The nightmare begins when a woodchuck, foraging for food alongside the road, is suddenly sliced in half as though by an invisible knife.   It continues with a small plane crashing into an unseen barrier, raining bits of fuselage and body parts.   The body count rises as a log-bearing truck and assorted vehicles hit the transparent wall at high speed.   Slowly, the townspeople realize that they are the victims of an unprecedented disaster—a huge, invisible, impenetrable dome has settled over Chester's Mill, Maine.   Nothing can get in, nothing can get out.

Dale Barbara is a drifter who's been roughed up and run out of town.   "Barbie" doesn't get far, though, on account of the dome's sudden appearance.  He's a decorated army officer who, racked with guilt over his part in certain Guantanamo-type actions, threw his medals away.   But, as King laments, you may be done with the past, but the past isn't done with you.  Barbie is summoned back into service and ordered to put Chester's Mill under martial law.   Unfortunately for Colonel Barbie, this action puts him in the gun sights of Big Jim Rennie, a bloated, Jesus-spouting politician.   Though Second Selectman Rennie has spent years robbing the town, he isn't motivated by greed.   Power is Big Jim's need.  He wants to be the biggest fish in a little pond.   For him, the dome is a dream-come-true.  

As Chester's Mill struggles with its isolation from the world, including the loss of life-sustaining goods and services, as Big Jim tightens his hold on the town, two groups begin to form—one good, led by Barbie and town newspaper editor, Julia Shumway,  and one very bad, led by Rennie and his growing police force--of which Mussolini would've been proud.  

Longtime King-readers will catch a whiff of a favorite motif here:  the coalescing of opposing forces of good and evil.   In The Mist, a military experiment goes horribly, colossally wrong, opening the door to a hellish dimension.   As giant spiders and other freakish menaces claim the earth, the embattled occupants of a super-market find themselves not so much taking, as being drawn into, sides.  On one side is old Mrs. Carmody, as charismatic as she is insane.  She calls for a blood sacrifice to save them from the monsters.  On the kinder, gentler side, artist David Drayton finds himself the unwilling, but determined leader of a group seeking freedom by more conventional means. 

There's a somewhat similar aggregation in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (later filmed under the title The Shawshank Redemption).  On the bad side are Bible-thumping hard case Warden Norton and his brute squad.  Leading the opposition is Andy Dusfresne, falsely convicted of the murder of his wife.  It's easy to see the Christ-parallel in Andy's interaction with a small band of "disciples," his sufferings at the hands of the pharisaical Norton, and his "resurrection" from the depths of living death.  

 King's most celebrated use of the theme appears in what many consider his magnum opus, The Stand.  In the wake of a biological apocalypse, at the urging of conflicting dreams, two groups form:  In Boulder, Colorado, an aged black woman called Mother Abagail leads the forces of Good.  Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Randall Flagg, AKA "the walkin' dude," pushes his people toward Dionysian destruction.  

Many consider The Stand to be King's most "Christian" work (others prefer The Green Mile with its miracle-working man-of-sorrows).  It must be noted, however, that some of the theological ideas in The Stand are distorted to say the least.    While it's true that King was raised a Methodist and won a Bible for memorizing verses, the writer's published work often veers off a biblical understanding of life and humanity.   This is certainly true Under the Dome where King's publically affirmed aversion to "organized religion" (read:  the church) is hard to miss.  His Reverend John Coggins, leader of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church, is crazy as a loon.  When he's not reading dirty books, he's conspiring with his church's biggest benefactor, Jim Rennie, to fund the conversion of "little brown children" with methamphetamine sales.  When he's not doing that, he's flagellating himself with a knotted rope.   In fact, the character is such an embarrassing caricature that his murder comes as a relief.  

The Democratic response, so to speak, is found in Piper Lilly, pastor of the Congregational Church in Chester's Mill.   King paints a compassionate portrait of an intelligent woman who cares about the people she serves.  She has her flaws, but she's brave and decent.  She tells herself she has lost her faith, yet she continues to pray to one she calls "Not There."  

That's another thing we've seen in King's books, the agnostic approach to God.   After thirty years, after Carrie and Cujo,  after Apt Pupil  and Pet Sematary, after The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Duma Key,  King is still posing the same old question:  What if there isn't any God?   What if God turns out to be a nasty child holding a magnifying glass over an anthill?  What if the dome is a metaphor for humanity under the pitiless pressure of a hostile universe, a place nothing can get into or out of?  

Yes,  we've seen this theology in King's books before, just as we've seen the Two Forces Coalescing theme, and several other King-things: including the usual foreshadowing of events ("their lives had another 40 seconds to run"), the usual sardonic nods to our culture of advertising (as the unfortunate farmer's tractor continues to chug after crashing into the dome, "nothing runs like a Deere"), the gross-out of bashed-out brains and voyeuristic violence, the suspicion of/contempt for institutions of authority, the idea that kids and dogs are smarter than grown-ups, the apocalyptic climax, not to mention the sheer length of the book, 1074 pages (reading through is like trying to kill a wooly mammoth one spear at a time).  

For all that, the novel is still, more often than not, a fast, involving read.  Stephen King is a great storyteller.  The only trouble, I think, is that we've heard this one before, more than once.  It seems there's really nothing new under the sun or Under the Dome. 

Posted December 18, 2009

Gary D. Robinson is a preacher, writer, and Superman fan living in Xenia, Ohio.  Check out his website, "Look!  Up in the Sky!" (www.garydrobinson.com).