Literary Analysis
Literary analysis In
The Wave, high school teacher Ben Ross is trying to show his students what life i
Nazi Germany might have been like. In order to show this, he creates a classroom experiment. He becomes the powerful leader of fascist like movement with the high school students as the members.
The story of The Wave illustrates how easily people in position of power can abuse this position.
To start it of Ben is accidently abusing his power as a teacher by exposing the kids to a dangerous experiment. And of course, this abuse of power later trickles down to the students. You have to remember that Ben was trying to create an ugly and fascist group. He wanted to see if he would be able to use Nazi psychology to make the students act badly. In order to make his students really feel like they're in a group, Ben provides them with symbols of membership they can use to show they part of The Wave. That is being used to divide Wave members from nonWave members. He even divide some wave members from each other by awarding some members with “monitor” status. The
“monitor” status gave them the power to tattle on other members. Quickly, unity becomes discrimination. This was exactly what the Nazis did, giving some “members” more power than others. This makes the ones without any power afraid and feeling like they must follow the stream. In the book, a boy writes a letter to Laurie about being forced in The Wave. He said pretty soon people in The Wave wouldn´n want to be friends with people who weren´t in it. He even said I´d lose all my friends if I didn´t join. I Think he was trying to scare me. If you look at it from another perspective Laurie abused her powers as a journalist trying to end The Wave. There were some of people who really liked The Wave, and who
grown because of The Wave. One of those people was Robert Billings, who before The
Wave was a “loser” with no friends. He actually became a
The Wave, high school teacher Ben Ross is trying to show his students what life i
Nazi Germany might have been like. In order to show this, he creates a classroom experiment. He becomes the powerful leader of fascist like movement with the high school students as the members.
The story of The Wave illustrates how easily people in position of power can abuse this position.
To start it of Ben is accidently abusing his power as a teacher by exposing the kids to a dangerous experiment. And of course, this abuse of power later trickles down to the students. You have to remember that Ben was trying to create an ugly and fascist group. He wanted to see if he would be able to use Nazi psychology to make the students act badly. In order to make his students really feel like they're in a group, Ben provides them with symbols of membership they can use to show they part of The Wave. That is being used to divide Wave members from nonWave members. He even divide some wave members from each other by awarding some members with “monitor” status. The
“monitor” status gave them the power to tattle on other members. Quickly, unity becomes discrimination. This was exactly what the Nazis did, giving some “members” more power than others. This makes the ones without any power afraid and feeling like they must follow the stream. In the book, a boy writes a letter to Laurie about being forced in The Wave. He said pretty soon people in The Wave wouldn´n want to be friends with people who weren´t in it. He even said I´d lose all my friends if I didn´t join. I Think he was trying to scare me. If you look at it from another perspective Laurie abused her powers as a journalist trying to end The Wave. There were some of people who really liked The Wave, and who
grown because of The Wave. One of those people was Robert Billings, who before The
Wave was a “loser” with no friends. He actually became a