The Wave's Experiment Book Report

“Before the end of the week, The Wave’s motto, “Strength Through Discipline, Strength Through Community, Strength Through Action,” governs the entire school” -The Wave, “The classroom experiment that went too far,” a novel written by Todd Strasser based on an actual event that took place in Palo Alto, California, 1969. A young teacher, Mr. Ross decides to create an experiment inspired by Hitler and The Nazis. “Strength Through Discipline, Strength Through Community, Strength Through Action”, is a simple motto taught to his students. Soon, this motto was spread quickly throughout the school beckoning students to join The Wave, and in only a few days, The Wave became unstoppable. What started as a small classroom experiment, turned into a violent,

The only thing Mr. Ross had to do was to start The Wave, then, his students did the job for him. At the beginning of this story, Ben Ross’s class watched a documentary about Hitler and The Nazis he ruled. “Then why didn’t anyone try to stop them?” “That’s crazy. How could you slaughter ten million people without someone noticing?” Strasser 12, “Yeah, I wouldn’t let a couple of Nazis scare me into pretending I didn’t see or hear anything.” Strasser 13. These are a few of many statements that actively demonstrates just how naive Ben Ross’s class was, only seeing the situation from a third perspective, never wondering how they would act if something happened to them. Before they knew it, they, too, joined a mini-Nazi group themselves. “Instead the students were becoming interested and curious.” Strasser 31 “For the next twenty minutes the class practiced getting out of their seats, wandering in apparent disorganization and then, at their teacher’s command quickly returning to their seats and the corrected seated posture.” Strasser 33. In a little over 20 minutes, Ben Ross took almost complete control of his students. In a little over 20 minutes, the students did whatever their teacher said, they were obedient, they were already nearing the edge of joining The

The Wave is hurting people. And everyone’s going along with it like a flock of sheep. I can’t believe that after reading this you’d still be part of it. Don’t you see what The Wave is? It’s everybody forgetting who they are. It’s like Night of the Living Dead or something.” Strasser 100. The wave turned people into nothing but a ripple caused by an insignificant droplet that just keeps going, in that ripple everything is a perfect sphere, getting larger and larger before it loses its shape, it loses what it was meant to be. I’d like to compare this to another experiment, outside this novel called, “The 5 Monkeys Experiment” or, “The Monkey Ladder Experiment”, put together by G.R. Stephenson. In this experiment, 5 monkeys were placed in a cage containing a ladder and a banana sitting at the top. The twist is though, that whenever a monkey would attempt to claim the banana, every monkey was sprayed with cold water as a punishment. After a while, if any of the monkeys dared to climb the ladder, all of the monkeys would beat him up in order to not get sprayed. One by one, every monkey was replaced with a completely different one, none of which though, have ever been sprayed. The new monkeys still, obediently, follow the trend, the norm, not even knowing why, or how this came to be. This can also directly link to The Wave. As the name suggests, this movement became an ongoing force in the ocean, threatening anything that stood in its