Use Of Foreshadowing In Under The Dome By Stephen King

Under the Dome Are aliens real? Do they live in space? Or here, on Earth, living like you and I? These questions are tested among a small tight knit community in the daunting novel Under the Dome, by Stephen King. From beginning to end, The King uses foreshadowing and his writing style to create a compelling, yet somewhat perplexing, page-turner. Nearly right off the bat, the use of foreshadowing sets the scene for what kind of story The King intends to tell. With possibly the most characters in a book ever written, a few are bound to die, one of them being Duke Perkins, an unfortunate old man with a pacemaker. As he leaves to investigate the dome he calls out to his wife, “Oh you bet!” (King 51) and that is followed by “The next time she saw him, he was dead.” (King 51) The point of foreshadowing is to give a reader an expectation, and in that quote it is obvious what will happen later on in the chapter. It’s not often that foreshadowing hints at something good

How well a book is written, is just as important as the twists and turns. All of well-rounded three-dimensional characters make Under the Dome just that much better to read. “(I’m) Fine.” It was a lie, but it emerged stoutly enough. Of course, she couldn’t tell what her face was saying.” (King 559) Surely anyone, and everyone, can relate to that simple, little white lie. It’s what allows a reader to open up to Stephen King’s carefully crafted narratives when he makes it easy to love the imperfect characters. “Ordinarily, the two girls would have flown down the walk to embrace their mother far in advance of Rusty, but this morning he beat them by several yards. He seized Linda around the waist and she wrapped her arms around his neck with almost painful tightness.” (King 689) Through his writing, one can feel the desperate love and want even though none of it is real. That’s what a book is really supposed to