Summary

The Wave is a novel by American writer Morton Rhue published in 1981. The plot is divided into 17 chapters and takes place at Gordon High School in a small American town. The novel is largely based on the experiment “The Third Wave”, which was conducted in 1967 at a high school in Palo Alto by the teacher Ron Jones.

The events of the novel The Wave largely occur in a small American town especially at Gordon High School. The young teacher Ben Ross is covering the Second World War and the Holocaust with his history class. To illustrate the deeds of the Nazis, he shows his students a documentary about how the Nazis treated the inmates at the concentration camps. Afterwards, the young people are very concerned about this dark past. They ask Ben Ross how it could be possible that many Germans at that time claimed not to have known about the atrocities of the Nazis and the existence of these camps. Many of the students are also completely sure that such acts could never be repeated without the population revolting against them.

The history teacher cannot give any concrete answers to provide the students with a satisfactory explanation for the submissive behavior of a large part of the Germans. This fact unsettles him, and he searches desperately for a suitable solution. During this process, Ben Ross decides to con...