Mrs. H gave us this quote and a few questions to answer.

“The past is never dead, it’s not even past.”

What does this quote mean to you?
I think it’s saying that what happened in the past can always happen again, either if it’s good or bad. The past is not dead, therefore it can re-occur again. I think we should try not to let bad things from the past happen again, but learn from our mistakes, though, we should repeat good things that gave us success, therefore will give us more success and the world will be a better place.

How does this connect to The Wave?
If you look at how the Seniors are gaining power and control and pretty much dictating the school like Hitler and The Nazis did it in Germany, which is the past, and now the past is re-occuring in a modern-day school. The past is still alive in this school and it’s affecting everyone in either good ways or bad ways. Therefore, the past is never dead.

American History connection…
I would say that The Wave connects to how the Puritans gained power in the “New World”. They settled there to get their freedom of religion and the freedom to believe in what they wanted, but it ended up in fights, and they banished people from their settlements who were not a Puritan. If you look at The Wave, then first it starts out peacefully, and is just a small class thing, and in America it was a small settlement, that then grew and became more powerful, and therefore, if you were not a part of the group, not being a member of The Wave or not being a Puritan, you would be banished or abused. Do you agree?

Mrs. H asked us to answer these questions about The Wave and post them on our blogs.

Laurie has noticed that non-wave members are being bullied into The Wave.

Have you ever been forced to join something against your will?
I don’t think I’ve ever been forced into anything I didn’t want to. I guess I just don’t remember because it is very common that people DO get forced into something that they don’t feel comfortable doing, or that they are not interested in. Or is it just me who thinks that?

How should we behave if we see someone being taunted or bullied by a group of people?
It depends on what kind of person you are. You can either go directly and tell the bullies to stop and risk being bullied yourself, or you can go to a teacher or a councelor and tell them what is going on and they will do something about it. It can often be dangerous to act yourself, because the bullies might target YOU instead, especially if you start defending the person being bullied by bullying back. I guess I just answered the last question too; Should we try not to get involved or should we intervene? What is your opinion on these topics?

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?