, the active antagonist. While, it may be argued, Barbie is--or can be--tough and is courageous, and that he has advanced hand-to-hand and perhaps martial arts skills, he seems to lack the passion for goodness that Big Jim has for evil. Big Jim is a determined, relentless adversary, who uses imagination, audacity, and intelligence to pursue his goals. He is also courageous and resourceful, organized and efficient, confident and defiant. A natural leader, Big Jim commands loyalty, inspires both respect and fear, and exhibits political acumen. Although he is contemptuous of others, seeing them as weak or dependent and he is involved in crime, including not only the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine, but also murder, Big Jim inspires the reader’s grudging respect in the same way that a Mafia godfather or a third-world strongman might do. He is glamorous, impressive, and powerful, a commanding figure with genuine presence. The passive Barbie, although he has shown that he can fight and is mentally tough as well as physically strong, doesn’t seem to be nearly as imposing as the villainous Big Jim.

Barbie comes off even less heroic when his passivity is juxtaposed to physician assistant Rusty Everett’s confrontation with Big Jim Rennie as he checks on his patient’s condition following Big Jim’s admittance to the hospital for treatment of his arrhythmia. Rusty has already confronted Big Jim once, in the selectman’s office, demanding an account as to what became of the propane that was stolen from the hospital, extracting from Big Jim the promise to investigate the matter, which, along with Big Jim’s decision to shut down his illegal drug operation, results in the return of two stolen tanks. Now, the courageous, if naïve, Rusty confronts the politician about a much more serious matter, declaring “I know you killed Coggins” (778), telling him about the baseball stitch marks he has seen on the Reverend Coggins’ face, which match those on the gold-plated baseball in Big Jim’s office, and demanding that Big Jim and Andy Sanders “step down” and allow Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell to “take over” the government of Chester’s Mill. However, Rusty crosses the line, morally and legally, when he threatens to withhold lifesaving medication from his patient if Big Jim refuses to “step down.” Unfortunately, Rusty is no match for his unscrupulous and murderous foe, who has concealed Deputy Freddy Denton and his bodyguard Special Deputy Carter Thibodeau in his hospital room’s bathroom. Having heard Rusty threaten to withhold the drugs that would keep Big Jim alive unless the politician agrees to resign from office, they are able to charge Rusty with extortion. In addition, they add the trumped-up charges of resisting arrest and attempted murder. They also allege that their prisoner, Colonel Barbara, or “Barbie,” “put him up to it” (782). After ordering Freddy to retrieve his cellular telephone, which Rusty had pocketed, Big Jim steps on Rusty’s left hand, seemingly breaking three of his fingers. (Actually, they are dislocated, although the fifth metacarpal of his hand is broken.) The physician’s assistant is then jailed, three cells down from Barbie, and the contrast between the assertive medic and the passive soldier is made even more striking, as, despite extreme pain, Rusty pulls his dislocated fingers, except for the pinkie, back into place, even managing to joke about his condition as he does so, saying he needs to “fix” his middle finger, as he “may need it” to flip off Big Jim and his cronies (788). Although Rusty no doubt acted rashly, both times that he confronted Big Jim (as he did when he seized the dome genberator), he has hardly made the situation any worse than it already is. The question is whether Barbie, jailed for over 250 pages now, has made anything better.

In any case, concerned that the jail is bugged, Barbie mouths the news to Rusty that, tomorrow night, a rescue is to be mounted, intelligence of which Rusty is already aware. Barbie adds, still mouthing the words, that they will require a safe house in which to stay following their escape, and Rusty thinks that, “thanks to Joe McClatchey and his friends. . . he had that part covered” (789).

King is a master storyteller with a long history of writing bestsellers, so it seems unlikely that he would be unaware of the apparent passivity of his jailed soldier. Barbie was promoted to the rank of colonel as the president’s “inside man.” He has displayed impressive combat skills in his fight against the four thugs who attacked him outside Dippy’s Roadhouse. He can be resourceful (he hid his pocketknife inside the jailhouse bunk’s mattress and drinks from a toilet bowl), and he is trained in close combat, interrogation, and black ops skills. He is respected by Colonel Cox, a “forceful” man. However, King’s having kept him in jail for a fourth of his novel, wherein he’s the frequent butt of jokes and jibes and has been physically assaulted and threatened with death on several occasions as well, makes Barbie seem more pitiful than admirable, as does Rusty’s manly, take-charge conduct, juxtaposed to Barbie’s apparent acquiescence to his foes. It will take extreme acts of heroism before the end of the story for Barbie to redeem himself as the hero whose past training, experience, and action has led the reader to believe he is capable of being. Perhaps King can pull it off. After all, he is a master storyteller with a long history of writing bestsellers. Still, the reader wonders, which is, in its own way, another, if rather peculiar, form of suspense.

Party Politics “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

For quite a few pages, ever since Joe McClatchey, Norrie Calvert, and Benny Drake discovered what they (and physician’s assistant Rusty Everett) believe is the dome generator, King has been building suspense concerning the device. Finally, Rusty not only sees it firsthand, but conducts a couple of tentative experiments with it. The device is odd: although the radiation level has been just shy of the danger zone all the way up Black Ridge, from McCoy’s Orchard, the Geiger counter now reads the threat as zero, and the condition of a hale and hearty squirrel, living (or, at least, foraging) in the area testifies to the safety of the area--from radiation, at any rate. Unwisely, Rusty, perhaps emboldened by the zero reading and the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed rodent, “bent and touched the surface of the generator--if it was a generator.” Although he is wearing protective gloves, the result of his contact is immediate:

A strong shock immediately surged up his arm and through his body. He tried to pull back and couldn’t. His muscles were locked up tight. The Geiger counter gave a single bray, then fell silent. Rusty had no idea whether or not the needle swung into the danger zone, because he couldn’t move his eyes, either. The light was leaving the world, funneling out of it like water going down a bathtub drain, and he thought with sudden clam clarity: I’m going to die. . . (736).

However, Rusty doesn’t die. Instead, he has either a hallucination or makes a telepathic connection, albeit one way, with him as the receiver, with an extraterrestrial race--or so, at least, he believes, seeing “faces.” but not “human faces, and later he would not be sure they were faces at all. They were geometric solids that seemed to be padded in leather” with “diamond shapes on their sides” that “could have been ears.” These “heads--if they were heads--turned to each other. . . In [apparent] discussion,” and Rusty thinks he “heard laughter,” picturing children at play at the local grammar school his daughters attend (735)

Rusty removes his iron apron and lays it over the generator. The metal catches fire, blisters, and disintegrates Despite witnessing the apparent defensive capability of the device and having himself been shocked by it, Rusty, having removed his gloves, seizes the generator in his bare hands, anticipating another shock, a burn, or another telepathic connection to the aliens. Instead, “there was nothing” (737). Despite its relatively small size--a little bigger than the proverbial breadbox--the generator refuses to budge. As Rusty wonders what to do next, he hears a tremendous explosion, looks up, and sees that another airplane, this one a large passenger jet, has crashed into the dome.

As a result of the jet’s crashing into the barrier, the townspeople unite more and more, wearing blue armbands as a sign of their solidarity. This solidarity is necessary, of course, to secure Big Jim Rennie’s political base and power, and it happens just before the selectman gives his speech to the townspeople. In including this scene, King also takes the opportunity to philosophize about human behavior, suggesting that, for approximately fifty percent of a population, long-term trauma encourages acceptance in place of denial. Acceptance, in turn, succumbs to dependency, and dependency gives way to resignation:

Earlier that morning, perhaps fifteen percent of the town was wearing blue “solidarity” armbands; by sundown on this Wednesday in October, it will be twice that. When the sun comes up tomorrow, it will be over fifty percent of the population.
Denial gives way to acceptance; acceptance breeds dependence. Anyone who’s ever cared for a terminal patient will tell you that, too. . . .

They need someone to sit with them when the night is dark and the hours stretch out. They need someone to say, Sleep now, it will be better in the morning. I’m here, so sleep. Sleep now. Sleep and let me take care of everything.

Sleep (740).

For years, the townspeople of Chester’s Mill have been more or less content, most of the time, to let Big Jim Rennie take charge of their affairs, to look out for the supposed good of the town, to take care of them, both individually and collectively. Now that they are involved in a crisis beyond human reckoning, the townspeople seem prepared to accept his dictatorial leadership, depending upon his strength and courage, despite his corruption. King has set the stage for Big Jim’s gathering of greater and greater power unto himself during his upcoming speech before the accepting, dependent, and resigned citizenry of Chester’s Mill. Big Jim himself knows as much. As he stands outside Town Hall, having hurried forth to see what caused the great explosion that occurred as he was working on his speeches--”one to the cops tonight. . . [and] one to the entire town tomorrow night”--he observes the townspeople “staring up into the sky with their mouths gaped open,” and he thinks, “they looked like sheep dressed in human clothing. Tomorrow night they would crowd into the Town Hall and go baaa baaa baaa, when’ll it get better? And baaa baaa baaa, take care of us until it does. And he would” (741).

Meanwhile, since page 533, Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara has been in jail on trumped-up assault, rape, and murder charges. Apart from drinking from his toilet bowl, eating cereal upon which his jailers have spat and deposited nasal mucus, and bantering with his captors while he waits for Deputy Jackie Wettington to rescue him, he does precious little. Even before his incarceration, he didn’t do much other than cook at the local restaurant, get into a fight, and quell a riot. All in all, to say that Barbie is a passive protagonist is putting it mildly. Perhaps the fictional version of President Barack Hussein Obama erred in selecting Barbie as his official representative inside the dome. Alternatively, King may be saving Barbie’s heroic feats for the resolution of his massive story. If so, though, one has to wonder, at this point, whether the reader will care.

It is no longer either acceptable to readers from either an artistic standpoint or from a politically correct perspective to characterize dramatic personae on the basis of their physical appearance, so that physically unattractive characters are villains and beautiful people are heroes or heroines, as was the stereotypical practice of days gone by. However, King uses a similar approach, which is both aesthetically and socially acceptable (so far): he uses references to physical organs (his male characters often exhibit fear, for instance, by a tightening of, or a crawling sensation in, their testes and scrota, and, throughout Under the Dome, King references Big Jim’s heart condition--an Achilles’ heel, no doubt--as a means of suggesting his emotional state. An example occurs when he fears that the crashing jet may have been the detonation of an atomic bomb that could destroy the dome before Big Jim would like to have the barrier obliterated and the townspeople rescued. It is only when he understands that the explosion was that of an aircraft rather than a bomb that he begins to relax and his heart rate slows: “Big Jim felt a cautious sense of relief, and his triphammering heart slowed a bit. It was a plane. . . just a plane and not a nuke or some kind of super-missile. . . “ (740). However, when Colonel Cox is slow to get back to him in confirmation of the airliner’s identity, his heart rate again increases: “Big Jim’s heart had been slowing toward its normal speed (if a hundred and twenty beats per minute can be so characterized), but now it sped up again and took one of those looping misbeats. He coughed and pounded his chest. His heart seemed almost to settle, then went into a full-blown arrhythmia” (741). Since the heart symbolizes the spiritual, moral, and emotional aspects of the personality, King has chosen wisely in using Big Jim’s heart condition as a metaphor for his personal, political, and spiritual corruption.

Once again, although King cites George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (who, like Big Jim, has a bad heart) as his models for Big Jim, there are strong parallels in the selectman’s behavior to both President Obama and his chief advisor, Rahm Emmanuel. Like Emmanuel, Big Jim believes in never letting a crisis go to waste, and, like Obama, he uses such situations to further his own political base and personal power, acting in a tyrannical and self-righteous manner, believing that not only does he know what’s best for the town he governs but also that he is doing God’s will in doing so. The arrogance of Emmanuel, Obama, and Big Jim is another striking parallel between the situation “under the dome” and that in present-day America. Big Jim, who sees his fellow townspeople as “sheep,” thinks “Sheep need a shepherd,” and he believes that, “under certain circumstances, panic could be good. Under certain circumstances, it could--like food riots and acts of arson--have a beneficial effect.” (So might such conditions as a worldwide economic meltdown, worsened by runaway spending; a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan; the Gulf oil spill; international terrorism; a porous border and massive illegal immigration; and whatever “crisis” exists or can be invented next, it seems.) Like Obama, who seldom speaks without a carefully prepared speech projected onto a teleprompter, Big Jim also knows the value of prepared speeches. When Colonel Cox pleads with the selectman to make sure that the people of Chester’s Mill understand that the jetliner’s crash was “just an accident,” Big Jim thinks, “They’ll know what I tell them and believe what I want them to” (742).

Are such parallels intentional, showing that King’s political thought processes have matured beyond black-or-white, either-or fallacious form of partisan politics and the playing of an “us” liberals/Democrats against “them” conservatives/Republicans blame game, or are these parallels the result of mere coincidence, suggesting that King remains more an ideologue than an independent thinker? Is it possible that one of the world’s most popular writers hasn’t stretched his own political perspective beyond that of his college years when it was all the rage to “STICK IT TO THE MAN,” as young Joe McClatchey would have had his fellow students do in response to the descent of the dome? Is it possible that King, who shows himself to be fairly astute in his analysis and understanding of human behavior, could be so superficial and stereotypical in his perception of politics? It is possible, of course, but it’s not desirable. According to his own statements, Big Jim is modeled upon President Bush (the son) and Vice-President Chaney. That the same character could easily have been modeled upon President Obama and Rahm Emmanuel should teach King something, if it hasn’t already: the two-party system is more corrupt than Big Jim Rennie, offering little difference between the platforms and, therefore, voters’ alternatives. That’s what the Tea Party and the increasing ranks of moderates and independents without political party affiliation are all about. If it’s not what Under the Dome is all about, let’s hope that, in his next novel, King is sadder but wiser in the ways of the world.

News reaches Rusty from the hospital: both Big Jim, suffering from arrhythmia, and Junior, diagnosed with having a possible brain tumor, have been admitted to the medical facility. On their way back to Chester’s Mill from Black Ridge, Rusty swear his companions to silence concerning his discovery of the dome generator.

Rose Twitchell takes sandwiches to Barbie and, despite Melvin Searles’ presence, Barbie succeeds in relaying a message to his former employer: “Tell her [Deputy Jackie Wettington, who plans to break Barbie out of jail] I said you’re all right” (747), meaning that it’s all right for Jackie to share her secrets with Rose.

Andy Sanders and The Chef smoke methamphetamine while the latter lectures the former, based upon a wild interpretation of the book of Revelation., concerning their roles as “Christian soldiers” in the apocalypse that is to come on Halloween, if not earlier. Both men also vow never to let Big Jim and his cronies shut down their meth lab, as Big Jim has said he will do to get “rid of the evidence” of his illegal operation ((751).

As Barbie was drafted back into the Army as a colonel by presidential order, so is Deputy Jackie Wettington, a former sergeant, who’s been “stop-lossed” and assigned the “twofold” mission of rescuing Barbie from jail and of ousting Big Jim from his office as selectman-become-dictator. King loses this section of his novel by setting the stage for future developments involving a conflict between Barbie and Wettington and their followers and Big Jim and his camp. With Halloween coming early, perhaps, to Chester’s Mill and Rusty Everett’s discovery of the dome generator, things are likely to be lively, despite a relatively passive protagonist, Big Jim’s arrhythmia, and Junior’s glioma. After all, the reader has been warned, “that dead band song” is about to “play.”

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.