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Chapters 1–4

Summary: Chapter 1 

Laurie Saunders, a senior at Gordon High School, sits alone in the publications office of The Grapevine, the school newspaper. Although the paper’s next issue is due soon, none of The Grapevine reporters is present, which makes Laurie, the paper’s editor-in-chief, nervous. When the bell rings, Laurie and her best friend, Amy Smith, dart off to their history class, taught by Ben Ross.

Mr. Ross is a “charismatic” teacher known for his creative teaching style. As class begins, he passes out papers, including two As, earned by Laurie and Amy, and two Ds: one for Brian Ammon, the football team’s quarterback, and the other for Robert Billings, described by the third-person narrator as being “the class loser.” Robert is disheveled and unkempt in his appearance and often bullied, especially by fellow student Brad. Mr. Ross is concerned about Robert, but also at many of the students’ lax attitudes, failure to get to class on time, and sloppy work. 

Summary: Chapter 2

Mr. Ross plays a film on crimes German Nazis committed in Europe during World War II. The film shows horrific scenes of starved and tortured prisoners inside concentration camps, where Nazis killed some ten million people, including Jews, homosexuals, Roma, and political dissenters. Mr. Ross is horrified but continues his lesson about the Holocaust and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler. 

Many students, unaware of the Holocaust’s realities, are stunned and saddened. When Mr. Ross explains that less than ten percent of the German population were Nazis, Amy asks why the majority didn’t stop them. Mr. Ross theorizes that German citizens were scared and that because they were unorganized, no match for the highly organized and armed Nazis. A football player named Eric insists he’d never let such a small minority control the majority. 

After class, Mr. Ross talks with Robert about his lack of class participation. Ross knows that Robert’s low self-esteem stems from being bullied and believing he’ll never match up to his older brother, Jeff, a former baseball star and straight-A student at Gordon High.  

Summary: Chapter 3

At lunch, Robert tries to join two girls at a table, but they immediately stand and leave. David Collins, Laurie’s boyfriend and a football player, tells Laurie that although the film was horrible, it was simply something that happened in the past. Laurie insists, though, that the film and this part of history cannot be forgotten. Soon, Amy and Brian join them. As they discuss the upcoming game against Clarkstown, David predicts that Gordon High will probably lose because the team is disorganized and complacent. As Amy and Laurie discuss the film, David insists that something like the Holocaust will never happen again. 

After lunch, Laurie and Amy go to The Grapevine’s office and discuss David. Laurie knows David is smart, but still, she’s concerned that he’s mostly only a “jock.” When Amy asks if Laurie and David will get married, Laurie notices a hint of jealousy from her friend. When student reporters Carl and Alex arrive Laurie scolds them for failing to turn in their articles. 

Summary: Chapter 4 

Mr. Ross ponders his students’ questions about why most Germans remained silent and complicit during the Holocaust and feels troubled that he has no real answers for them. This prompts Mr. Ross to check out a stack of books from the school library, though he suspects the answer is likely not written anywhere. He wonders if only those who experience a similar situation can truly understand, and then considers what he believes will be a quick class “experiment” to demonstrate what it might be like to live in Nazi Germany. When Christy, his wife, returns home and tries to discuss her tennis match, Mr. Ross is absorbed in his thoughts. After Christy asks Mr. Ross about the books he’s reading, he determines that to arrive at real answers, his students will need to experience something similar to Nazi-era Germans. 

Analysis: Chapters 1–4 

The Wave opens with a glimpse into Gordon High, a typical high school in the United States, along with its typical gamut of teachers and teenage students. The specific location of the school and the year the story occurs are noticeably absent, though this lack of detail is likely intentional, suggesting that the novel’s events could occur anytime and anywhere. And although everything feels rather serene at the start of Chapter 1, author Todd Strasser cleverly and subtly foreshadows the tumultuous events that will transform Gordon High over the following nine days. Senior Laurie Saunders’s pen chewing, for instance, is attributed to the school newspaper’s impending due date, but her growing habit hints at an underlying tension and future discord. Brad’s bullying of Robert also reveals an unhealthy hierarchy among the students, which readers see again in Chapter 3 when David Collins calls Robert an “Untouchable,” a reference to the lowest tier of India’s caste system where millions of people are seen as sub-human. Students’ general complacency and lackadaisical attitude also suggest that they may be susceptible to manipulation.

Mr. Ross’s character traits are especially significant. The opposite of the boring, monotone Mr. Gabondi, Mr. Ross is young, creative, and enthusiastic, making him a likely figure for students to follow. That students also consider Mr. Ross to be “charismatic” is no coincidence: The trait is often used to describe cult leaders and dictators and explain how they’re able to seduce and sway large numbers of people to commit unspeakable crimes. In fact, in Chapter 2, Mr. Ross shows students a film about Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Although the film’s scenes of the Holocaust are shocking and horrific, Mr. Ross believes it’s a film that his students, who to this point have been mostly “naive and sheltered,” need to see, and that education is essential to help prevent similar atrocities. Mr. Ross’s accompanying lesson on how a weary post-World War I Germany, rife with inflation, unemployment, and hunger, created a fertile ground for Hitler and the Nazis to seize power foreshadows how his experiment may affect both popular and disaffected students.

Students’ sentiments and questions that follow the film resemble those frequently raised about the Holocaust and similar genocides. As Mr. Ross illustrates, it’s extremely difficult to answer why so many people could have followed Hitler, how such an enormous crime against humanity could have occurred, and how so many people could have pretended they didn’t know what was happening. Like Eric and Brad after the film, many people swear that under similar circumstances, they would act more heroically, more morally, and less fearfully. However, Mr. Ross realizes that finding answers to such questions, and determining exactly how one will act when tested, is something one can’t truly know unless faced with a similar situation. His realization prompts him to conceive a classroom “experiment” in Chapter 4, so his students can learn the answers to their questions for themselves.  

Students’ reactions to the film also shed light on their characters and future actions. Some fool around after the film, revealing they may not yet be mature enough to accept and process its significance. That Robert sleeps through the film shows how deeply disengaged and disconnected he’s become, in part because he’s bullied. David’s notion that the Holocaust was something that merely occurred in the past shows he’s naive and his need to eat immediately after the film shows he’s yet to develop wisdom and empathy possessed by Laurie, who emerges as a voice of reason, a moral compass, and a proponent of individualism, traits that will guide her actions as the novel proceeds. Her insistence to David in Chapter 3 that the film and Holocaust cannot be forgotten recalls the phrase “Never again,” a slogan shared by Holocaust survivors determined to see that its history wouldn’t repeat.

Next section Chapters 5–7

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