Under the Dome

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Although Stephen King is arguably the most popular author of the last 40 years, it is the consensus of most of his fans that, from time to time, he’ll release an awful book. Really awful.  Under the Dome isn’t quite in the league as one of King’s worst, but sadly it does fall into the “really bad” category.  What makes it a bit more frustrating is that this one could have actually been quite good.  It had serious potential.

The story is one of those plots that can only be found in a Stephen King novel.  One day, a quiet town in Maine discovers rather abruptly that a “dome” has appeared over the entire town.  Although invisible, it’s definitely there and nothing can get in nor out.  Animal, vegetable, nor mineral.  This story starts off really well, but King manages to blow it in a bad way.  It’s not so much the story and how it unfolds, but the characters that King fleshes out in this yarn.  It should be said that most of King’s novels take place in a small town in Maine, and in many cases, you can’t help but wonder that you’ve seen and met all of these hideous stereotypical one dimensional beings many times over that have been regurgitated from his previous works.

And, oh there are many characters.  So many that King, fortunately, provides us with a “cast” at the beginning of the book detailing most of them.  This aids the reader since it’s so easy to get lost with all of the different people coming and going in and out of all the pages.  Unfortunately, if there is one thing that is common about all of the actors in this play is that they’re all,to some extent, ridiculously annoying.  95% of the folks we encounter under this dome are either a) good natured but really stupid or b) mean spirited and really stupid.  You can probably already guess when panic sets in under this dome what will happen with all of these not-so-bright individuals.

The worst is the “main” bad guy - Big Jim Rennie (he’s one of the few characters whose name I can remember as I write this, several weeks after I completed the novel).  Big Jim is the owner of the town’s used car lot, and one of the town selectman.  He’s also a big bad Republican and a so called “Christian”.  King never forgets to let us know this over and over and the author then proceeds to continue to offend these two groups of his readers by this ridiculous comic of a character.  It seems like just about every scene Big Jim shows up in, King has to take a stab at this man’s beliefs.  He’ll murder and sell drugs, but he won’t curse - since cursing is, you know, sinful.  Yeah.  Right.  You can’t help but get thoroughly aggravated when this buffoon of a character says things like “We need to kill that rhymes-with-witch!” or when he tells of his meeting with Tiger Woods, he describes the golfer as a “pretty decent negro”.  Yes, King actually wrote that.  As a matter of fact, you don’t really end up hating this villain, yet you end up hating Stephen King for insulting the reader’s intelligence.  Doesn’t Stephen King realize that people, you know, actually spent their money and buy his books?  It’s sad indeed.

 Of course, there are a few “good” guys, yet the odds are ridiculously stacked against them because of the idiocy of the plot.  They do somehow prevail and do, for the most part, accomplish what needs to be done.  Not surprisingly, the “main” good guy isn’t even from this warped town, he’s actually a drifter.  I guess King thinks this fictitious town can’t have too many brains in it, or something.

Then we have the police.  It comes as no surprise that they aren’t that bright and aren’t really any help as they should be at a time like this.  Ol’ Big Jim then deputizes many of the younger guys right out of high school to help keep the town in order, and of course, all of these guys  would make the white supremacist groups look like a bunch of altar boys.   This town is definitely not a place where you would want to stop for a cup of coffee on a good day.   You can’t help but seriously wonder where King actually comes up with this kind of town.  Does he really believe such individuals can exist in mass proportions?

Another strike against this book is the “gross” or “disgusting” factor which is completely unnecessary.  There’s plenty of murder, arson, rape, drug abuse, suicide and even borderline necrophilia throughout these pages, but, believe it or not, this in itself actually isn’t that bad in and of itself.  King just seems to take some sort of sadistic pleasure within this story in making his readers sick to the stomach.  Case in point:  There’s one scene where one of the “good” guys is placed in jail unfairly by the “bad” guys at the police station.  When a visitor comes to see the good guy with a bowl of cereal for the prisoner, the bad guys, naturally, have to pass the bowl around and spit in it.  Now, King could stop right there.  But no, he has to describe  the sound of each person’s spit, the texture of each person’s spit, the color of each person’s spit, etc. etc.   I ask Mr. King, what ever possessed you?   Again, this entire novel is filled with scenes such as this.

Once the explanation of this mysterious dome is revealed, a lot of readers cried “foul” since it was kind of stupid.  But this is Stephen King, remember, and most of his books deal with the unknown/unseen/supernatural etc. so it really wasn’t too big of a shock for my tastes.  As a matter of fact, I think King should have spent more energy and pages devoted to the cause of the dome, but he’s too immersed in his warped town to go in that direction too far or too long.   The climax of this book, especially, was a big let down.  There was too much action and not enough understanding.  Yes, I realize that King is making a commentary on how human beings treat each other and how we treat nature, but a little bit more care could have gone into the last 100 pages or so.

Had this book been cleaned up a bit, and I mean that almost literally, the story might have been a good one.  King states in the Afterword that he actually started writing this book about forty years ago, but then discarded the story until recently.  You really wish he would have left this idea in the trash bin.