Founded by Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple was a cult with ideological radical political, religious and racial aims. In an attempt to create a socialist utopia, Jones established a remote agricultural project settlement in Guyana, known as Jonestown. Here, under Jones’ instruction, 918 people (including Jones himself) died in an act of ‘revolutionary suicide’. Many of the dead were involuntarily poisoned with cyanide.
Commentary on the Jonestown massacre often focuses on the blind adoration of Peoples Temple followers and questions of their (in)sanity rather than their humanity. In Paradise Undone, Annie Dawid changes this narrative, using her fictional interpretations alongside verbatim dialogue from Jonestown documents, to allow readers the opportunity to empathise with Peoples Temple members.
Paradise Undone opens on the 30th anniversary of the massacre, with an interview with a disillusioned survivor: Watts battles with knowing that the same man who helped him overcome his drug addiction also caused the deaths of his loved ones. Told in a pseudo-epistolary format, we also see the perspective of Virgil, based on the former US Ambassador of Guyana, who marries a member of the Peoples Temple and struggles to endure his feelings of guilt and disgust after the events of 1978.
Readers also follow Marceline Jones, wife of Jim Jones and co-founder of the Peoples Temple. Usually portrayed as a complicit and complacent wife, Dawid offers an alternative narrative: one in which Marceline is a victim of Jones’ manipulation. The final perspective is that of Truth’s, an imagined member of the Peoples Temple who remained infatuated with Jones and his teachings, even after the Jonestown massacre. I found the evolution of Truth’s character to be particularly clever, with Dawid using Truth to show readers the value of education in reshaping perspectives.
Paradise Undone explores how Jones was able to reel in vulnerable people, predominantly from poor and Black communities. Dawid also comments on the multilayered hypocrisy found within Jones’ teachings, showing readers how racism and classism in America facilitated Jones’ rise to power, yet both remained rife within the internal power structure of the Peoples Temple. Similarly, Jones frequently preached about American colonisation but arguably became a coloniser himself, with his creation of Jonestown in Guyana.
Dawid offers readers an insight into Jones’ ‘pornography of power’: his ability to manipulate women within the Peoples Temple, often using sex (or the withholding of sex) and reproduction as a psychological punishment or a means of keeping a woman invested in him and his mission. Both male and female protagonists in Paradise Undone show the varying but enduring consequences of such abusive actions.
Paradise Undone is a story of hypocrisy and humanity, dreams and devastation. It explores what happens when generalisations are made, lies are told, and a desire for social reform leads to mania and fanaticism. It offers a social commentary on the increasing politicisation of violence in America, and is a cautionary tale about the perils of society failing to learn from the past.
Ella Beales is a Historical Researcher, Archivist and Public Historian.
Annie Dawid is the author of Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown which is available now.
