Under the Dome

Sometimes, though not often, I like to take a break from being an unbearably pretentious douche bag and revisit some of the things I really enjoyed before enjoyment was more based on the context of a thing rather than its content. During the winter break, I decided to treat myself to Stephen King’s gigantic latest novel, Under the Dome, remembering how much I adored his stories in high school. I was floored to find out that the delight of reading him as a teenager translated perfectly to the delight of reading him as a snobby adult.

The basic premise of the novel is that on a peaceful autumn day, a force field (or dome) drops over the town of Chester’s Mill, cutting the town off from the outside world. The Dome effectively turns Chester’s Mill into a sovereign state ruled by the ruthless, loathsome middling politician, Big Jim Rennie, backed up by his lunatic son and his gang of thugs. As the air within the Dome becomes polluted and the temperature rises, the town becomes increasingly desperate and the resultant shift is that mostly good-natured people start to do reprehensible things. Standing against Big Jim and a town thirsty for a scapegoat to blame the situation on are an ex-soldier-cum-cook, a newspaper editor, an English lit professor, a physician’s assistant and a technology savvy teenager.

The protagonists are well-developed when compared to King’s more contemporary work (i.e. Cell), but where King really shines (and has always shone) is in the exquisite construction of his antagonists. He is never better than when he is creating something sinister, and that word fits Big Jim and his son, Junior, to the letter. Never have I been so consumed with hatred for a fictional character. It’s almost as if, while reading about Big Jim hiding behind god to justify his senseless thirst to command a sinking ship, you’ve become a citizen of Chester’s Mill and you want to tear his fictional head off. Such is the immersive quality of King’s writing and the ease in which the reader can place themselves not only in the predicament of a citizen of Chester’s Mill but in the universe he has created in Under the Dome.

If you’ve ever read Stephen King, you know his strength has never been subtle social or political commentary and that doesn’t change in Under the Dome. Sometimes I think—and my English professors will have my head for this—it is okay for a writer’s message not to be hidden in obscure symbol or imagery. King comes right out and says what he wants to say in an obvious, immensely enjoyable way. This isn’t to say that King doesn’t say anything worth thinking about. For instance, the concept of shame is examined in detail; particularly the idea that shame is what distinguishes humanity from anything else and what it could mean if you don’t feel shame for the shameful things you have done. The far subtler (though still not terribly subtle) theme running through the book is that of decency and how long the people of Chester’s Mill can cling to their sense of it before being corrupted by the mentality of a mob fuelled by fear and directionless rage.

Although the book is 1,072 pages long, it feels more like 500. This is because King’s sense of plot and pace is so refined. There is never a point in the novel where the reader is waiting for something to happen and there is never a point in the novel where the reader doesn’t want to know what happens next.