The wave Morton Rhues novel

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‘The Wave’- Analytical Exposition Ben Ross, a history teacher at Gordon State High, conducted an experiment aimed at explaining why ordinary people in Hitler’s Germany did not speak of the wrongs that were taking place in their society during that period. This experiment was called “The Wave”, and involved using his history student’s as test subjects. In the experiment, Ben Ross adopted similar techniques used by Hitler to control people’s thinking and behaviour. This essay will explore how his students’ reaction to the experiment showed possible reasons for the Nazis to gain control of people’s thinking and behaviour. This will be discussed in the following paragraphs. First, it is important to examine the nature of the experiment that was designed to give his students a taste of what it would have been like in Nazi Germany. The first activity involved Mr Ross introducing a slogan that was created to grab the class’s attention. This slogan was: “strength through discipline”. He used the football team as an example to demonstrate the importance of the slogan. He mentioned to David, Brian and Eric, members of the school’s football team: “… you play football. You already know it takes discipline to win”. This showed the class the importance of discipline to achieving success. The school’s football team had not won a game in two years, so this statement held even more importance and grabbed the class’s attention. With this attention, Mr Ross then continued to lecture the class on the importance of discipline in the classroom. This was achieved by stating that “Discipline begins with posture”, and instructed Andrea to demonstrate to the class an example of good posture. During this time, Robert Billings began to take notice and sit up straight in his chair. Mr Ross noticed this and praised Robert for very good posture. This was unusual as Robert often did not

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