In Steven James\u2019 The Pawn,<\/i> the reader meets a character named Aaron Jeffery Kincaid, who lived in Jonestown, Guyana when the murders\/suicides took place. He was a child at the time, and had to outrun guards who were chasing him with guns, but he managed to escape. He was the only survivor of the murders and suicides that day. James gives us this much history, and then Kincaid disappears until the second half of the book. The author plots his novel this way so that he can use Kincaid as a red herring. The Pawn<\/i> is, after all, in the mystery genre, and the overarching point of the book is going to be discovering \u201cwhodunnit.\u201d Anything about Jonestown is going to be in the service of that quest.<\/p>\n
The FBI is searching for a serial killer, and until late in the novel, both they and the reader assume it is Kincaid. The FBI does indeed catch the \u201creal\u201d bad guy, just as they catch Kincaid. But the irony is that Kincaid is far more evil than the serial murderer they were hoping to find.<\/p>\n
Kincaid\u2019s experience in the jungles of Guyana has shaped him in many ways. It may seem only commonsensical to imagine that a 10-year-old would take a radical turn away from a person or situation that almost killed him. But in James\u2019 hands, Kincaid develops quite differently from what the reader might expect.<\/p>\n
The character has not turned away from Jim Jones. To the contrary, Kincaid has founded his own church, though it is far smaller than Peoples Temple. He asks his own followers to call him \u201cFather,\u201d just as many of Jones\u2019 followers had called him. The church members have heard Kincaid preach for years about the coming apocalypse and the need to be ready to take their place in the drama that their leader has sketched. They are so devoted to him that when he declares the beginning of the end, they do as he asks and turn their children over to be killed. Perhaps not surprisingly, after their children are dead, the parents seem to have little zest for life and are quite ready to sacrifice themselves for Kincaid\u2019s cause.<\/p>\n
The culmination of Kincaid\u2019s plot is to start a soon-to-be global plague by disseminating a virus he had his church members create through genetic engineering. His members are with him, ready to do their part in both spreading the virus and, if need be, to kill themselves rather than be captured by the authorities. In the end, of course, Kincaid is thwarted. Most try to follow his last instruction to commit suicide, but a few from the group are saved, including the microbiologist who knows how to treat the virus.<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/p>\n
<\/a>While The Pawn<\/i> is a genre novel, We Agreed to Meet Just Here<\/i>, by Scott Blackwood, is literary fiction. The personalities and events surrounding Peoples Temple may seem at first glance to better suit the \u201clower\u201d form of fiction, but Blackwood\u2019s rather surreal offering makes good use of it as well.<\/p>\n We Agreed to Meet<\/i> is quite different from The Pawn<\/i>. Its point lies not so much in the plot as in the characters\u2019 reactions to events in their small town: the death of a promising young woman, about to go off to college; the disappearance of an old man who suffers from Alzheimer\u2019s or some other form of dementia; a child who breaks his arm.<\/p>\n In the midst of all these events, Jim Jones appears as a raconteur to Odie Dodd, a Guyana native who moved to the Texas town where the story takes place. His neighbors and friends have been watching him fight cancer and fear he has gone away to die. Odie\u2019s claim to fame is that he was the first outside person to find the bodies at Jonestown. A medical doctor, he was on his way to inoculate the community\u2019s children, but he was delayed along the way, and when he arrived, he was greeted by a camp full of death. In the novel\u2019s present time, though, Odie has disappeared. His wife calls the neighbors, and they form a search party that fails to find Odie or his body. The search goes on for a few days until people tire of the effort, assuming that the old man must have died. The townspeople (and the reader) are astonished to discover, at the end of the novel, that Odie returns home in reasonably good health.<\/p>\n While Odie is gone, though, he has some remarkable experiences. One of these is to wile away his time in conversation with Jim Jones. This makes sense from a psychological point of view, given that, as his wife says, Jonestown is \u201cthe axis around which [Odie\u2019s] life winds.\u201d If a mentally confused older person were to imagine conversations with someone not there, it seems reasonable that his conversation partner would be someone from a central event in his life. At the end of the book, though, the reader is caught by Odie\u2019s reappearance: where has he been all this time? And to whom was he talking all that time? It wasn\u2019t Jim Jones, of course. Or was it?<\/p>\n It is in instances such as this that psychology can offer answers to difficult questions. Jung, especially, would find this particular question to be quite sensible in his worldview. According to Jung, each and every human being carries archetypes, which are symbols representing experiences, emotions, and relationships, common to all human beings in the collective unconscious. For example, the Mother is one archetype held by all human beings, in that all humans have mothers. The archetype is not solely formed by the particular mother one individual knows, but instead all the experiences of all mothers through the centuries of human existence. Some modern people object to this view of the archetype because, as they say, the idea of the \u201cperfect\u201d mother varies from culture to culture and from time to time. There is no reason to think that our archetype is normative for everyone. In fact, it may be the case that close attention to archetypes can reveal important principles that underlie a culture\u2019s ancient perceptions of mothers.<\/p>\n Of course, readers who do not hold with the tenets of psychology may find this kind of approach unconvincing. But the basic messages drawn out from a Jungian view are very close to those from a faith or literary view. The Judeo-Christian tradition does not espouse archetypes, and while some literary criticism could and does, it tends to be a rather unpopular way of finding meaning in a text. But readers of all three approaches named here could probably agree to some of the themes found in this novel, no matter the theoretical foundations from which they come.<\/p>\n One of the most important ideas in this novel is that there is no solid demarcation between \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cevil.\u201d Instead, the line between the two becomes fuzzy. From any<\/i> perspective it is easy to understand that Jim Jones is portrayed as evil; it is more difficult to make a case for a \u201cgood\u201d Jim Jones. Theologically, though, traditional Christianity and Judaism hold that there is good and bad in each human being; the only perfect humans were (in the first case) Jesus and (in the second) Elijah. From a literary perspective, Jones and Odie end their last conversation with a discussion ofthe time when Odie came upon Jones, sitting amidst all the dead bodies of hisfollowers, with a gun pointed at his own head. Odie says,<\/p>\n You hesitated. Lost your nerve. Your hand was shaking.<\/p>\n \nJones sighs. At least any old someone would have remembered what actually happened. Would have given us the ending we deserved.<\/p>\n \nI grabbed your arm.<\/p>\n \nYou were supposed to tell the story, not be in it. What about your Hippocratic oath?<\/p>\n \nThe gun went off.<\/p>\n \nDo you know what it\u2019s like to hear a whistle and realize it\u2019s the wind blowing through a hole in your face? . . .<\/p>\n \nYou were still breathing, lying there, Odie says.<\/p>\n \nThe weary old contingent world wobbles on like a bad tire. Do no harm, they say, but how can you not?<\/p>\n \nYou begged me to kill you, Odie says. I picked up the gun off the floor. I pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n \nWorlds fail, Odie.<\/p>\n \nNot always.<\/p>\n \nYou had malice in your heart, Jones says. Who could blame you? All those little ones, dead?<\/p>\n \nI had pity in my heart, Odie says. The bullet loves the wound that begot it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We Agreed to Meet Just Here<\/i>, 137-8<\/p>\n \n By no means does this conversation excuse Jones from his actions, nor does it portray him as a wonderful person. But it does suggest that there is in Jones at the very least the ability to see things from someone else\u2019s perspective (in this case, Odie\u2019s), which is the foundation of empathy and the movement away from interpersonal evil.<\/p>\n Indeed, Jones still feels sorry for himself, and he still resents Odie, but surrounded by more than 300 dead children, he is finally able to admit that any sane person would have probably done what Odie did.<\/p>\n To be thorough, it is important to note that Odie also has good and evil within him. He knows very well what the \u201cright\u201d thing to do would have been when he discovered Jones as he did: turn him over to the \u201cproper authorities.\u201d But Odie, whom the reader has already judged to be a good man, shows that something dark does indeed lurk in his heart. Coming into contact with great evil is what moves Odie from his good self \u2013 the one that controls him most of the time \u2013 to the bad.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n <\/a>In The Pawn<\/i>, the author presented the reader with a portrait of a follower of Jim Jones, one who took up his pastor\u2019s task in order to finish it. In We Agreed to Meet<\/i>, the author provided a Jim Jones in an undetectable form: is he a ghost? a soul in purgatory or hell? a figment of Odie\u2019s imagination? But in Armistead Maupin\u2019s Further Tales of the City<\/i>, the reader meets Jim Jones, in the flesh, for his second act.<\/p>\n Maupin\u2019s Tales of the City<\/i> series, of which Further Tales<\/i> is the third, presents stories of a group of people connected to an apartment house in San Francisco. The characters appear in each of the books, but all take turns as the focus of each book; a character may have just a small role in one novel, then a starring role in another. In this volume, Maupin offers the story of DeDe Day, who had joined Peoples Temple when they were in the San Francisco area, and moved to Guyana with them. There she knew Jones, and he doted on her and her twins. DeDe managed to escape death and finally made her way home.<\/p>\n In this story, Jim Jones is still alive. He survived November 18, too, went on to have substantial plastic surgery, and changed his identity to a that of man named Luke. Eventually he finds himself a tiny shack in a park where he takes up residence and is discovered by a character named Prue. A convoluted plot finally brings Jones\/Luke, Prue, DeDe, her twins, her mother Frannie, and her friend Mary Ann to the same cruise to Alaska. While on the cruise, the women discover Jones\u2019 true identity when he kidnaps the children. They are unable to find him for quite some time; when they finally do, they learn that he has a plan to give Peoples Temple \u2013 or rather, Peoples Temple redux<\/i> \u2013 a second try, with Prue as his wife and DeDe\u2019s children as his own. Once all of them understand who he truly is, the women involved have no interest in being part of Jones\u2019 fantasy. The problem is that he has the children, and they are terrified he will harm them unless everybody plays along. Eventually, the group of women is able to work it out and Jones is finally shot and buried in a garden behind one of the women\u2019s house.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n It is no surprise, perhaps, that all three of these novels feature Jim Jones, as opposed to the congregation of Peoples Temple as the central representative of what we know as \u201cJonestown.\u201d While Further Tales<\/i> includes much more information about the group in Guyana than the others, still it is Jones who is the central character in the drama. The obvious reason is that the people of the congregation are dead. So is Jones, but we see that Maupin was able to work around that reality nicely. The others could have done so had they wished. But apparently these authors saw Jones as the focus.<\/p>\n This is no surprise, really. Even when news about Peoples Temple first broke in the media, people concentrated on Jones rather than the members of the church. Many people offered interpretations that explained how something like Peoples Temple could occur, but certainly at the beginning, and in these novels, the main reason offered seemed to be Jim Jones and the \u201cfact\u201d that he was insane.<\/p>\n This, in and of itself, is not enough to explain the phenomenon. There are plenty of Christian congregations with crazy ministers, but they do not end up with their own version of the final White Night. Clearly other factors were involved. Nevertheless, it is easiest to blame Jones: anyone who is a church member can ease their fears that something like that might happen to their congregation by reminding themselves that their minister is not \u201canother Jim Jones.\u201d When considering the \u201cquestion\u201d of Jonestown, for most people the answer lies in the very name: Jim Jones.<\/p>\n The Pawn<\/i> draws a portrait of a follower of Jones who both hated what Jonestown became (armed guards chasing him through the jungle) yet still yearned for Jones himself. In order to become a \u201cnew\u201d Jones, he spent years developing his plans and the practical tools he needed to make it happen. The Jones in Maupin\u2019s novel is less threatening \u2013 he does not create a \u201cdisciple\u201d who carries on his work. Instead, he somehow survives and remakes himself so that he can give Peoples Temple another try. The idea is chilling, but the fact is that even in that novel, Jones is dead at the end. He may have been scary, but by the time the book ends, he is, at last, out of the picture.<\/p>\n We Agreed to Meet<\/i> offers the reader the real Jim Jones, if by that one means \u201cthe man and not one of his followers.\u201d The reason he is less threatening than either Jones or Kincaid in The Pawn<\/i> is that he seems to be either a ghost or a figment of an old man\u2019s imagination. But saying that Jones is \u201cjust\u201d a ghost \u2013 or whatever else one may choose to call him \u2013 does not lessen the anxiety his presence may cause. Part of the message in the novel seems to be that Jones is not a separate person, nor some floaty, haunting ghost, but a part of each and every one of us. Given that as the case, then the truth seems to be that anyone can \u201cbe\u201d Jones. Each of us can follow in his footsteps.<\/p>\n It seems likely that more novels will feature Jim Jones and Peoples Temple in some way as time goes by. It is clear that the phenomenon has entered the popular imagination. Young people with no clue about the events of Peoples Temple say, \u201cDon\u2019t drink the Kool-Aid\u201d even though they know nothing of what it actually means. As the culture becomes more and more comfortable with the event, it will appear more frequently in literature.<\/p>\n Given that our culture is struggling mightily with questions of what makes a \u201cgood\u201d person, it is possible that Jonestown could become a touch point for discussion. As we have seen, this question is addressed at some level in just three novels here. There are already more novels that make use of Jonestown, and doubtless more to come.<\/p>\n (Karen Stroup, Ph.D. was an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) – serving on the board of trustees of the Disciples Historical Society for six years – and was a professor in religion and psychology. She was also a regular contributor to <\/i>the jonestown report . Her articles appear here<\/a>.<\/p>\n (Dr. Stroup died on January 21, 2012 at the age of 54.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Steven James\u2019 The Pawn, the reader meets a character named Aaron Jeffery Kincaid, who lived in Jonestown, Guyana when the murders\/suicides took place. He was a child at the time, and had to outrun guards who were chasing him with guns, but he managed to escape. 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