The Wave: Review

Intriguing ideas, but not as fully executed as it might have been

Review

Spoiler alert

Based on actual events, this book (as the cover indicates) describes how a history teacher develops a classroom model, based on Nazi party tactics. The resulting actions of the students, and the teacher himself, indicate how effective Nazi practices were and how easily people will surrender their free will to a larger, community-based uniformity.

This book is an extremely fast read and is a dramatization of the events that took place. As it is primarily classified as a “teen novel”, it’s difficult to assess how much was actually based in reality. For this reason, I was perhaps not as satisfied as I might have been otherwise – I found the idea absolutely incredible, so I was really looking forward to this book. But I felt it didn’t quite realize the potential it possessed (which could be due to any number of reasons).

Still, despite my minor annoyances over structure and lack of character development, I think the story itself is compelling enough that people should at least be aware of it, if only as an example of the dangers of conformity…