We just started reading The Wave and because Mr. R was absent Mrs. D put up the following questions for us to answer.

David tries to convince Laurie to forget the events that took place in Nazi Germany;
“Forget about it. It happened once and the world learned its lesson. It’ll never happen again.” (p.21)

I don’t know if I agree with this quote. Well, we can’t just forget about what happened 50 years ago, even though you might think that the world learned its lesson we still need to remember that they did something bad. Violence and events like this, won’t end, just because of what happened back then, and we can’t change the fact the people will always want a little bit of power and success. If we just forget what happened, maybe someone will make the same mistake. Do you agree with the quote or not?

Should we try to forget evil events, and trust in the goodness of human nature?

No, we should not forget it all. It might be painful to see or hear, but we can’t just trust that everyone will not try to do the same thing, though I don’t think it will ever happen because everyone knows how awful it was and many now know that you have to respect other peoples culture and religion. What do you think?

Is evil an outside force, or are we all capable of evil acts?

I think it’s both. I would connect evil to power, greed, and ignorance. Hitler wanted power, he wanted the Germans to have power and not the Jews. He was greedy for the wealth that the Jews had gained by their own knowledge and work, and lastly, he was ignorant of others’ opinions. If you didn’t agree with him you would be treated like a Jew, and no one wanted that. If you look at society today, as I said in another post; people think they get power from what they own, well, I would say that is an outside force of evil or power.  If you want more you’re often that kind of person who wants a lot of friends, but after awhile you just dump them like trash. Isn’t that a connection to what Hitler did? Well, everyone can be evil to some degree. Sometimes you just might not use the word “evil”, but maybe the word “mean”. You can’t be nice all the time, that’s not how humans are made. It often depends on what situation you are in, if you are trying to survive you might end up being evil, or greedy towards the other people around you who are maybe trying to survive as well. So, I would always say that “we are all capable of evil acts”, just maybe not all the time, maybe just once in our lives, and I would say that it’s okay, as long as you somehow make up to it, and learn from what you did. Do you agree?