Three Dimensional Villains in "Under the Dome"

Of all of the notable antagonists in literature, most derive their key actions from a desire for greater power: Grendel, Claudius, Sauron. Then there are the villains who only do what they do because they can. However, the best villains are the ones with depth, or three dimensions. Two lead antagonists from Stephen King's Under the Dome illustrate what makes a three dimensional character. 

"Big" Jim Rennie is a used-car salesman, town Second Selectman, and the head of the country's largest methamphetamine distribution. To himself, and to others, he rationalizes away his sins by saying what he does is always "for the good of the town". Even the murders he commits is part of the greater good, including the smothering of his late wife. She was in pain and going to die anyway, Rennie thinks to himself. The other citizens he kills to cover up his other crimes, as they were the two people bent on exposing him. Again, Rennie believes he killed them for the greater good, because he is the best leader for the town. A leader can't lead from jail, now can he? Though Rennie swears he only deals meth to raise money for the town and strengthen the business district, the only businesses he props up are those directly linked to him or his co-conspirators. Theoretically, Rennie can retire on any beach of his choosing, considering the millions he's made for himself. Yet, on a beach, Rennie would become just a man. By staying in Chester Mill, his supposed talents are put to good use as Second Selectman. What makes Rennie a more realistic character is his heavy Christian background, and his love for his son, Junior. Even as he snaps the neck of innocent women, Rennie does not forget to thank the Lord Almighty, or tell his son he loves him. 

 

Junior Rennie is another great antagonist in Under the Dome. Unlike his father, Junior does not want power. What Junior wants is an abatement to his chronic migraines, which he does not know are caused by a brain tumor. In part, his migraines (and tumor) are to blame for his bad behavior, but then again, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Junior murders his fair share of people, even keeping them in a pantry to visit and sleep with, calling them his dead "girlfriends". As mentally ill as he is, Junior is able to recognize his father's own disconnect from reality and remarks upon it: "Dad, has anyone ever told you that you're crazy?" Junior is also smart enough not to take part in the gang-rape of Sammy Bushey. There is also a point in the book when Junior does a genuinely good thing; he and a fellow officer rescue two abandoned children from starvation. When one of the kids wrap their arms around Junior's neck in gratitude, he thinks that he has never felt better.

Rennie and Junior's characters are reprehensible, but they are also human, and their depth leaves room for the reader to hate and understand them at the same time. 

Tragic heroes and Perspective in "Carrie"

Stephen Kings first and iconic novel, "Carrie", is as much a chilling horror story as it is one about tragic heroes. Heroes may be too broad of a term for the characters of Carrieta White, Tommy Ross, and Sue Snell. Certainly, in the small world of Chamberlain, Maine, they were heroes in their own way.


Carrieta White (or Carrie) was a girl conflicted to belong and to ultimately destroy everything she touched. She was driven to a state of rage over a long period of time after years of bullying from girls at school. Underneath the latent rage was a sweet, vulnerable girl, and at times, a beautiful one, "She felt that her heart would break if he [Tommy] uttered so much as the wrong sound, and if he laughed she would die," (King, 1974, p. 127). None of her classmates would have pegged her as either of those things, but before the terror of prom night came to fruition, Carrie was a shining star, flashing brightly, and fading just as quickly: [Tommy to Carrie] "You're like Galatea [...] We read about her in Mr. Ever's class. She turned from a drudge into a beautiful woman and nobody even knew her," (King, 1974, p. 134). The tragic part of Carrie's character is the betrayal she feels at being humiliated at the prom during the King and Queen coronation, which she and Tommy Ross unexpectedly won. It was not the two buckets of pigs blood that drove Carrie White over the edge; it was the subsequent laughter that followed, largely mixed in with her horror over the sudden death of Tommy Ross.


Tommy Ross could have been pigeon-holed as a jock character, intent on popularity and chasing the hottest girl in school. He was all those things, but with a conscience. Not only did Tommy possess a moral compass, but he also displayed the ability to look ahead, to see past high school: "High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beered up," (King, 1974, p. 48). That is not to say that Tommy's character was above reproach, because he admitted to doing a despicable thing, possibly to grow closer to Sue Snell, or to put the Carrie White situation in perspective for her. When in seventh grade, Tommy relates how he kicked a bully in the stomach when he had already been passed out on the ground. Clearly, it was a cowardly act, but one he felt was not entirely merit less since his victim was a bully. However, he told Sue, Carrie had never harmed her and her friends, so why oh why pick on her so? Despite his good advice and good intentions, Tommy was the first to die on prom night, thanks to a quarter-full bucket of pigs blood striking him on the skull as it fell to the stage. What was most tragic of all about his character (and for Carrie) was that he had begun to love Carrie, even after knowing her for only a short while. This did not deflect from the love he felt for Sue, it was merely another woman in his life.


Sue Snell was as popular and beloved as Tommy Ross, but not as confident to stand alone in matters when it came to doing the right thing. All that changed after the shower incident with Carrie White. After whole-heartedly taking part in bullying Carrie, Sue felt actual remorse and wanted to make Carrie feel as though she belonged. Sue struggled with this, questioning if she was helping Carrie to abate her feelings of hypocrisy, or if it really was a selfless act. This sort of honest self-analyzation shows a certain maturity and morality in Sue. In the end, she gave up her own prom date (Tommy Ross) for Carrie, an act that had unintended consequences. The tragic part of Sue's character was that she lost her high school sweetheart, and most of her friends in during the hellish prom night.

During the story, King highlights different character perspectives that make for an interesting insight on what people see happening, and what 'really happened'. For example, Carrie reflects on her power as something unknown, and not really evil. Yet, her mother thinks of it as a devilish creation, stemming from the way she saw the power drive her grandmother insane. Also, it is interesting to note that once the blood came down on Carrie, most of the students watching were just as horrified and confused as she was. Really, to break the silence and to keep from going insane, they turned to laughter, and only so because the image of Carrie's bright eyes surrounded by all the red was a comic one. When she tripped on her way off of the stage, the laughter was easier to come by, and when a student tripped her, the laughter positively swelled. To Carrie, once the blood came down, there was silence and then she finally heard the expected laughter. It broke her heart, along with the knowledge that Tommy was dying right next to her. In her grief, she hurried off of the stage, only to stumble slightly. The final cap on the night was when a student cruelly tripped her and she fell to the floor, blood smearing everywhere. She even waited for someone to kick her while she was down, but that did not happen. Perspective is a funny thing, and not one easily written.

The Times They Are a Changin'

The 20th century changed the world of poetry. Major world events boded on the mind of many a writer, reflecting in their work. Diaspora in the British Empire, the two World Wars, and cultural and societal events was behind the poetic change that took place in the early 1900's.

Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" is a poem that depicts the racial issues he experienced as a Jamaican born citizen living in white neighborhoods. His prose is as full of eloquence as any Romantic or Victorian writer, but the issue he is writing about is something either of those writers could not relate to: being persecuted or even killed because of skin color. "If we must die, O let us nobly die/ So that our precious blood may not be shed/ In vain; then even the monsters we defy/ Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!" (Greenblatt et al, 2006). When reading his poem from an objective stance, one could assume he is describing a bloody battle in any war during any time period. His ultimate message of the poem could be achieving honor, even in death.

Seamus Henley writes about a blacksmith, ever present and non-changing though the world is changing around him: "He leans out the jamb, recalls a clatter/ Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows/ then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick/ To beat iron out, to work the bellows," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Though the job of the blacksmith has not differed for decades upon decades, the world has, bringing with it industry and technology.

The world that these poets saw was very different from the world of the Romantics and Victorians. Things in the world of the Romantics and Victorians were easier in a way, more black and white. While the world of the 20th century writer became muddled with grey, full of detail and chaos.

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic

Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York,

NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Tradition

Tradition. It is a word that has many different meanings, as plenty of words tend to do. For writers, it means repetition, boredom. To T.S. Eliot and other poets of his era, tradition meant a certain quality of writing. Specifically, tradition came into play when comparing modern poets with Romantics and Victorians. Romantics and Victorians influenced writers for generations to come.

The writing styles of the Romantics and Victorians have their differences and their points of agreement. While the Romantic writer fancied nature and created poems with ethereal backdrops, the Victorian writer had a more modern standpoint and wrote more realistically about nature and issues that interested them. This is not to say that either of the the writers had more imagination than the other, but they merely used it in ways that suited them. Poets of the 20th century seemed to have taken both of these styles and merged them, to create poems that are full of modern sentiment, but romantically spoken.

English writer T.E. Hulme would have disagreed because he was a man who longed for writers to lose their "romantic view[s] which drag in the infinite," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). He believed that Romantic poems were always "moaning or whining about something or other [...and true romance and...] beauty may be a small, dry thing," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Many of T.S. Eliot's works echo this sentiment, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". In this poem, Eliot writes of the mundane but presents it in such light that it takes on a life of it's own: "Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets/ the muttering retreats/ of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/ and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells" (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Eliot's view of traditionalism stemmed from his respect for Hulme and his base of literary history. He believed that in order to be a great writer, one had to study about literature. By learning different styles and reading about different stories, a writer would know better about how to develop their own style; "This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity," (Greenblatt et al, 2006)".

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Feminism Through the Eyes of Woolf and Loy

Feminism was never better defined than it was by two women: Virginia Woolf and Mina Loy. Both women wanted more freedom and independence for women during a time when women were still held back by the confines of society. However, both women differed in opinion on the definition of feminism and how said independence should be obtained.

Virginia Woolf defines feminism as a woman that could secure financial means for herself, effectively gaining a space for herself, or, as the title of her famous essay suggests, "A Room of One's Own", (Greenblatt et al, 2006). In her collective narrative, she tries to come to terms with how it would be possible for a woman to be financially independent, because women could not own property and were considered property themselves.

Mina Loy believes that woman should not only have their own money and place to live, but that they should own the entire world. She wanted women to "be brave and deny at the outset--that pathetic clap-trap war cry woman is the equal of man---she is not!" (Greenblatt et al, 2006). To Loy, women and men are equal; women are above men and should shove their way to the top.

Woolf asserts her standpoint quietly, while Loy presents her ideas with passionate abandon. Loy seems almost angry at times during her manifesto, and perhaps she has a right to be. Woolf may have been angry internally, but her writing style is objective, if not a bit depressed.

The sometimes tedious diction of Woolf made it hard to follow sometimes. It is as if she wrote down her thoughts themselves, and as thoughts do, her sentences became run-on sentences that had many different avenues for the reader to follow. Loy's style made it a bit easier to read, because she was so direct. There was no mistaking her views, or her disdain for all men.

One thing that both of the writers seemed to agree on was the "effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic

Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York,

NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Kurtz and Marlow: The Dualities of Human Nature

In Joseph Conrad's novella "The Heart of Darkness", there are two main characters that are meant to complement one another, Charles Marlow, and a man referred to simply as Kurtz.

Marlow is a gruff sort of fellow who appears not to care about anyone but himself. However, he shows a distaste for the way the the Natives are treated. In one particular instance, he watches a group of chained slaves pass by him and remarks upon it to himself, "All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages" (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Most colonists would have looked away from the slaves, and not even thought of them as men, but Marlow mused upon the state of them. His thoughts eventually culminated to a grandoise conclusion that pretty much summed up the moral challenges in the story: "I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men -- men, I tell you," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). The men that led the slaves past Marlow were what he considered to be 'devils'.

Kurtz is an infamous man that Marlow meets after only hearing rumors about him. Marlow says of him, "I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Marlow was not a perfect character, and neither was Kurtz, just as no one person is perfect. Every person has the potential for great evil, even if they are creative, kind, and articulate like Kurtz is. Marlow is more of the neutral man who witnesses all the wrongs being committed, internally condemns them, but can do nothing to stop them. Kurtz is a man who knows that his lust and greed for ivory have gone too far, but he still went goes on with it. Only on his deathbed does he grasp the scope of the life he has wrought, and the pain he has brought upon others.

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Science in a Victorian Age

Both Charles Darwin and Robert Louis Stevenson were Victorian writers that shared common threads in their works: science and change.

"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is Stevenson's novella about a man that experiments on his own nature, specifically his good and evil nature. Dr. Jekyll creates a potion that separates his free will and conscience from his morality and reasoning, ultimately creating a separate persona that is Mr. Hyde. The main character of the story is a scientist who wishes to test and prove a new theory, much like the real-life scientist, Charles Darwin.

By writing "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man", Darwin was not opening up the idea of evolution, but making it more plausible with his own theory of natural selection, (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Evolution had been a theory lightly discussed by scientists of the time, but Darwin's research made it all the more believable. With the printing of Darwin's writings, great debate and change began in the scientific community, and even amongst the general populace. Before, it had been an accepted mode of thought that animals were a separate from humans, with both being unable to change unless the Creator saw fit to do so. After Darwin made a compelling argument for evolution and for his new idea of natural selection, people began to see the world differently.

Stevenson also took a staid idea (the concept of good and evil), and brought it to the forefront with his story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On a deeper level, his story was ultimately alluding to the fact that there is good and evil in every person and that it cannot be denied. If one tries to deny it, or repress it with potions like Dr. Jekyll was eventually forced to do, than they may create a split-personality of Mr. Hyde-caliber. Repression, even in nature and especially in society, often leads to rapid and sometimes violent revolutions.

The works of Stevenson and Darwin have changed through the 20th century into the 21st century. In the 20th century, both works may have been hard to accept, for the moral and scientific truths they portray. Yet, from a modern perspective, the works of Stevenson and Darwin are so widely accepted that they are a part of the everyday cultural language. For example, when one is explaining evolution or natural selection, they may refer to it as "Darwinism". Also, when referring to a person that is acting strangely in opposing fashion, they would be described as being "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde".

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.