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Under The Dome Review by Stephen King

Book Reviw/Report on Under the Dome by Stephen King

Under the Dome is a science fiction/apocalyptic book written by Stephen King, it is a eleven hundred pages long and throughout all those page I was crying fan girl tears. It is one of my most favorite books of all time and certainly the best apocalyptic book I have ever read. I rarely do positive reviews on books, but because this book was so amazing I just had to express my love for it.

Chester's Mills, Maine, is having itself an ordinary morning, and its citizens are getting up to all the usual things: Spending too much of their husband's money, killing girls, beating up people they don't like and driving them out of town, and making evil brews. Business as usual for the human race, in other words. *WHAM* Down comes the Dome. No way in, no way out, no one can understand the nature, the origin, or the purpose of the Dome inside or outside of it. National security issues crop up. The town misfit, an Iraqi war vet, is called back into national service to solve the mystery. And then things get **really** ugly: The local used car salesman takes control.

Right away Stephen King introduces his signature unique plot lines. And the problem in this story, the event that sets the novel in motion is so strange, so irrevocably random and mind blowing that the reader is immediately drawn into the character’s confusion. Like what? What do you mean there’s a giant transparent dome around them? And get this, the first chapter is told in the view of a woodchuck, a woodchuck! That’s total unique awesomeness right there, and then of course in the chapters that follow hundreds of the towns people are killed by this dome. A plane goes into it, trucks go into it, a woman get’s cut in half by it, and families get separated. Then a question begins to creep up, who will take charge? Of the town councilmen, only three are inside the dome. A woman who broke her hip a few months ago and is now dependent on pain killers, a man whose wife was in the plane that crashed into the dome, and runs the pharmacy that illegally supplies his fellow councilwomen with painkillers, and the sadistic, greedy antagonist of the story Big Jim Rennie who controls them both.

This is only the beginning of the thick plots that begin to unravel, turns out the town reverend is laundering money and helping Big Jim with his meth business, and Big Jim Rennie’s son Junior is hiding the corpses of three dead teenage girls in his closet.

Then there is Dale Barbie, ex Iraqi war veteran whose trying to escape the memories of his time in service, but is called back into duty and told to attempt to order the chaos with the help of a few loyal sidekicks he meets along way. Like the determined town journalist Julia Shumway, the head doctor at the town clinic Rusty Everett, and his wife and children. King features the POVs of numerous characters throughout the novel, all whom we grow intimately close with and are stunned when they die. Though despite the sheer number of memorable and intriguing characters (for King shows both sides, good and evil equally) I don’t believe there is any specific main character. Rather, the main character appears to be small town America and how it reacts as a whole to cataclysmic events.

Thing is though, Jim Rennie along with everyone else’s secrets are beginning to be revealed. Big Jim (whose sense of religion seems to be so twisted that he refuses to swear in the hope that he will Saved, but has no problem slitting a few throats here and there) like doing secretive actions (think Reichstag fire) as a way to cast blame on enemies (they attempt to blame Barbie for the several murders Jim Rennie and Junior committed) raising a private army (Big Jim elects many of Juniors young friends to be added to the town police force, which right away starts a whole another line of events as these ‘police officers’ begin to abuse their power over the citizens), planning to massacre one’s opponents, blackmail, spying on one’s own citizens (see Patriot Act), controlling or at least monitoring communications (ditto), attempting to destroy opposing media (he burns down Julia Shumway’s newspaper office) and so on. Which also begins to raise the question, are the people under the dome really still part of American anymore? Especially after the military fires an MOAB and it fails to put even in a dint in the transparent dome.

For me, Under the Dome portrays the steps of human oppression and the ultimate decline of society, from bad to worst should be the title of this book, and it’s extremely similar to Lord of the Flies though instead of a bunch of kids stuck on an island facing survival problems, it’s a bunch of adults stuck in a dome facing problems they created.

Which leaves me to believe the main idea of this book is karma, and that your lies will always come back to bite you. This is drastically portrayed in the ending where as Barbie and Julia attempt to convince two alien children (turns out two supernatural children have been running the dome this whole time, and were completely unaware of the affects it had on the people of Chester’s Mill, which could be another possible theme. That all your actions have consequences), a shootout between Big Jim’s army and the town rebels causes Big Jim’s stockpile of propane (he’s been using to make meth) to blow up. The ensuing explosion, combined with the propane and meth-making chemicals, unleashes a toxic firestorm large enough to incinerate most of the town. Leaving alive just over three hundred individuals who eventually to die off as well due to the lack of oxygen within the dome. Many of the POV characters die this way, or meet their own personal demise. (Junior is stabbed in the head by falling debris). The twenty or so survivors left include Big Jim and his new favorite crony Carter Thibodeau (who by now is responsible for several rapes and murders) flee to a fall out shelter, though Big Jim and Thibodeau eventually turn on each other over the limited oxygen supply (and Big Jim's worry that Thibodeau may act as a witness against him if they survive); Big Jim stabs and disembowels Thibodeau, only to die several hours later when hallucinations of the dead send him fleeing into the now-toxic environment outside.

Though the ending of Under the Dome is shocking and brutal (only six of the original town citizens survive when Julia finally manages to convince the alien children to raise the dome) it tells you the story of human nature, irrefutably making points that need making about Mankind and its flaws, while wringing your withers with fear, excitement, and sadness.

A.C

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