The progression of The Wave in Gordon High School throughout the novel The Wave by Rhue Morton, reviewing the themes of conformity (the draw of community), individualism and authoritarianism. The Wave is a reenactment of what happened in the Holocaust but inside a classroom. Ben Ross starts the progression of The Wave, he thought that this would help the students in his class understand what happened in the Holocaust and believed that he would stay in control and have power of the progression in this classroom experiment. In The Wave Rhue utilizes the character journeys of Robert Billing and David Collins. Their journeys of conforming were rapid; they both quickly got involved in The Wave. The motives of David Collins and Robert Billings were quite diverse; Robert seemed to have bad intentions even before The Wave had started where as David Collins wanted to his football team to have more team spirit and for isolated students to feel like they belong. As it grew Laurie Saunders journey through The Wave portrayed the theme of individualism, by being excluded from school events and being targeted on because of her disagreement of joining The Wave.
The progression of The Wave is assisted by conformity, the football team, who are seen as being very popular, introduced the conformity theme and the other students really take to it and most students want to join The Wave. Rhue challenges the reader to consider the theme of conformity. David Collins is the star of the football team and is very liked by his fellow students and classmates. David likes and encourages the idea of The Wave; David is a driving force and a big influence on his peers to join. David gets the football team to join in on The Wave to get everyone in the school to ...
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...volved in this, I can assure you that it cant get out of hand.” (p.79). He used The Wave to help his students relate to the Holocaust. Rhue portrays the theme of power through Ben Ross’s experience of The Wave and how it really takes over him although he thinks his still in control, he really isn’t and it goes above him and the students start to take control over him.
The progression of The Wave was sped up by the theme of conformity because the students all felt like they needed to be involved but by being involved in The Wave they lost their individualism, the people who stayed true to themselves and didn’t conform slowed the movement. The Wave movement was created by Ben Ross who let the power go to his head and eventually lost control of The Wave without realizing his students were becoming more influential and dominant towards the younger members of The Wave.
The book “The Third Wave,” was an experiment happened in April 1967. The experiment was thought up by a history teacher named Ron Jones. Jones basic idea was to make a group that followed certain rules. After a few days the experiment had gone out of control and was then stopped. The reason many of the students thought of joining the so called Third wave because they thought it was cool. Also any students that were not in the group were shunned
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
Power causes the dictator to lose sight of his/her morals and good intentions thus resulting in causing corruption among themselves and also those around them. These aspects can be easily seen in Animal Farm and The Wave particularly when the dictators get too addicted to power and rationalises their treacherous actions as if to say “What I am doing is for your own good.” This manipulation of language demonstrates how the dictator takes advantage and wrongly uses power to justify his ways. The simple idea of power can cause addiction and corruption without anyone realising, which has been proven to end in very dangerous situations in both novels. Above all, power is just an obsessive scheme that ultimately causes inequality among the group, destroys relationships, leads to dictatorship and induces
Since the publication of, Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the holocaust has been deemed one of the darkest times in humanity, from the eradication of Jewish people to killing of innocents. Wiesel was one of the Jewish people to be in the holocaust and from his experience he gave us a memoir that manages to capture the dark side of human nature in the holocaust. He demonstrates the dark side of human nature through the cruelty the guards treat the Jews and how the Jews became cold hearted to each other. Wiesel uses foreshadowing and imagery, and metaphors to describe these events.
According to Simply Psychology, conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to the real- involving the physical presence of others or imagined-involving the pressure of social norms or expectations of a group. In story “A&P by John Updike” the setting in 1961, reflects on some of the values society held at that time. I will suggest that people were expected to act and dress in a proper fashion. However in A&P, the appearances of three girls who entered the store in their swim wear and the differences of opinion
The best teachers have the capabilities to teach from first hand experience. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel conveys his grueling childhood experiences of survival to an audience that would otherwise be left unknown to the full terrors of the Holocaust. Night discloses mental and physical torture of the concentration camps; this harsh treatment forced Elie to survive rather than live. His expert use of literary devices allowed Wiesel to grasp readers by the hand and theatrically display to what extent the stress of survival can change an individual’s morals. Through foreshadowing, symbolism, and repetition, Wiesel’s tale proves that the innate dark quality of survival can take over an individual.
This is a compliance of behavior that is socially accepted by certain standards. Conformity is where an individual abides by what it expected of them based off of their own circumstances. The article studied variations in sports’ influences across social classes. In the article, both higher and lower status backgrounds were somewhat similar while discussing early attraction to sports. Despite some similarities, differences explained the tendency of males from lower-status backgrounds develop higher levels of commitment to sports careers. In the article, a man spoke on his NFL career with high regards, but shockingly had a passion for something other than football. He stated that he once had a love for playing the drums, and at an early age dreamed of becoming a professional drummer in band someday. His family could not afford a drum set so instead he settled for a cheap football. In return he chose to conform to his economic misfortune and created a new dream of becoming a NFL football player. On the other hand, a thirty-two year old white college athletic director reported he had seen his chance to pursue a professional baseball career as “pissing in the wind” so in return focused on his education. This man conformed to his economic opportunities such as a college degree and chose a life in education. Social classes and economic backgrounds have a lasting impact on an individual’s conformity due to the limitations or opportunities provided
At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.
Using lines and basic shapes to emphasize shading and detail and then teamed with such a complex theme, Art’s story and graphics join together in a complimentary marriage. With the nearly childlike drawings and the intense mature storyline, there is a message that this is being written by the child telling the story of the parent. The story emphasizes his father’s inability to grow and repair from his past but even without the words you can almost see that Art has never truly be able to move past his the trauma of growing up with his parents. Using his frustrations and the need to explore the history of his father’s idiosyncrasies, Art creates a poignant story not only about the tragedy of the holocaust, but of the realities of being a child growing up with survivor parents.
It is very common to see conformity among young people, especially when large groups of young people are constantly around each other. School is one example where conformity is rampant. For some reason people tend to gravitate towards what others are doing. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, the characters are no different from any other young person in that they tend to conform. Ishiguro shows this conformity to prove that conformity stems from the want to fit in and pure ignorance. At Hailsham, the students conform just to fit in with the rest of the students, but they also conform because they do not know any better.
Conformity is defined as the occurrence of people yielding to social pressures as a result of pressure from a group of their peers; when faced by the pressure to conform, people will alter their behaviour and actions to fit the norm demonstrated by their peers (Lilienfield et al., 2012). Conformity is studied so that is can be understood and used in society to facilitate positive outcomes, and help avoid situations where peoples’ predisposition to conform leads to negative consequences (Lilienfield et al., 2012). By understanding conformity and other social processes society as a whole is able to understand themselves better and motivates them to work on improving as a whole (Lilienfield et al., 2012).
How do the actions and words of a society affect the way people act? In Never Let Me Go, author Kazuo Ishiguro depicts a society in which individuality is threatened by the pressure to conform through methods such as peer pressure and social expectations. Without a doubt, peer pressure is most commonly found in schools today just as social expectations are suffocating the middle class’ desire to become their own unique person.
From the displays of power that have been shown through out this essay, we see that this story is a story about power. Power is the story is primarily about peoples need for some small amount of power to survive in life and to feel that hey have a purpose within their society which every society it may be whether its is Gilead or Nazi Germany or modern day Britain.
Conformity is a concept that has intrigued psychologists for decades; a concept that has been the foundation of numerous studies, books, and that has been subtly woven into the media. Most of the research done on conformity has to do with what can cause conforming behavior and when conforming behavior is most prevalent. There are generally two types of influences that can cause conforming behavior, informational social influences and normative social influence. Both deal with the when and why of conformity in society and what situations typically cause a group or one or two people to conform. The most powerful and dangerous type of conformity is conformity to authority, which can cause people to obey orders that they would normally not follow in any other situation. With that being said, informational social influence can fuel conforming behavior, especially in instances when the situation is a crisis, ambiguous, and when other people in the situation have authority or expertise.