Under the Dome

The novel was published amid a background of ongoing wars—Afghanistan and Iraq—wherein the memories of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the establishment of Homeland Security was still fresh. America had elected its first Black president, and the nation had been plunged into the Great Recession, a time of deep economic insecurity. Under the Dome traces the fault lines among a populace who are divided politically, economically, and culturally. Setting the novel in the very near future—it was published in 2009, though the action appears to take place in 2012—allows the author to explore how far and how deep those fault lines might go and how long they may take to rupture in a crisis. The Dome, with its extraterrestrial origins and claustrophobic environment, allows the author to exaggerate the effect of those divisions.

The novel’s protagonist, Dale Barbara, is a decorated Iraq War veteran, a status that he would rather ignore. His attitude toward his service is ambivalent at best—he threw his medals into the Gulf of Mexico more than a year before—and he remembers the enhanced interrogations of Iraqi prisoners with remorse. He is deeply mistrustful of the military and its motives. In one of his first conversations with Colonel Cox, Barbie suspects the military (with or without the government’s permission) has something to do with the Dome: “Is this an experiment that went wrong? Or, God help us, some kind of test? You owe me the truth. You owe this town the truth” (150). Barbie also suspects that Cox’s desire to help, and the military’s duty to help, is motivated by a desire to understand and appropriate the technology involved in the generation of the Dome: “That’s actually a priority [to retrieve the generator], isn’t it? Sir? Because a thing like that could change the world. The people of this town are strictly secondary. Collateral damage, in fact” (153).

While Barbie’s worldview is shaped by his experience in Iraq, Big Jim Rennie and his associates’ perspective is formed via their privileged political and economic positions. When Chief Randolph and Rennie discuss the owners of the bar, Dipper’s, they both dismiss them as “wingnuts,” primarily because they have a picture of Barack Obama in the establishment (131). Rennie also thinks disparagingly of former president Clinton (133); his politics are conservative, and his mistrust is not of the establishment but of those who question authority and the status quo. He also presents himself as an evangelical Christian, though much of his behavior belies that belief system. Thus, he and Barbie are set up as antagonists not only because of the incident between Barbie and Junior but also because they exist on opposite ends of the political spectrum. It is clear that the author himself is also taking sides: Barbie is the obvious hero, whereas Rennie is the consummate villain.