A review by emily_m_green
The Wave by Todd Strasser

dark reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

The Wave by Todd Strasser is a well-known book which tells a fictionalized account of the Ron Jones’ experience as a history teacher turning his students into dangerous Fascists. Based on a short story Jones wrote called the “Third Wave,” The Wave expands the story and makes up characters based on the real ones. 

In The Wave, Ben Ross is a young history teacher who is seen as the cool guy. He has fun lectures and experiential learning, which was unusual at the time. After showing a filmstrip about the Holocaust, his students ask how German citizens could allow it to happen. So, as Ross does not have the answer, he starts researching,  and decides that he will try something with his students that begins as a series of classroom drills on how to sit and how to participate in class coupled with slogans: Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action. From there, the students get a feeling of belonging and a feeling of equality. Especially for students who felt they were in the shadow of others, the feeling that no one is better than anyone else is a feeling that they will fight to maintain. 

The Wave is a thin novel, but even so, it doesn’t feel as though it even needs to be that long. The story is so simple and so predictable that more than one chapter feels almost unnecessary. 

Some unexamined issues I see in the novel: the first is that as a teacher, Mr. Ross has the trust of the students, and they understandably don’t question his choices or think he would draw them into harmful behavior. To compare the behavior of high school students being lead by their teacher to the behavior of adults in Nazi Germany is not entirely fair, especially to hold them as culpable as we hold adults. 

My second quibble is that the student who fights the hardest against the Wave is also extremely popular, earns good grades, and has a good home life. The novel fails to examine the possibility that she may, in fact, feel a little bit threatened, as several characters accuse her of. 

Would I teach this book? I did, indeed, teach this book. The students were interested, but some saw its plot as much too obvious and simply accepted the students in the book as junior Nazis. Because the book is not so nuanced, it can leave students with less of an impression. 

I used the book in a unit on persuasive writing. Students wrote a letter to the school board arguing whether or not Ben Ross should be granted tenure. They were assigned a position (which did not make all of them so happy). We also practiced using textual evidence from the book to support their arguments. 

The length of the book makes it easier to use as a teaching tool and many of the students did find it interesting.