The Wave Essay, Research Paper
Nazism The wave is about a history teacher whose
name is Ben Ross. His class was starting to study the time
that Hitler began making all the Jewish people stay in camps.
Ben Ross could not find a way to get his class interested into
this time period, so he decided to try to make a group, He
would play like a Hitler type scenario and his class would be
the Jewish people. He would make this group open to the
whole school. Ben Ross told his idea to his class. He
announced the group, and he had a pretty good turnout.
They called the group that wave and they made a
handshake, and a symbol. Laurie a girl in Ben Ross’s class
joined the wave at first and was in it for a while, but she saw
that it was becoming way too serious. She decided to drop
out of the wave. The wave became so popular that almost
all the school was in the group. Ben Ross started to dress in
suits, instead of his usual jeans and a nice shirt. He started to
dress like a dictator. Ben Ross had the kids in his group sit
with very good posture, and if they wanted to talk they had
to address him as sir and they Stood up and talked very
crisp and clear. When they were through talking they had to
sit back down the proper position. Ben Ross thought that his
experiment was going really good. All the kids were really
taking it serious and he was enjoying it too. Laurie who quit
the group saw that everyone was in the wave and she was
on the staff of the Gordon Grapevine the school newspaper
she decide to write and article about how everyone was
taking this wave thing way to serious. Her article in the
paper was published and everyone saw what she wrote.
This made all of the group members very upset, they started
to threaten her, and make her feel left out because she had
quit the wave. Laurie had a boyfriend David who was in the
wave, kept telling her that she should join the wave again, he
didn’t realize that why she didn’t want to be in the group.
This was splitting them apart. Laurie and David were talking
one night and David brought up that she still was not in the
wave, and she needed to join the wave. Laurie told him that
she did not want to be involved in it, it was getting way to
serious. People were getting hurt. David got really mad and
grabbed her arm. He then saw what he was doing and let go
it made him very mad. He knew it was all because of a silly
group he was in. He was hurting someone that he really
cared about. David then decided that he needed to drop
out. The wave started to get very to serious, kids started to
threaten and even beat up other kids that weren’t in the
wave. They were not one of them so they had to be taught a
lesson. Ben Ross discovered that his wave group was
getting way to serious, he called a meeting to tell his group
that it was getting out of hand. He realized this when he
discovered that other kids were getting hurt just because
they choose not to participate in the group. He told them
that he never meant for it to get this far out of hand. He also
told them that he had to put a stop to it now. It was a good
lesson untill it got out of hand. This book was based on a
true story that happened in a High School History class in
Palo Alto, California.