Shadows Move Among Them

Portraying the dark, authoritarian side of the utopian dream, this classic novel tells the story of the Reverend Harmston, a man devoted to building a microsociety in which there is a balance between the order that is necessary to produce livelihood and the freedom to fully explore sexuality. Setting up a commune in the remote Guyanese forest with the creed, “Hard work, frank love, and wholesome play,” the reverend attempts to construct an ideal society that opens up cross-cultural dialogue between the spirit of European enlightenment and the culture of the native Amerindians. Underneath its generally comic tone, however, there are notes of a darker spirit at play—such as Harmston's unquestioned authority and the brutal punishments he hands out—that eerily foreshadow the actual 1978 Jonestown Massacre, a violent event that occurred 27 years after the novel's initial publication.