A Spaceship to Heaven - Comprehension

Sujet du devoir

First, they packed their suitcases neatly and dressed themselves in black - shirts, pants and tennis shoes. Then, one by one over a period of several days, they ate applesauce or pudding laced with a barbiturate and chased it with vodka. Finally, again one by one, they lay down on cots or bunk beds and, joyously believing they were destined to rendezvous with a heaven-bound UFO, put plastic bags over their heads to hasten death. Two members of the Heaven’s Gate cyber-cult remained alive to remove the plastic bags, drape the 37 bodies in purple shrouds and tidy up. Then, they killed themselves the same way.

The 21 women and 18 men of Heaven’s Gate, many of them computer programmers who called themselves monks, are the most recent victims of charismatic and self-styled messiahs who claim that group suicide leads to spiritual rewards.

The Heaven’s Gate commune, led by former choirmaster Marshall Applewhite, rented the 830-square-m mansion in the exclusive Rancho Santa Fe enclave last October from businessman Sam Koutchesfahani for $10,000 a month. Milton Silverman, the owner’s lawyer, would later tell reporters that the celibate, teetotalling, non-smoking tenants belonged to a religious computer group and believed they were angels.

Applewhite, their 66-year-old leader who died with them, was the son of a Presbyterian minister who worked as a choral director at the University of Alabama in the 1960s. After a near-fatal brush with heart disease in the early 1970s, he left his wife and two children to embark on a nomadic life with Bonnie Nettles, a nurse he met during his convalescence.That search led them to devise their own faith, called "The Process," in which they presented themselves as heavenly messengers from outer space.

In 1974, they persuaded a group of Oregon townspeople to give away all their possessions, and their children, and travel with them to Colorado to be picked up by a spaceship. When the spacecraft failed to appear the following year, the pilgrims became fed up. "Bo" and "Peep," as Applewhite and Nettles then called themselves, were subsequently jailed briefly for possessing stolen credit cards. Afterwards, they continued on their mission while avoiding publicity.

Experts suggest that now preachers are not the only hazard for naïve people ; they say cult recruiters use the Internet to impression gullible people.

Rae Corelli and Anne Gregor, Maclean's, April 1997

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Before you read
1.Judging from the pictures (une secoupe-volante et un guru) and the headline of the text, guess what the story is about

Read lines 1 to 11
2.Check your guesses.

Read the whole text
3.Find the names of the cult and its founders, and the number of members.

4.Give as much information as possible about the two cult leaders and their faith.

5.In 1974, they were imprisoned. Why? What happened on their release?

6.Pick out all the elements from the text referring to the cult members' activities and their beliefs.

7.Find as much information as possible about the suicides. Did all the members die at the same time?

8.Quote elements describing their feelings and beliefs before dying.

9.Who and how do preachers and cult leaders recruit? Find reasons why people join cults.

10.Cult leaders are described as "charismatic messiahs". Explain and give your opinion.

Où j'en suis dans mon devoir

1.This is an other dimension.

2.An evasion of extra-terrestre with the objectif to captured humans ans use them before killed them.

3.Heaven's Gate led by Applewhite, his nurse and Milton Silverman.
Numbers are 39.

4.Applewhite got 66 years old and was the son of a minister. Before died, he less his family composed to his wife and 2 childs. This lastest went on a nomadic life with the nurse Bonnie Nettles.

5.In 1974, the extra-terrestre come from to captured them.

6. They were angels.

7.He's suscided him because he know much that he will. The dad before.

8.

9.Applewhite and the nurse. Because they stolen credit cards.

10.They diriged poor (mentaly) people to do what he want.