Response to the Wave: Coming of age

During the past two weeks, I have read and finished the book, "The Wave" by Todd Strasser.  The Wave is about a high school history class, and an experiment the teacher set up so his students could better understand the Nazis.  How the Nazis were made and why nobody opposed them in Germany.  Before the experiment, the class was very judgemental about it.  They couldn't understand how the people of Germany just sat around and let them do the things they did.  After they did the experiment, they now understood.  This is why I think you can't judge or understand something before you actually experience it yourself.  If you put yourself in the actual situation your views may change.  You may see the pressure somebody had on them or the pressure they didn't have on them.

Ben Ross, also known as Mr. Ross, is the history teacher in this book that organized the experiment for the students.  At the beginning of the book, it starts out with him showing his class a film about the holocaust and the things that happened in them.  After seeing the film, his class gets very upset.  They get upset because of how horrible the the things they just saw are, and because they don't understand how the people of Germany could just sit around and pretend they didn't know anything and just let that happen.  This is the reason Mr. Ross created the experiment.  The experiment that he created was to form a group in his history class called, "The Wave".  The Wave was supposed to be a group were everybody is equal and is based around discipline, community, and action.  Their slogan and motto was; "Strength Through Discipline, Strength Through Community, Strength Through Action".  What he didn't expect was the group to get out of control.  It spread through the entire school, recruiting every single person they could fine, and threaten or bully any kid that didn't want to join.  Much like the Nazis.  He wanted them to understand that the idea of the Nazis wasn't so ridiculous and could happen very easily, as they had just demonstrated.

Laurie Sanders, is another main character in the story.  She is a senior girl in highschool and in Mr. Ross' history class.  She is one of the people at the beginning who don't understand how Germany just let the Nazis run wild and reek havoc and injustice into the world.  After the film she said; "How could Germany sit back while the Nazis slaughtered people all around them and say they didn't know about it?  How could they do that?  How could they even say that?".  Laurie soon found out the answer to her questions, via the wave.  She saw first hand how the wave swept over and completely conquered the school in days.  She saw how powerful it became and how people were too scared to oppose it for fear of what they would do in return.  She judged something before she herself had been in that exact situation.  She judged it, but didn't really understand the issue since she had never lived through it.

I think this book showed a lot about coming of age.  The novel shows how a group of highschoolers were swept into something and had their ignorance and innocence wiped away.  It showed them coming to a realization and coming to true terms with the world and with society.  This is what I feel like coming of age is all about: coming to terms with things and realizing the truth.  This is why I feel this book is a perfect example of a coming of age novel.

The wave is a story that shows us about coming of age, and revealing the truth behind the world.  It shows us that we shouldn't judge or try to understand things before we are put into the situation ourselves because we may not have the correct view.  We may not know what it was like, what it wasn't like, and so forth.  I personally really enjoyed reading this book.  This book did only help the characters understand the world and society, but it also taught me these things as well.  Never would I have learned this from any other way. 

Response to Prompt #14

Becoming an adult is a very hard, exciting, and a confusing thing to a 14 year old kid.  To a kid, becoming an adult is ages away, a time that will never come.  A time of responsibilities, hardships, and having no fun.  Adults are the people that make the rules, that make you come home for dinner when you really just want to stay out with your friends.  They are the people that watch over you and the people that are always looking down on you.  A 14 year old kid never wants grow old and have to have responsibilities and obey they rules, but they know they eventually have to be.  And because kids know they eventually have to grow up, they have many questions and concerns about growing up.  I myself, are included in this catagory.

One question that I have about being an adult and growing up is, why?  Why do you have to grow up?  Why can't we all just stay as kids and play out in the park till we get to tired to move?  Some people will say because "you have to grow up eventually, you can't stay young and immature forever, so grow up" others will say "you can't expect your parents to take care of you your entire life so you have to grow up".  The first one I really don't understand, why can't a be an immature 40 year old man, huh?  Why is it that growing up is always related to becoming less immature and less innocent and becoming more responsible.   The second reason I see the reasoning in, I understand the fact that we can't have our parents always there looking out for us.  I understand the fact that you can't live with your parents until you grow old and dies.  But even if you do move out, even if you move on into the "real world" and start a career for yourself, you're expected to act as an adult and not as a child.  I don't understand why a grown man can't act as if he would if he were still in middle school.

This is why I am concerned about growing up, because I don't really know what that means.  What growing up means I can do and what it means I can't do.  I hate the fact that people expect me to grow up and stop acting childish and immature.  I want to stay this way and fun for the rest of my life!  This is just how i feel now, though.  Maybe in a few years or when I'm all grown up I'll think of it differently, but for now, I'm just going to enjoy being a kid.