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Chapters 8–11

Summary: Chapter 8

While walking to school, David tells Laurie how Coach Schiller thinks The Wave will help the team. When Laurie shares her mother’s concerns about Mr. Ross and the movement, David becomes upset.

In class, Mr. Ross hands out Wave membership cards, some of which are marked with a red “X,” signifying which students are monitors who will watch for dissenters. Robert and Brian are happy to be selected as monitors. Mr. Ross then adds the word “Action” to the motto, explaining that to achieve a goal, people must take action. When he asks students if they believe in The Wave, they all rise and emphatically say “yes,” but Laurie worries that they’ve become blind and completely obedient to Mr. Ross.

Mr. Ross then explains that everyone in The Wave should work together and be treated as equals. He tasks students to recruit new members. A student named George Snyder stands and tells the class he feels part of something for the first time in his life. Robert adds, “It’s like being born again.” 

At lunch, David invites Robert to join his table. When Laurie asks if anyone feels strange about The Wave, Brian and Robert then remind Laurie they’re monitors and she might be disobeying The Wave’s rules by disavowing allegiance. 

Summary: Chapter 9

Recruiting for The Wave is a success and Coach Schiller is grateful that the football team has become more disciplined. Mr. Ross notes students’ grades are up, but they restate facts instead of analyzing information. He daydreams about extending The Wave to other schools and even envisions an article on his accomplishment in Time magazine. 

Later, The Grapevine reporters try to convince Laurie to roll with a story on the movement. At first, Laurie is apprehensive, but she eventually concedes and asks reporters to find out what students think about The Wave.

That night, Mrs. Saunders tells Laurie that Elaine Billings, Robert’s mother, is ecstatic about her son’s new transformation. Mrs. Saunders worries The Wave resembles a cult, and that Robert was a likely candidate to be brainwashed. Laurie promises her mom she no longer believes in The Wave, but she admits she’s confused as to how bright people could get so caught up in the movement. 

Summary: Chapter 10

After Principal Owens calls Mr. Ross to his office to discuss The Wave, he passes students in the hall who give him The Wave salute. Mr. Ross sees his experiment has gone further than he expected. He knows he should end it, but he worries about people like Robert, who now have a purpose and aren’t picked on any longer. Mr. Ross also recalls his original goal, to help students understand what it was like to live in Nazi Germany. 

At the meeting, Principal Owens is open to hearing Mr. Ross’s intentions but expresses serious concerns about The Wave, particularly its saluting and motto. Mr. Ross assures him both are simply a part of the experiment. He also speaks of Coach Schiller’s gratitude for how The Wave has helped the football team and exaggerates by saying that students are even doing better in Mrs. Ross’s music class. Mr. Ross assures Principal Owens that The Wave as an experiment won’t go any further than he wants it to. Principal Owens gives Mr. Ross the green light to proceed but reminds him that because the students are young and impressionable, they’ll need to be watched. 

Summary: Chapter 11

In The Grapevine’s office, Laurie finds an anonymous letter from a junior to the editors. When the junior refused a senior’s invitation to join The Wave, the senior became angry and threatened that the junior would lose all friends as a result. The letter confirms Laurie’s growing fears about The Wave. As students’ enthusiasm for The Wave begins to overwhelm Mr. Ross, Robert requests to be his bodyguard, reiterating his feelings that he’s now part of something special. Robert’s request makes Mr. Ross wonder if things have now gone too far. His concern grows when students hang Wave posters throughout the school and change an upcoming pep rally to a Wave rally, saying they’re orders he gave when, in fact, they aren’t. 

Analysis: Chapters 8–11 

As The Wave rises in Gordon High, the movement becomes more fascistic, and the school environment more closely resembles that of post-World War I Nazi Germany. While David and Laurie walk to school in Chapter 8, for instance, David grows angry that Mrs. Saunders has spoken badly about The Wave and looks to quash any hints of dissent from Laurie. In class, Mr. Ross rises as a dictator. He displays propaganda posters, demands full obedience and allegiance to the cause, creates membership cards, and even appoints certain students to spy on their peers. Caught up in The Wave’s momentum and blinded by its promise of power, students readily give up their loss of privacy and freedom. That only Laurie dissents, however, shows not only her bravery but also the power of group conformity, lending insight into the students’ original questions about how most Germans could have conceded to the will of the Nazi minority.  

When Mr. Ross tasks students with recruiting new members, The Wave spreads rapidly throughout the school, showing how quickly fascism can gain momentum, even within seemingly stable, democratic environments. Through his discussions with students, Mr. Ross learns that many are drawn to The Wave because it promises equality and inclusion. In Chapter 8, for example, Brad says he’s on board with the movement because it has eliminated cliques, and he even welcomes Robert to the popular kids’ table at lunch. Such promises are false ones, however. The Wave, ironically, is its own clique and its members begin to see themselves as superior and part of an elite cause, recalling the dangerous sentiments of Nazis who declared that others such as Jews, homosexuals, and the Roma were inferior and thus subject to persecution.

As The Wave gains momentum, most of the novel’s characters undergo significant transformations, particularly Robert. Once “the class loser,” Robert rises as one of the movement’s leading figures and most zealous defenders. In Chapter 8, he tells Mr. Ross that being in The Wave is “like being born again” and later reminds Wave members that if Laurie voices dissent, she’d be disobeying its rules. Robert’s major transformation reveals how alluring fascism can be to those who feel powerless, and how quickly such people then exert their newfound power over others. Bright, politically astute Mrs. Saunders understands this. In Chapter 9, she explains to Laurie how similar The Wave is to dangerous cults and political movements, which typically prey on and then brainwash the weak to advance their cause. The Wave’s false promises of power, community, and equality parallel ploys of dictators such as Hitler who then call on their followers, once fully “indoctrinated” in the words of Mrs. Saunders, to carry out their desired “action,” a word that Mr. Ross adds to The Wave’s motto in Chapter 8. 

Mr. Ross also experiences a dramatic, and unexpected, transformation. Despite his experience and education, he is seduced by the power he experiences as a leader. In Chapter 9, Mr. Ross even envisions gaining fame through a Time magazine article praising him for introducing a new sense of organization to American students. Still, Mr. Ross feels conflicted. He knows that The Wave has gone too far, for instance, as students salute him in the hallway in Chapter 10 as he walks to Principal Owens’s office, or when Robert offers to be his bodyguard in Chapter 11. At the same time, he knows that for students to truly learn the lesson The Wave is meant to teach, he’ll need to see it through to its end. Mr. Ross is only playing with fire, though, and may even be fooling himself. Also, although Mr. Ross assures a concerned Mr. Owens in Chapter 10 that he’s in complete control of the experiment, Mr. Ross has already seen in Chapter 8 that, given The Wave’s momentum, his students might begin to act on their own. His earlier sentiment, and Laurie’s growing fears that The Wave may be getting out of control, are later confirmed in Chapter 11 when an anonymous student delivers an unsigned letter to The Grapevine, informing editors that he was threatened for not wanting to join the movement.

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