Genocide In The 5th Wave

Imagine that you are trying to survive through one of the most destructive things that can happen to a civilization, a genocide. In The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, Cassie goes from one week living a normal high school life, to the next week trying to rescue her brother from a fake military base ran by “the others”. She doesn’t know why this is happening, exactly where her brother is or if she will ever find him again. The Others have caused five waves of destruction to the world some of the waves include; getting rid of all electricity, a massive tsunami, spreading of plague and training the good humans to kill other good humans. Did other genocides throughout human history successfully kill as many people as they hoped to kill? The 5th Wave

The Rwandan genocide began because, the Bahutu rebelled against the Watusi (Kimble 247). Also as told by Maritz, “an important indicator for the potential of future genocide is a difficult life condition, such as war or economic crisis” (Maritz). He argues that, “during times of hardship humans feel the need to protect themselves, which can result in losing respect for another group or blaming that group for the present conditions. Often, there is a history of long standing animosities toward the group that is blamed” (Maritz). While some genocides are caused by war or economic crisis, others can be because groups were blamed for something that they may or may not have actually done. Turkish leaders had suspected that armenians were working with Russia, which provided them with a reason to kill the entire group (Maritz). The logic behind this genocide could have been because a group was accused of being apart of a rebel army. Exterminating this group was justified as an “act of self defense” (Maritz). The “victims are often portrayed as wealthy and as willing to take advantage of other groups, which justifies killing that group” (Maritz). If the enemy can come up with an excuse to perform the genocide then it doesn’t look as bad to outsiders. Another way to make a genocide seem okay is that, “Being a part of something larger is, therefore, provided through belonging to a

During this genocide, “Turkey was in control and fighting against Russia. Fearing that the Armenians might aid the enemy, hundreds of thousands of helpless people were driven into the Arabian desert to die of heat and starvation” (Aspaturian 21). Religion was the main reason people were attacking each other. Some people were forced to assimilation or convert to Islam and adopt Turkish names in order to survive (1915 Genocide). The main goal of the genocide was to create a homogenous turkish state (1915 Genocide). The Turks deported thousands of Armenians, driving them from their homes into the desert to die (Aspaturian 23). The events of World War 1, “in the ottoman empire, where approximately 2 million christian inhabitants were killed or disappeared traceless” (1915 Genocide). The genocide, “emptied the ottoman empire and current Turkey from its christian population leaving an almost entirely Muslim/Turkish Turkey” (1915 Genocide). They completed their goal, therefore it was a successful genocide. Just like in the 5th wave, the others or the enemy attacking the world “aren’t stupid. The others are so far ahead of us, it’s like comparing the dumbest human to the smartest dog. No contest” (Yancey 1). The 5th wave was very successful as well because of how smart the attackers were, so they had good