Death in the Jungle: Parts 5–6

by Candace Fleming
This work of nonfiction tells the tragic story of the Peoples Temple, an American cult founded by Jim Jones.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Prologue-Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5-Part 6
15 words 16 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. resigned
    accepting that something unpleasant cannot be changed
    “There were times when I was ready to walk through the jungles to escape; then I’d get resigned to dying [in Jonestown].”
  2. harangue
    a loud bombastic declamation expressed with strong emotion
    Hyacinth Thrash didn’t need to flee into the jungle to escape Jones’s endless harangue.
  3. lucrative
    producing a sizeable profit
    He’d given up a luxurious Berkeley apartment, a fancy sports car, and a lucrative private law practice to work as a Temple attorney.
  4. precocious
    characterized by exceptionally early development
    Suddenly, retaining custody of the precocious and spoiled, often sweet, occasionally naughty child was “a matter of life and death,” member Bonnie Yates later wrote.
  5. zealotry
    fanatical devotion to a cause, belief, or idea
    Jones’s followers still held their defensive line but with less zealotry.
  6. stipulation
    a restriction insisted upon as a condition for an agreement
    Three weeks later Jones finally released the boys with one stipulation: They were never to speak to each other or be seen together again.
  7. shambles
    a condition of great disorder
    “What a waste of time when the world’s in shambles and we need to be changing it.”
  8. scrimmage
    practice playing (a sport)
    Residents gathered at practices to whistle and clap as the team dunked and scrimmaged.
  9. inevitably
    in such a manner as could not be otherwise
    She resisted his overtures at first but inevitably gave in. She had no other choice.
  10. agog
    highly excited
    The congregation was agog; no one ever spoke back to Father.
  11. consummate
    having or revealing supreme mastery or skill
    A consummate politician, he cozied up to the crowd by mentioning that he’d run into a former student from his teaching days here in the community, as well as an old classmate of his daughter’s.
  12. swaggering
    having or showing arrogant superiority
    The mention of Wilson, Jonestown’s tough, swaggering security chief, must have unnerved them.
  13. sequester
    keep away from others
    Unlike Carolyn Layton, Lew Jones, and Dick and Harriet Tropp, who sequestered themselves in Jones’s cottage, Marceline put herself in the heart-wrenching middle of it all.
  14. in situ
    in the original or natural place or site
    In those first days after the massacre, the U.S. State Department pressured the Guyanese to bury all the bodies in situ.
  15. perfunctory
    hasty and without attention to detail; not thorough
    While pathologists did perform a handful of perfunctory autopsies—on the bodies of Jim Jones, Annie Moore, and Carolyn Layton, among others—they did not look for any other answers.
Created on Wed Jan 21 07:37:16 EST 2026 (updated Wed Feb 25 10:38:35 EST 2026)

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