Ethics Go UNDER THE DOME

By BARCODE 2x

Stephen King's hefty new novel Under the Dome imagines an ordinary autumn day in a small New England town, suddenly stricken with death and unspeakable terror. An invisible dome descends over the town of Chester's Mill, Maine, and no one is getting in or out.

The Dome is hard enough to repel nuclear missiles, and has other mysterious properties. The town erupts in violence. The corrupt local government lays down martial law, and before long, Stephen King's signature horrors and dismemberments begin. Cruelty to women, cruelty to children, to dogs, and to the reader are just the tip of the iceberg here. It's creepy. It's really, really creepy.

To say any more would give too much away, and the surprises here in this exciting, if stylistically flawed, novel are too great to spoil. So I won't. The idea of the Dome, however, brings about tough insights into our own world. As Chester's Mill is increasingly divided along moral and political lines, our own world comes into focus. The metaphor used repeatedly in this book is that the town is like a colony of ants, under a magnifying glass. The increasing greenhouse heat and gathering pollution under the Dome speaks to our own situation. The ants catch fire before long. But who is watching? Who is holding the glass over our heads while we burn to a crisp?

Ann Arbor has been described as a City in a Bubble for as long as I can remember. A liberal and intellectual enclave with clear barriers, keeping "us" in and "them" out. Recent articles in annarbor.com speak of problems in Ann Arbor's poor areas. The "Invisible Poor". The outlying towns in Washtenaw County are seen as another world altogether. Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor are divided communities. The Dome around Ann Arbor, the casual-cosmopolitan atmosphere has given the town a snooty reputation.

But how strong is Ann Arbor's Dome?

Our first panel discussion on disaster preparedness left us here at a2ethics.org with a very shaky, unsecure feeling. In the event of a disaster or outbreak of disease, the resources will run so thin, and the vaccines will be used on police and public officials before anyone else has the chance. The H1N1 flu shot clinics in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti have shown us how pathetically scant the resources are. Thousands queue up to get the shot, and only mere hundreds will get it.

Not a Dome, but a mysterious List emerges in our fair city. A priority list of who gets what. Our county commissioner, our director of 911 emergency operations, and others on the panel suggested that in the event of an emergency, there will be a priority list of people who get help first. Only two dozen police officers will be available at any one time. Doctors and hospital beds will be used up quickly. School gymnasiums and other public facilities will be used as makeshift clinics and neighborhood quarrantines. The feeling we were left with was utter terror. We felt a whole lot better before the panel discussion. We are on our own. Besides the list, there will, of course, be others who get the vaccines and the help. The ones who can afford it. That list also exists.  

Moral Domes emerge too. Religious communities and political factions will protect their own in an emergency situation. Religious culture will be very roped-off, with social and business activities staying within the members of the community. It is not uncommon in Mormon culture to keep stockpiles of food and water in the house at all times. Disaster preparedness is built into the lifestyle, and strengthening the community by consolidating resources is essential to survival and solidarity.

Under the Dome creates an eerie sense of Us-Against-Them. "Which side are you on?," the community leaders continually ask one another. Many are unaware that "sides" even exist, besides the inside of the Dome and the outside. The barrier creates multiple internal barriers. The prison cells below the police department resemble Abu Ghraib in their brutality. The hidden meth lab, shrouded in secrecy, is one of the biggest in the nation, operated by a paranoid golem. Two very separate and divided church communities exist, in which fear and disaster are bred.

Most of all, the town Selectmen have created divisions. They have laid down laws protecting themselves, and put together a murderous, barbaric police force. Common hoods have become law enforcement officers, brutalizing the townsfolk. These high school dropouts become cannon fodder too, footsoldiers of a doomed political mission, once chaos and violence begin to rule the day. In a matter of days, things fall apart. The Dome is blackened with pollution. The water and power sources are dwindling. No one gets in or out. The US government is powerless to control what happens inside. The town is an ethics-free zone. Social norms collapse. The horror of the Dome itself is nothing compared with the human atrocities that result.

In a brief moment of reflection, one character wonders if life was really that much different before the Dome fell over the town. Was the Dome always there, in a way?

A thought experiment: put a Dome down over your own city. Play it like a game of Risk. When no one can interfere, what will the new notions of power be? What will happen when the wrong people are in charge? Who will rise to bring order to the town? What is truly good for the community? And is there a Dome already over our heads, steadily blackening, leaving us protected from the outside, but trapped and desperate on the inside?

Under the Dome would make a fabulous board game.