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.