Jones was obviously a man of extraordinary charisma. He did not "program" people; he dominated and captivated them, which is something very different from brainwashing. There is no question that he used spying and blackmail to tyrannize his followers with guilt. But these methods would have been ineffective without the force and appeal of this own personality: charisma is always more powerful than coercion.

But the letters of Jones's followers show their awe and affection for him, even when they were uncomfortable with his actions. He looms over them not as an autocrat, but as a beneficent master. We may call him sick and ruthless, yet we must admit he held some uncanny attractiveness--and he hardly seems mad, at least not until his last days in Jonestown.

There is one partial explanation, and experience which the members of the People's Temple apparently shared: they had all suffered. Poor blacks, veterans, drug addicts, convicts-Jones built his church on that rock.

It seems hypocritical and condescending, then, to speak of them as zombie-like believers, with no feeling or thought of their own; it is their suffering which led them to Jones. And them majority of Jones' followers never seem to have repented of the decision--he seemed to be the only thing between them and despair. They did not want to return to the tough life--there was at least hope and a vision at Jonestown.

THE UNIQUELY American aspect of the People's Temple is so obvious that it goes unnoticed. It is the very impulse to form churches like the People's Temple which combine the religious function with social idealism or action. In no other country are churches formed so easily as in America. Religious movements, and not political ideologies, are the great vehicles for utopian experimentation in America.

These are the legacy of the Puritan's Covenant psychology, and they are a great source of the old American demon, absolutism. The movements epitomize one half of the national psyche, the Puritan conscience, and contend with the other half, democratic license. They take up, once again, the Puritan's vision of an ideal community and a steadying of morals and manners. Their history is mostly a history of failures--the continent is littered with testimonies to American visions. And the People's Temple was really no different: it sought the ideal community, too. Like all its American predecessors, it longed to leave aside the past, and the fever of democratic license; but its own absolutism proved self-consuming. The impulse which inspired Jonestown is really no different from that which inspired the Mormons 100 years ago. What has changed is American society: a violent age produces violent events.

And so it is the dementia of absolute belief which should be felt as the deepest horror in the Jonestown affair. For out of absolute belief comes the desire to test that belief absolutely; and only when faced with death can the believer know he truly believes. And so, in a twisted way Jones resurrected this task from past movements; and forgetting the past, he and his followers repeated it.

This topsy-turvy theme of belief triumphing over death runs through all American literature, from Bradford to Hemingway. It is the American's consolation that if he fails with his vision, he can persist in his belief. Perhaps these tendencies sound old and no longer applicable. Well, in a sense the Jonestown tale was sketched out a century ago. Consider Moby Dick: Is not there some deep similarity between Jones and Ahab? Ahab, leading his crew in a suicidal pursuit, testing himself against all the supernatural forces; Jones, carrying his group with him in his strange quest. How did both control their followers? What drove them to such fanatical lengths?

Jonestown's members are even more significant than Jones himself, who was distributed and demonic, yet only one of a thousand. Their normal humanity, not their madness or mindlessness, stands out, their journey with undimmed belief from America and into the jungle. It all leads inexorably and even naturally to final dissolution in some unmapped region--just as the hard-bitten crew of the Pequod rowed fearfully yet willingly under the raging Ahab, to the great white whale, to the end of the absolutist quest. How can we so easily write them off?