Under the Dome

As the quintessential villain of the story, Big Jim Rennie claims few, if any, redeeming characteristics. While he pays ample lip service to his evangelical affiliations—he does not swear or drink alcohol, for example—he harbors a desire for power that leads to everything from casual corruption (misappropriation of town funds) to full-scale illegal operations (manufacturing meth) to multiple murders. He relies on lackeys to carry out his commands and would easily sacrifice any of them—including his son, Junior—to save himself. Police Chief Randolph and First Selectman Andy Sanders (later Carter Thibodeaux) are convenient pawns in his bid for totalitarian control and readily dispatched. Rennie even looks the part of the supervillain, with his abundant girth propped behind the wheel of “his H3 Alpha Hummer (color: Black Pearl; accessories: you name it)” (65). While the Alpha is an actual part of the all-but-armored vehicle’s model name, it does not escape the reader that Rennie’s character drives one because he is meant to be one—the Alpha commander of The Mill. This explains why Dale Barbara, with his military credentials and the support of the president, no less, becomes his arch-nemesis. Barbie will receive the full brunt of Rennie’s wrath and might, as Rennie tries to frame Barbie for the murders committed by himself and his son, for his own drug-manufacturing plant, and even for the Dome itself.

Rennie engages in immoral behavior even when it is not in the service of his bids for power and control. Junior notes that Rennie was a philanderer even when his wife was still alive (later, Rennie will admit in an interior monologue that he hastened his wife’s death by smothering her with a pillow). He is most certainly a hypocrite, a quality that is heightened under the pressures of the Dome. It is fitting that Rennie thinks of himself in the third-person, royal “We” perspective; it suits his autocratic leadership style well.

Eventually, his corruption veers into something more sinister. His constant justifications of even the most heinous of his actions speak to a growing break with reality, with rational thinking. He begins to think that the Dome is God’s will, and that he himself is akin to God. When Junior dies, Rennie thinks, “He had been ready to sacrifice Junior, yes, but there was precedent for that; you only had to look at what had happened on Calvary Hill. And like Christ, the boy had died for a cause”—Big Jim Rennie’s cause, that is (894-95). His messianic determination is thwarted only by his own weak heart (another metaphor for his corruption), and rather than visions of paradise, he sees the ruined bodies of his victims upon his own lonely death.

In contrast to his father, Junior Rennie is a more complex villain. While he clearly follows in his father’s footsteps in his desire for power and dominance, there are moments along his character arc that invite compassion. For example, when Junior rescues the Appleton children, he seems to offer them an unconditional love that he himself lacked from his own father; further, he is unaware of his brain tumor, and how much the tumor affects his personality and behavior is uncertain, thus he is painted as a much more tragic figure than his father.

Having said that, Junior’s sense of privilege is prodigious and drives him to take what he wants and murder without compunction. He also suffers from some antisocial compulsions. He has been expelled from college due to “behavioral issues” (135), and the reader learns that he has sexually assaulted the corpses of the two young women he murdered. These are psychological problems that exceed the purview of a garden-variety bully.

Still, Junior realizes, even before the reader is privy to Big Jim Rennie’s affirmative thoughts on the matter, that he is a sacrificial lamb: “But did family come first? Of course, he [Rennie] said that [. . .] but Junior had an idea that for his dad, Jim Rennie’s Used Cars might come before family, and that being the town’s First Selectman might come before the Holy Tabernacle of No Money Down” (99). Indeed, Rennie would sacrifice his son to maintain power, even though he couches it in the language of Christianity.

The plucky editor-owner of the local newspaper, the Democrat, Julia Shumway herself is said to be a Republican. She is sensible and persistent, and she earns the admiration of Barbie, as well as the grudging respect of Colonel Cox for her determination. Julia is not merely the owner of the newspaper; she is also the representative of its legacy: It was started by her great-grandfather and passed down to her male forbears and then to her. As such, her character serves as a symbol, too. She represents generational inheritance, female empowerment, and, most importantly, the significance of democratic freedoms, both legally enshrined and socially enforced. That is, Julia embodies the small-town values that are threatened by the presence of the Dome, the generational continuity of the small business owners who drive the engines and maintain the cohesion of such towns. At the same time, she symbolizes the larger democratic freedoms—of speech, of press, of due process, of gender equality—that are suspended by Rennie and his henchmen under the Dome. It is no accident that some of the most harrowing scenes in the book are of sexual assaults committed by Rennie’s gang. Without rule of law, women become even more vulnerable targets.

Nevertheless, Julia remains strong and inviolable, even when her newspaper and apartment are burned down. While she and Barbie make a formidable team, she does not depend on him for her safety, and she remains independent throughout. Later, when she tells the story of being bullied as a child, she admits that she felt privileged and superior, smarter and better than the rest of the children—before being humiliated. When Barbie suggests that she felt she deserved the attack, Julia replies, “Deserved is the wrong word. I thought I’d bought and paid for it, which isn’t the same thing at all” (918). The author suggests this incident is what makes Julia the prime candidate for the confrontation with the aliens; he links her childhood comeuppance to an adult ability to beg for mercy, for the sake of others. In her humility, she is humanized, and the alien responds in kind—if not with uninhibited mercy, then at least with pity.