Under the Dome by Stephen King
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
SPOILERS
On the surface, the basic plot of the book revolves around a dome covering a small town in Maine and calamity ensues. The book is over a thousand pages long which gives a lot of time to delve into the many (many) characters caught inside and focus on how humans/society can unravel when placed in intense situations. The entire story mirrors what King says of his own writing style in “On Writing”. “I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free.” That sums up the entire narrative of “Under the Dome” (UtD).
If as a reader you come for the plot then the story does a decent job of moving forward without getting too bogged down (it does in some places with characters that appear only to serve to flesh out the small-town vibe and then are never heard from again) then this is a fine book, though somewhat lengthy. For the plot itself, it’s a solid three. Nothing new or particularly groundbreaking and done better elsewhere (see “Lord of the Flies” or even King’s other works).
Where I would lower the rating of this book to a 2.5 instead of three is the static nature of the main characters. Yes, many other reviewers have focused on this, but it is the main issue I have with this book. The “bad” people were bad before the dome came down. The “good” people were good before the dome came down. The dome only acts to heighten their inherent qualities instead of muddying the waters or making the readers question themselves what they might do in a similar situation.
Big Jim is a power-hungry city council member who we quickly learn has been siphoning propane from the town to fuel a meth-making operation. Strangely enough, this book was released in November of 2009 when Breaking Bad was in its second season. Now, knowing how long it takes publishers to get a completed manuscript ready for publishing I’m sure UtD was finished before the first season even premiered. However, when compared to that show the flatness of Big Jim compared to Walter White shows how lacking Big Jim is in complexity. Instead of watching a slow descent into madness (aka Walter White) the narrative tells the reader bluntly that Big Jim is evil with no real redeeming qualities or motivations. Then he is evil for the rest of the book.
It would have been more effective to combine Big Jim with Lester Coggins’s internal struggles. Make Big Jim a zealous religious follower. Make him hate himself for basic sins (like masturbation and cussing), but also make his need to spread the word of god drive him to make the proverbial deal with the devil. It would give it stakes to see how he justifies and twists religion to fit his needs while still wholeheartedly believing he is doing gods work. He could still be conniving and controlling but aim his reasons at religious glory instead of…well…what? Self-aggrandizement? Money? Power? If you did this then Chef could act as a perfect foil to Jim. Where Chef is insane due to his drug abuse Jim would be insane because of his need to please the Lord. In that way, it could show how both characters morph religion to suit their selfish desires and character flaws.
Another character who falls flat for me is Junior. Introduced while killing his ex-girlfriend things only go downhill from there. Later we find out he has a brain tumor which is possibly making him a killer. By this time he hasn’t shown any redeemable qualities (other than being nice to a couple of kids he finds) to identify with. He is just evil and would gladly kill his father (Big Jim) if he needs to. Again, there is no ambiguity here, which makes the character seem unrealistic.
In the situation I’ve outlined above where Big Jim is a religious zealot: Junior could be another casualty of people bending religion to their own purposes. Big Jim could have beat Junior when he found dirty magazines in his room or locked him in a basement without food for taking the lords name in vain. Big Jim could have created the pyscho Junior would become by ignoring mental health issues presenting when he was a child as false signs from God. In this way, Junior, while still a horrible person, could have depth in his need for love that is unrequited from his girlfriend leading to the killings. Then when he sees Big Jim kill someone he could have so wanted to please his father he goes along with hiding the bodies. Instead, a brain tumor is the “reason” why he’s an asshole killer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Barbie (can I just say I hate that King chose to call him that as I cannot fathom an ex-military man going by Barbie, regardless of what his last name is) is an ex-military man who is now a drifter, but still a hero underneath. Poised from the beginning to be the main “good” guy because of his skills, knowledge, and can-do attitude. Again, this character doesn’t get the room to grow in any meaningful way during the 1,000 pages of this book. He is a capable military man who acts like a capable military man. Even by the time we get some backstory on his time in Iraq, he still doesn’t grow. It’s almost added as an aside, before he goes on being the capable military man.
Many of the other side characters function in similar ways of being either good people or bad people with little growth given to them from the circumstances of their imprisonment. In this way, I think King does better in works where he focuses on a smaller cast of characters. In his older works, he got deep and personal with the characters like Jack Torrance in The Shining. We know King can do this,
which makes the shallow and sprawling cast of characters in UtD all the more frustrating. I’d rather see it through the eyes of three or four characters who change and adapt to the situation rather than the twenty plus we get who stand in for pre-determined roles.
Not one of King’s best, but as I said, if you come purely for the story and nothing else then it is serviceable. Though I skipped some chapters with characters I just couldn’t stand to read about anymore. Many of these characters added little to the story if anything. Because again, most of the bad characters were bad before the dome came down. So their interactions with others only act to reinforce this instead of changing these characters in a complex or meaningful way. If you are a slow reader, I’d skip this one. Better books out there, especially by King, making for better time spent.
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