The Importance of Being a Stud
Essay Preview: The Importance of Being a Stud
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This document provides the reader with a summarized version of the origins of the Peoples Temple and what happened in Jonestown prior to the mass suicide of over 900 people. The document features transcriptions from the meeting held in Jonestown right before the suicides began which gibes the reader a better understanding of the control Jim Jones had over his followers. I found this document quite useful because it helped me to better understand what happened in Jonestown. I also found the transcript of the meeting helpful because it showed just how much the people of Jonestown trusted and revered Jim Jones even when he told them they would all have to kill themselves after the meeting. The document also discusses what made people follow Jim Jones in the first place, such as his persuasiveness. This document is quite reliable because most of the quotes and stats are sourced and there appears to have been quite a lot of work put into writing this document. The author concludes the document by discussing the influx of articles in American media about cults after the Jonestown tragedy, recapping how Jim Jones attracted followers to the Peoples Temple and by further discussing the methods Jim Jones used to gain control of his followers.
This article discusses how the Peoples Temple came to be and a bit on what Jim Jones did before he founded the Peoples Temple. It also provides the reader with a different point of view on Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. One that shows the reader the Temples noble intentions in the beginning, when the organization was about racial equality and helping the impoverished, and then continues to discuss what happened to the organization leading up to the mass suicide. This article was only somewhat helpful because it did not provide anything that was very relevant to my essays thesis statement, but it did help me to better understand the story of The Peoples Temple. The biggest problem I found with this article was that it also discussed the authors history of writing documents about Jonestown and Jim Jones because although it was relevant to the topic it did not provide me with any useful information. I believe the intended audiences for this article are people who were previously aware of Rebecca Moores research on Jonestown and those who were around when the Jonestown tragedy occurred but never really knew a whole lot about it. This article is very reliable because it was published in a very reputable magazine, the Indiana Magazine of History, which has been around since 1905 and all of the articles in it are peer reviewed before publication.