The Breakfast Club

Cliques are something that can be found at every highschool. They are groups of people, with common interests and goals, who spend a large amount of time socializing with each other, and a minimal amount of time with others. The Breakfast Club is a movie that brings together 5 students, all belonging to 5 cliques that can be found in any school, the Jocks, the Brains, the Criminals, The Princesses (the girls who own the school) and the Basket-cases. At the beginning of the movie, these 5 seemingly very different people had nothing to say to each other, but throughout the movie the sanctions of each clique become less and less relevant and they find that they themselves have formed their own clique (the Breakfast Club) with new norms and sanctions. In this paper I will be describing 3 very stereotypical cliques through the description of 3 characters from this movie, John Bender, the criminal, Brian Johnson, the brain, and Andrew Clarke, the jock. I'll also be describing Claire, the princess, and why I identify with her.

In this movie, John Bender, represents the criminals. The norms of this group are to be tough, be rebellious and to be hated. These are the people who seem to be pre-determined to live on the streets or if they're lucky, in trailer parks. These are the teenagers with alcoholic, drug-addicted and abusive parents, and they are the teenagers who quickly become just as bad as they're parents are. They are disliked, disrespected and treated unfairly by their peers, but are treated even more unfairly by adults. John Bender conforms perfectly to the norms of his clique. Mr. Vernon, the principal, treats John with utter disrespect and even allows his raging hatred for John Bender to be seen. John Bender admits to his fellow peers the physical and emotional abuse he suffers from his drunken parents and he is, a very tough and violent, attention-seeking, annoying and rude young lad who, until the social barriers between them are broken, is