Skip to main content

‘We Are But a Little Way in the Forest Yet’: The Community in the Wilderness

  • Chapter
The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture

Abstract

On 17 November 1978, US Congressman Leo Ryan travelled to Guyana in order to investigate the jungle encampment led by controversial preacher Jim Jones. Less than 24 hours later, Ryan was dead, gunned down by followers of the man known as ‘Dad’ to his acolytes.1 In the hours that followed, almost every man, woman, and child who lived in the Jonestown settlement perished, many of them willing participants in what Jones dubbed ‘Revolutionary Suicide’.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. This account of the final hours of life in Jonestown is taken from T. Reiterman (1982, 2008) Raven: The Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones and his People (New York: Penguin), 487–569.

    Google Scholar 

  2. J.E. Hall (2004) Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History (New York: Transaction Publishers), 191.

    Google Scholar 

  3. S. Bercovitch (1996) The Cambridge History of American Literature (London: Cambridge University Press), 32.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  4. A. Bradstreet, ‘To My Dear Children’ cited in D. Anderson (1999) A House Divided: Domesticity and Community in American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 9.

    Google Scholar 

  5. J. Stockwell (1998) The Encyclopaedia of American Communes, 1663–1963 (North Carolina: McFarland), 3.

    Google Scholar 

  6. C. Berryman (1979) From Wilderness to Wasteland: The Trials of the Puritan God in the American Imagination (New York: National University Publications, Kennikat Press), 21.

    Google Scholar 

  7. P. Miller (1996) Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 15.

    Google Scholar 

  8. P. Boyer and S. Nissenbaum (1974) Salem Possessed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), XIII.

    Google Scholar 

  9. These theories are outlined in more detail in P. Bartel (2000) Spellcasters: Witches and Witchcraft in History (Lanham: Taylor), 130–155.

    Google Scholar 

  10. P. Kafer (2005) Charles Brockden Brown’s Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press), 115.

    Google Scholar 

  11. J.G. Frank (1950) ‘The Wieland Family in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland’, Monatshefte, Vol. 42, No. 7 (Nov.), 347–353.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Details cited in H. Brogan (2001) The Penguin History of the USA (London: Penguin), 93–94.

    Google Scholar 

  13. J. Tompkins (1986) Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  14. A.G. Lloyd-Smith (2000) ‘Nineteenth-Century American Gothic’ in D. Punter (ed.) A Companion to the Gothic (London: Blackwell), 111.

    Google Scholar 

  15. A.G. Lloyd-Smith (1989) Uncanny American Fiction: Medusa’s Face (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press), 24.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  16. N. Hawthorne (1835, 2008) ‘Roger Malvin’s Burial’ in Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics), 59.

    Google Scholar 

  17. N. Hawthorne (1850) The Scarlet Letter (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth), 22.

    Google Scholar 

  18. R. Miller (2009) American Literary History, 21(3): 464–491.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. C. Ryskamp (1959) ‘The New England Sources of The Scarlet Letter’, American Literature, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Nov.), 257–272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. J. Stockwell (1998) The Encyclopaedia of American Communes, 1663–1963 (North Carolina: McFarland), 40.

    Google Scholar 

  21. N. Hawthorne (1852, 2009) The Blithedale Romance (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  22. M. Zuckerman (1977) ‘Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity and the Maypole at Merry Mount’, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 2, 255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. N. Hawthorne (1835) ‘Young Goodman Brown’, Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics), 350.

    Google Scholar 

  24. M. Rowlandson (1676) ‘The Sovereignty and Goodness of God’ in N. Philbrick and T. Philbrick (eds) The Mayflower Papers: Selected Writing of Colonial New England (New York: Penguin, 2007), 179.

    Google Scholar 

  25. S. Jackson (1956, 1996) The Witchcraft of Salem Village (New York, Random House).

    Google Scholar 

  26. H.E. Nebeker (1974) ‘The Lottery as Symbolic Tour de Force’, American Literature, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Mar.), 100–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. S. Jackson (2010) ‘The Lottery’ in Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories (New York: The Library of America), 227.

    Google Scholar 

  28. T. Tryon (1974) Harvest Home (New York: Hodder Stoughton), 33.

    Google Scholar 

  29. S.T. Joshi (2001) The Modern Weird Tale (North Carolina: McFarland), 195.

    Google Scholar 

  30. T.E.D. Klein (1984) The Ceremonies (London: Pan), 63.

    Google Scholar 

  31. A. Cooke (1996) Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements (New York: Arcade Publishing), 40.

    Google Scholar 

  32. J.C. Oates (2011) The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (New York: The Mysterious Press).

    Google Scholar 

  33. F. Oehlschlaeger (1988) ‘The Stoning of Mistress Hutchinson: Meaning and Context in “The Lottery”’, Essays in Literature, Vol. XV, No. 2 (Fall), 259–265.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Copyright information

© 2013 Bernice M. Murphy

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Murphy, B.M. (2013). ‘We Are But a Little Way in the Forest Yet’: The Community in the Wilderness. In: The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137353726_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics