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MORTON RHUE
1994, PUFFIN BOOKS
AUTHOR
I am sorry, I couldn't find any information about Morton Rhue.
I only know that this book is a novelization of a teleplay by Johnny Dawkins based on a short story by Ron Jones.
SUMMARY
When Ben Ross, a history teacher at Gordon High School, shows his students a film about the cruelties in the Nazi concentration camps they are shocked and upset. They can't understand how such a small minority of people was able to rule the majority and so they ask their teacher about it. Mr Ross isn't able to give an adequate answer either, but he thinks that it has to be something one could only understand by being there or if possible by creating a similar situation. The idea intrigues him and he thinks it is worth a try. So he invents "The Wave" as a classroom experiment....
The next history lesson Mr Ross starts the experiment my writing the slogan "Strength through discipline" on the blackboard. The students have to do drill exercises such as wandering through the classroom and sit down as fast as they can when their teacher tells them to do so. From that day on the pupils also have to follow certain rules. As Mr Ross had feared they are fascinated of the power and the success they can feel.
Christy, Ben's wife, warns him about the experiment. She says it is more than a game and that her husband had created a monster. (Later on she warns him that he might lose control. He keeps right...)
In the next lesson Ben Ross gives the class a new motto "Strength through community" and also a common salute and a common sign which the teacher draws on the blackboard: A circle with the shape of a wave in it.
The next day Ross hands out yellow membership cards. Those pupils who get a card with a red X on it are monitors, that means that they have to inform their leader about any violation against the group's rules. Moreover a new watchword is added: "Strength through Action" and the pupils are asked to attract other students to join the wave. They do so, but by scaring methods..... For example a Jewish boy who doesn't want to join the wave gets beaten up and called "Dirty Jew",
Laurie's boyfriend David breaks up with her because she opposes the Wave. But she doesn't change her mind and writes an criticising article about the, how she calls it "dangerous and mindless movement". After school David waits for her because he wants her to stop talking against the Wave. When she denies to do so David gets mad and knocks her down. Only just he realises what bad thing the Wave is and the couple decides to visit Mr Ross to tell him to stop the experiment. He has already got a plan how to finish it, but he can't tell Laurie and David because if the students recognise that he wants to end it they will have learnt nothing or they will fight against Ben Ross and giving up the Wave.
So Ben Ross organises a Wave rally saying that all members have to come because the leader will speak to them. When the auditorium is filled with people Ben shouts "There is your leader!" and on the large movie screen behind him appears a gigantic image of Adolf Hitler. He tells them that they had changed their equality to superiority over non-Wave members, that they had accepted the group's will over their own convictions. They all would have made good Nazis he points out. The effect of this speech on the students is staggering. It had been a painful lesson for them to see that fascism isn't just something that other people did, but that it was right there, in all of them.
MAIN CHARACTERS
. Laurie Sanders: she is the only one who feels strange about the Wave, she is a very good
student, as said in the book she is the "class princess", she refuses to join
the organization and for that reason her boyfriend David breaks up with
her, she has a very good relationship with her parents who she informs
about the Wave, they agree that the motion is like a cult or a sect, it is
too militaristic and like brainwashing, the members of the Wave say that
Laurie is a threat and has to be stopped (for example on day she finds the
word "enemy" written in red letters on her locker), especially when she
writes a critical article in the schoolpaper, considering the organization
dangerous, mindless and doing more harm than good, in the end she is
able to convict Ben Ross to stop the Wave.
. Ben Ross: he is a young History teacher at Gordon High School, he is married to Christy
who is against the Wave from the first moment onward, she warns him that one
day he will lose control and she keeps right, Ben just wants to give his students
an insight into the Nazi regime, he doesn't know that in the end he will
succeed so well, the Wave is a painful experience for him too.
But it is a more terrible lesson for Robert, the class loser and outcast. He liked
the Wave very much because there he was equal. Ben Ross comforts him in the
end.
SOME MORE INFORMATION
The Wave is based on a true incident that occurred in a high school history class in Palo Alto, California, in 1969. For three years afterwards, according to the teacher, Ron Jones, no one talked about it. "It was," he said, "one of the most frightening events I have ever experienced in the classroom.
"The Wave" disrupted an entire school. The novel dramatizes the incident, showing how the powerful forces of group pressure that have pervaded many historical movements and cults can persuade people to join such movements and give up their individual rights in the process - sometimes causing great harm to others. The full impact on the students of what they lived through and learned is realistically portrayed in the book.
(Taken from the afterword)
PERSONAL APPRECIATION
All in all I didn't like the book a lot. There are such a lot of books dealing with the subject of the second world war and for this reason I think that this topic has been "recycled" too often. But I think it gives an impulse to think about myself. How would I have reacted in this situation? Would I have joined the Wave or would I have opposed it? Well, I think I would have swum with the current, because I do not want to make my life more complicated than it already is. I get influenced and manipulated very easily and so I think I would have reacted the same as the majority: I would have joined the motion without thinking a lot about what I was doing, feeling strong through community....
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