The Wave

The television screens were still blank. No face appeared on the screen and no sounds came from the speakers. Around the auditorium students began to squirm and murmur with anxiety. Why wasn't anything happening? Where was their leader? What were they supposed to do? As the tension in the room continued to build, the same question passed through their minds over and over: what were they supposed to do?

From the side of the stage, Ben looked down at them, as the sea of faces stared back at him anxiously. Was it really true that the natural inclination of people was to look for a leader? Someone to make decisions for them? Indeed, the faces looking up at him said it was. That was the awesome responsibility any leader had, knowing that a group like this would follow. Ben began to realize how much more serious this "little experiment' was than he'd ever imagined. It was frightening how easily they would put their faith in your hands, how easily they would let you decide for them. 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...

From the centre of the audience a single frustrated student suddenly jumped up from his seat and shouted at Mr Ross, "There is no leader, is there!"

Shocked students around the auditorium quickly turned as two Wave guards rushed the offender out of the audi­torium. In the confusion that followed, Laurie and David were able to slip in through the door the guards had opened.

Before the students had time to think about what had just happened, Ben strode to the centre of the auditorium stage again. "Yes, you have a leader!" he shouted. That was the cue Carl Block had been waiting for as he hid back­stage. Now he pulled back the stage curtains to reveal a large movie screen. At the same moment, Alex Cooper, in the projection room, flicked on a projector.

"There!" Ben shouted at the auditorium full of students. "There is your leader!"

The auditorium was filled with gasps and exclamations of surprise as the gigantic image of Adolf Hitler appeared on the screen.

"That's it!" Laurie whispered excitedly to David. That's the movie he showed us that day!"

"Now listen carefully!" Ben shouted at them. "There is no National Wave Youth Movement. There is no leader. But if there was, he would have been it. Do you see what you've become? Do you see where you were headed? How far would you have gone? Take a look at your future!"

The film left Adolf Hitler and focused on the faces of the young Nazis who fought for him during World War Two. Many of them were only teenagers, some even younger than the students in the audience.

"You thought you were so special!" Ross told them. "Better than everyone outside this room. You traded your freedom for what you said was equality. But you turned your equality into superiority over non-Wave members. You accepted the group's will over your own convictions, no matter who you had to hurt to do it. Oh, some of you thought you were just going along for the ride, that you could walk away at any moment. But did you? Did any of you try it?

"Yes, you all would have made good Nazis," Ben told them. "You would have put on the uniforms, turned your heads, and allowed your friends and neighbours to be persecuted and destroyed. 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. You ask how could the German people do nothing as millions of innocent human beings were murdered? How could they claim they weren't involved? What causes people to deny their own histories?"

Ben moved closer to the front of the stage and spoke in a lower voice: "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."

Ben paused for a moment. So far he'd made it sound like they were all at fault. But it was more than that. "Now listen to me, please," he said. "I owe you an apology. I know this has been painful to you. But in a way it could be argued that none of you are as at fault as I am for leading you to this. I meant The Wave to be a great lesson for you and perhaps I succeeded too well. I certainly became more of a leader than I intended to be. And I hope you will believe me when I say that it has been a painful lesson for me too. All I can add is, I hope this is a lesson we'll all share for the rest of our lives. If we're smart, we won't dare forget it."