Stereotypes In The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club

This paper is an analysis of five dissimilar teenagers representing a cross-section of middle class high school students in the suburbs. The students meet each other for the first time during a Saturday morning detention session. Each student arrived to the school by different means, which is a precursor to determining the type of individual each one is. The group is comprised of a "princess", an "athlete”, a "brain", a "criminal", and a "basket case". These are the roles the students play during the week. Because of typical stereotypes and status levels, at the onset, the students don’t want anything to do each other at the beginning of the detention session. However, once confronted by the controlling principal and
She is a very quiet girl hardly ever speaking, which makes it difficult for people to understand her. When she does speak, she usually does so in self defense. She longs for attention, in order to receive it; she acts like a mentally unstable individual. She suffers from boredom and is very reserved. She shocked the group when she emptied her purse which held nothing but useless items in an attempt to gain attention from the others at the beginning of the detention session. Allison was dropped off to the school, but you can’t tell by who as the person drives off before any words are exchanged. She states that she did nothing wrong to get sent to detention. She displays very peculiar behavior during the detention session. At the onset of the detention session, each student’s status is conveyed by their existing peer social status in school. They form bonds, with whom they feel most comfortable with, for example, Claire and Andrew immediately sit down next to each other and begin exchanging conversation about the friends they have in common within the “popular” crowd that they are a part of. Brian is next in line in the school social status scene because of his intelligence but he is still considered to be a geek by his peers. In contrast, Allison and Bender are at the bottom of the school social
Everyone at this school loves me.” Looking at her from the others perspective, she appears to be very self-centered and more important than the others. Although Claire leads the group to believe she had been sexually active due to peer pressure, she ultimately admitted to the group that she is still a virgin. Allison actually tricked her by lying and being deviant, having Claire to admit she was a virgin. Allison then expressed to the group that being sexually active is actually a double edged sword in their social setting because if a girl admits to being sexually active, she is considered to be a slut while if she denies being sexually active she is considered a prude. Her observation demonstrates she isn’t exactly who the group perceives her to be. Eventually the group allows Claire to see that there is much more to life than being popular in