The Perils of Group Conformity

Amy, I’m serious. The Wave is hurting people. And everyone’s going along with it like a flock of sheep. I can’t believe that after reading this you’d still be part of it. Don’t you see what The Wave is? It’s everybody forgetting who they are. It’s like Night of the Living Dead or something.

In Chapter 14, Laurie informs her best friend Amy about The Grapevine’s soon-to-circulate exposé on The Wave, hoping to warn Amy so she can avoid any potential trouble. As Amy reads Laurie’s editorial, however, she insists the paper cannot be published. Amy’s call for censorship reveals just how swept up in The Wave she’s become, and how willing she is to hide the truth rather than relinquish the false sense of equality the movement has brought her and others at Gordon High. Laurie, though, is highly perceptive. She realizes that her fellow students, including Amy, have stopped thinking for themselves, and like sheep or zombies, have willingly conformed and caved to the will of The Wave. Laurie is also a fierce truth-teller and freedom fighter. She knows that the paper must publish and that the truth about the movement must be revealed. 

David could not believe it. He felt almost as if he were coming out of a trance. What had possessed him these last days that could cause him to do something so stupid? There he’d been, denying that The Wave could hurt anyone, and at the same time he’d hurt Laurie, his own girlfriend, in the name of The Wave!

This passage, stated by the novel's third-person narrator, occurs in Chapter 15 after David confronts Laurie on her walk home and demands she stop publishing stories about The Wave in The Grapevine. When Laurie resists, however, David detains her and throws her down in the grass. As soon as Laurie falls, though, David comes to his senses. The words “trance” and “possessed” are especially apt here, as they convey how deeply The Wave had taken hold of David. Readers will be reminded of Mrs. Saunders’ early warnings about cults and brainwashing, as well as Laurie’s prior comments to Amy in Chapter 14, where she likened Wave members to zombies. David’s act of violence is yet another indication that The Wave has gone too far, though his sudden awakening is a good sign. Here, he realizes how quickly fascism can take root and how naive he was to think that an event like the Holocaust could never repeat.

You say it could never happen again, but look how close you came. Threatening those who wouldn’t join you, preventing non-Wave members from sitting with you at football games. Fascism isn’t something those other people did, it is right here, in all of us.

Mr. Ross’s climactic speech in Chapter 17 is shocking, but no more so than the events that occurred at Gordon High. As Mr. Ross reveals that The Wave has only been an experiment and that its true leader is Adolf Hitler, he holds a mirror up to all its members. Within that mirror, they’re forced to face all their misdeeds and wrestle with the perils of blind conformity to a cause. Mr. Ross’s lesson and words, though, aren’t meant to hurt students. Rather, they’re meant to teach them essential lessons about the darker side of human nature. Just as Mr. Ross had hoped, students have now found answers to their original questions about how the Holocaust was allowed to happen, and how so many German citizens could have complied with the Nazis’ will. Most shocking of all, though, students see that fascism is something that can take root anywhere and, if we’re not especially careful, in anyone.

The Need for Healthy Dissent

Honey, just remember that the popular thing is not always the right thing.

In Chapter 7, Mrs. Saunders senses something is amiss with The Wave and while talking with Laurie at dinner, raises red flags about the movement. Mrs. Saunders questions whether Mr. Ross’s class exercises are too “militaristic” and she reminds Laurie that she was raised to think for herself. In this passage, Mrs. Saunders also shares an essential truth with Laurie: Group acceptance and conformity are no substitutes for sticking to our morals and speaking up when we know something is wrong. Although Laurie initially focuses on the good The Wave has brought, particularly for outsiders such as Robert, Mrs. Saunders’ insights sow seeds of doubt in Laurie. Her red flags, here and in future discussions, eventually stir Laurie to rise as the novel’s voice of reason and moral compass, despite being shunned from the in-group at school.

But Laurie kept resisting. ‘I will write and I will say anything that I want to, and you can’t stop me!’ she yelled at him.

By Chapter 15, Laurie Saunders will not be silenced. Along with being Gordon High’s voice of reason and moral compass, she emerges as its fiercest voice of dissent against The Wave. In Chapter 14, when Laurie works with Alex and Carl to publish an exposé about the movement in The Grapevine, members of The Wave begin to defect, and other students speak out about its crimes. Not everyone is pleased, however. Robert calls Laurie a “threat” who “must be stopped” and Brian insists that David tell Laurie to stop voicing her opinion. When David detains Laurie and demands she stop saying bad things about The Wave, though, she remains resolute. Laurie’s insistence to David that she will write and say anything she wants is especially significant. Amid the flurry of fascism that has spread through Gordon High, Laurie knows that The Wave’s most potent antidote is the freedom of speech and press, and how necessary it is to preserve both. 

If people were destined to be led, Ben thought, this was something he must make sure they learned: to question thoroughly, never to put your faith in anyone’s hands blindly. Otherwise . . .

In Chapter 17, as students gather in Gordon High’s auditorium believing they’ll see The Wave’s national leader, Mr. Ross, or Ben as he’s referred to here, fully grasps the extent of his experiment. From it, he’s learned the desire to be led is likely an inherent human trait. Still, he’s dismayed at how willingly students obeyed his orders and conformed to the movement’s mindset. With this realization, though, Mr. Ross knows he has a great responsibility. He must make this moment so impactful that all The Wave’s lessons will not be lost. In a scathing speech, he chastises students for conceding so easily to The Wave’s, and his, will, without any reservations or questions. By doing so, they allowed a dangerous force to seize control and harm to come to others, just as German citizens did in Nazi Germany. Mr. Ross shows students that thinking for themselves, questioning authority, standing up for others, and speaking out are all essential tools for thwarting fascism.

The Imperative of Learning from the Past

David thought for a moment. Then he said, ‘Yeah, sure, as something horrible that happened once, it bothers me. But that was a long time ago, Laurie. To me it’s like a piece of history. You can’t change what happened then.’ 

‘But you can’t forget it,’ Laurie said.

This interaction between David and Laurie in Chapter 3 sheds light on each of their characters at the start of The Wave and gets to the heart of the lessons Mr. Ross hopes to teach with his experiment. David’s sentiments, which echo common refrains about the Holocaust, are both naive and wrong. Sadly, the genocide that occurred in Nazi Germany following World War I was not the world’s first, nor its last. Laurie, even before her rise as The Wave’s chief dissenter, possesses the empathy and wisdom that David lacks at this point. She’s deeply troubled by Mr. Ross’s film and lesson about the Holocaust. Despite David’s ignorance and claim that the Holocaust is merely a part of history, Laurie knows better. Her insistence that the Holocaust cannot be forgotten recalls the phrase “Never again,” a slogan shared by Holocaust survivors determined to see that its history wouldn’t repeat.

I’m their teacher. I was responsible for getting them into this. I admit that maybe I did let this go too long. But they’ve come too far to just drop it now. I have to push them until they get the point. I might be teaching these kids the most important lesson of their lives!

In Chapter 15, Mr. Ross’s wife, Christy, advises her husband to end his experiment before it goes too far. The Wave has disrupted the entire school, she tells him, and other teachers and counselors are concerned. Christy also questions whether Mr. Ross might be intoxicated with power and therefore reluctant to relinquish his role as The Wave’s leader. Mr. Ross is receptive to her warnings, though, here, he insists he needs to see his experiment through to its proper conclusion. Doing so, he believes, will be the only way for students to fully absorb the lessons he initially set out to teach. The immersive educational experience is unorthodox and has the potential to get out of hand, he knows. Still, Mr. Ross feels it’s necessary to help students understand what happened during the Holocaust and ultimately, to prevent history’s crimes from repeating.

If history repeats itself, you will all want to deny what happened to you in The Wave. But, if our experiment has been successful—and I think you can see that it has—you will have learned that we are all responsible for our own actions, and that you must always question what you do rather than blindly follow a leader, and that for the rest of your lives, you will never, ever allow a group’s will to usurp your individual rights.

At the novel's climax in Chapter 17, Mr. Ross tells his students that “you all would have made good Nazis.” His words are harsh, but he knows such brutal honesty is needed. Despite his students’ insistence in Chapter 2 that they wouldn’t have been complicit in the Holocaust or be scared into pretending its crimes weren’t occurring, The Wave showed they were capable of being swept up in a fascistic movement. So many of Gordon High’s students readily swapped individual liberties for false promises of power, equality, and community. So many students willingly obeyed a dictatorial leader and conformed to a dangerous group’s will, despite the harm it caused. Students may have acted like Nazis during the experiment, but as an educator with a profound concern for humanity, Mr. Ross asks them to forever remember the lessons they learned and not repeat their mistakes in the real world.

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