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Schule > Englisch > "The Wave" by Morton Rhue

Author

Historical Background
Characters
Story
Own opinion
The Wave by Morton Rhue
Author
real name Todd Strasser
born May 5 1950 in New York
worked first as a journalist for “The New Yorker” and “The Village Voice”
The Wave published in 1981, breakthrough in Germany
Other books : “Give a boy a gun” 2002 and “The Tribe” 2004
Historical Background
Story happened in Cubberly High School in 1968
History Experiment of teacher Ron Jones went wrong
All people so shocked couldn’t talk over 3 years about the experiment
1972 Ron Jones published an article

Characters
Laurie Saunders : pretty girl, short light-brown hair, works for The Gordon Grapevine, boyfriend David, very good student
Amy Smith: friend of Laurie, thick, curly, blonde hair, very good student too
Ben Ross: since 2 years history teacher at Gordon High, brown hair, charismatic, creative, his students like him
Christy Ross: Ben’s wife, music teacher at Gordon high
David Collins: Laurie’s boyfriend, star of the football team, very good looking
Robert Billings: class loser, dirty, never brushes his hair
Brian Ammon, Mr. Owens, Mrs. Saunders

Story
The class sees a film over the 2. World war and concentration camps. The pupils are shocked, particularly Laurie. They ask Mr. Ross many questions that Mr. Ross couldn't answer. When the pupils enter the class on the next day, at the board stands: "Strength through discipline". Ben explains to the pupils what it means and he says to them how to answer a question correctly. The pupils start to like this new experiment and see its favours. Mr. Ross writes two other sentences on the board: "Strength through community" and "Strength through action ". Because of the experiment the pupils arrive punctually to the lesson. In the group everyone is accepted even Robert. The wave gets more and more members and soon the whole school is in it. Members persecute not-members of the wave. Laurie becomes sceptic about the wave. When she writes an article in the school newspaper against the wave the wave members become angry. David should stop Laurie he believes so strong in the wave that he beats Laurie. But then it recognizes what the wave had made.
Christy Ross and director Owens ask Mr. To stop Ross the wave. He promises them that he will terminate the experiment on the next day.
On the next day a meeting of the wave takes place. As Mr. enters the podium the crowd screamed the 3 rules. Then Mr. Ross switches on the screens and the students could see Adolf Hitler. Mr. Ross says that this would have been their leader and that all of them would have been great Nazis.

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