The Wave

On Monday morning, Laurie wants to find Amy to show her the story, thinking that it will allow Amy to leave The Wave before trouble starts. To her surprise, Amy is horrified at her defiance and blames her for overreacting to her breakup with David. Amy boasts that she no longer feels competitive with Laurie and tells her not to publish the issue, but Laurie says she already has.

The special issue of The Grapevine flies off the stands. Laurie realizes that few students heard about the beating. Now other students want to tell stories about their abuse. In addition, rumors hold that parents visited the principal and that counselors are interviewing students about The Wave. Ben suspects that he’s responsible for the upheaval. He’s strangely embarrassed about the team’s loss at the football game. While getting headache medicine from the faculty medicine cabinet, he overhears Coach Schiller and another man talking about the game. The students believed they could win, but they had no plan; they blame Ben for the team’s sense of false confidence.

David doesn’t understand why anyone resisted The Wave to begin with. The loss doesn’t bother him because the team’s attitude changed, which makes him optimistic for the team’s future. When he and Robert look at The Grapevine, he thinks Laurie made up the stories about The Wave. Robert coldly says she’s not allowed to lie about them: “Laurie Sanders is a threat. She must be stopped” (104). Brian says he and David will take care of it and tells David that they’ll wait for Laurie after school and talk to her.

When Christy gets home, Ben is reading a book about Nazi youth. She says The Wave is disrupting the entire school and observes that his goals appear to have changed. Ben knows she’s right but defensively says that he thought she was on his side. He says he can’t stop yet, even when Christy tells him that Principal Owens was looking for him all day.

All day, teachers and administrators thank the writing staff for their effort. That evening, Laurie is the last to leave the office. She’s worried when she realizes she’s alone, and she panics when she sees that the word “enemy” is painted on her locker. She hears a noise and runs.

David and Brian are waiting in a van. They see Laurie. Brian says to make sure she understands as David gets out. He confronts Laurie, telling her that the Jewish boy’s beating was an accident and that the muggers used The Wave for cover. He grabs her arm and tells her to stop writing. When Laurie screams that she hates The Wave and its members, David throws her onto the grass. She sobs as he kneels and apologizes. David is horrified by his actions and feels like he’s been awakened from a sleeplike state. He realizes that he’s been wrong about The Wave as Brian’s van passes them.

At home, Christy tells Ben to end The Wave the following day, or Principal Owens will do it for him. She says Ben is sacrificing his reputation and putting them both at risk. Ben tells her that he’s meeting with Owens the next morning. He thinks, “The important thing wasn’t when it ended, but how. The students had to end it themselves, and they had to understand why. Otherwise, the lesson, the pain, all that had gone into it, was for nothing” (116). He admits to himself that he underestimated the seductive nature of power.

He has an idea he thinks could end things abruptly and effectively. He stays up late to plan. David and Laurie knock on his door. They’re scared of The Wave, and he thinks his lesson has worked. He’d wanted to show them what life in Nazi Germany might have felt like, and he remembers the students asking why people hadn’t just spoken up or left. Sadly, he wonders, “Was it a weakness of man that made him want to ignore the darker side of his fellow human beings?” (119).

David tells Ben that he almost hurt Laurie. Ben says they’ve discovered what he wanted them to learn, and he hopes they can do the same for the other students. They agree to trust him, and he asks if they know two non-Wave people. They suggest Alex and Carl. Then, Ben asks them to act “normally” tomorrow and, once more, to trust him.

Principal Owens shouts at Ben as he tells him that the boy who was beaten has a rabbi who spent two years in Auschwitz. Ben says he just needs the rest of the day to get his lesson across. He asks Owens to tell the parents it’ll be over by that night and explains his plan. Owens agrees but says that he’ll ask for Ben’s resignation if it doesn’t work.

Ben announces a Wave-only rally for five o’clock in the auditorium and says that The Wave will expand nationwide. Together, he claims that they’ll turn the country around. He says the founder of The Wave will appear on cable during the rally to announce the National Wave Youth Movement. David and Laurie are shocked. Ben quickly takes them into the hall before they can protest and change his plan. Again, he asks for their trust.

Laurie and David beg Principal Owens to stop the rally, but he sends them back to class. They go to a park and talk. David realizes that he feels alone, and Laurie believes that the drama of The Wave has brought them closer together. She reminds him that after the documentary, David told her that nothing like the Nazis could ever happen again. David agrees, but he still can’t believe it’s happening. Laurie says she wants to see the leader’s appearance, and they return to school.

Ben is impressed by the efficiency and organization. Robert has placed guards and secured the doors, as instructed. The crowd salutes Ben and shouts The Wave mottos. He asks Robert to turn on the two large TVs that are behind him. The crowd is restless as they wait for the blank screens to show an image. No one knows what to do, and Ben thinks, “That was the awesome responsibility any leader had, knowing that a group like this would follow” (133). Above all, he wants the students to leave this room knowing the importance of questioning and thinking for themselves.

A student shouts that there is no leader. As guards remove the student, David and Laurie slip in. Ben says they have a leader just as Alex reveals a movie screen at the back of the stage that shows the image of Hitler.

It’s the documentary. Ben says this would have been their leader if they continued. The video shows young Nazis, and he says they all would have made good Nazis. Ben explains that they’ve now learned that they’re responsible for their actions and that individual rights are precious. He then apologizes for the success of the experiment. Crying students drop their membership cards as they leave the auditorium. Amy hugs Laurie as Eric and Brian embrace David. David apologizes to Ben for not trusting him. When Ben is finally alone in the auditorium, he hears Robert sobbing. He realizes that Robert lost what gave him his first sense of belonging and control when Ben exposed the artifice of The Wave. Ben tells Robert that he wants to take him out to eat so that they can talk.