UNDER THE DOME - Stephen King - Fiction

I tried to write a short story on these themes once--tried a few times, actually--telling the story of, among other things, an outsider who struggles between concepts of personal and public religion, told through the lens of genre fiction. Need I say outright that Stephen King is far more accomplished at telling this story than I was? Of course, he benefits from nearly 1100 pages in which to tell his tale of an extraterrestrial terrarium that unleashes the tyrannical impulses of the second selectman in a sleepy small town in Maine. King admits that he wanted to tell a metaphorical tale about the Bush/Cheney administration, from the perspective of the evils of power and the many ways in which frightened and confused people can be manipulated and misled. He succeeds, in a pitch-perfect narrative encompassing nearly fifty important characters and yet taking place over less than a week. We come to hate Jim and Junior Rennie, and to love Dale Barbara and his ragtag group of problem-solvers, and their plights seem continually real, despite the science fiction touches of a race of "leatherhead" aliens who end up being responsible for the Dome.

Of course, the solution to the Dome ends up being so unempowering as to make it seem that King believes there is little hope in preventing such circumstances as bring out the evil that lies dormant in powerful men. The citizens of Chester's Mill end up having to beg for their freedom from aliens who, for all we know, can't really understand them at all, and they are spared only because the alien they manage to catch between playtimes is a young child with some capacity for pity. If this summary seems awkward, it's because the plot point is--we know that our heroes have to succeed in lifting the Dome, and soon, because they are running out of breathable air, but rather than a scientific breakthrough or a show of cunning, they are left to beg for their lives and hope for the best. One almost wishes the Dome were a military experiment gone awry, to carry through the metaphor of the misuse of governmental fiat. Instead, the military is just as helpless as we are, and happen to be represented within the Dome by Dale Barbara, town hero, and so we are made to sympathize with them, even though our liberal consciences insist that they are part of the problem. Instead, local police become the brownshirt villains of this tale, and terrorize the town simply because their personalities predispose them to doing so.

I really never thought of King as being a feminist before--CARRIE being what it is--but UNDER THE DOME does bring to the forefront a number of strong female characters, including the town's newspaper editor, who succeeds in bringing down the Dome, bedding Dale Barbara, and single-handedly foiling Jim Rennie's every move. There are a number of strong narrative choices made in UNDER THE DOME, and one of the best is allowing women to save the day and outsmart the sexism of Rennie and colleagues.

UNDER THE DOME is a quick and compelling read, made more accessible than its brother-in-arms, THE STAND, by its circumscribing devices: containing the action within a single town and a number of days, and making the antagonists easily recognizable and the threat from outside concrete and quantifiable. If you prefer THE DARK TOWER, you'll prefer THE STRAND; if you like the scope of IT, then UNDER THE DOME is a natural extension.