The Breakfast Club

In the movie The Breakfast Club it depicts the different types of social groups in high school by using five teenagers as the main characters. It explores the different pressures put on teenagers to fit in their groups, as well as the expectations from parents and authority figures. The five teenagers start to realize that although they all have different social groups they are more similar than different.
The movie is based on five students stuck in detention together. The students pass the hours by talking, arguing, and, at one point, smoking marijuana. As the day goes on the students begin to open up to each other. The students realize that even with their differences, they face similar pressures and complications in their lives. They all feel pressures from all aspects of their lives from who they can befriend, grades, social status, strained relationships with their parents.
Two of the main characters are Clair and Allison. Clair who is from the popular group is going through something most teens experience in high school, pressure from her friends. She is a virgin and feels she should be doing what all her other friends are doing. It’s sad to see how in high school the pressures of being sexually active are so high. She is also going through family problems. Her parents are divorced and are using her to get back at each other during arguments. Allison is the quietest student except for her occasional outburst and seems to be a compulsive liar. She’s considered the basket case. She really doesn’t have any friends. It seems to me she is fairly insecure. She doesn’t have a relationship with her parents either, due to them having problems of their own.
The three teenage boys are Andrew, John and Brian. The athlete is Andrew he doesn’t seem to have a brain of his own. He can’t seem to think for himself. He also has pressures from his father when it comes to wrestling and pushes him as hard as possible. John is considered the more troubled student. He is more of the wild child in the group. John supplies the marijuana when they smoke. He comes from an abusive household, at one point he shows a scar on his arm from where his father put cigarette out on him. Brian is the brain he is considered the nerd. The pressures he feels are more about grades, he even attempted suicide due to a bad grade. His parents put extreme pressures on him to maintain good grades. Although Brian doesn’t seem to worry about what other people think of his friends he’s the one that will try to get along with everyone and not judge.
As you can see they really do share so many similarities. It just goes to show that no matter what social group your in, someone out there can be experiencing the same pain, pressures and expectations as you. Also you should never judge someone by there appearance, but yet by whom they are in the inside. You never know what someone is going through. As they say never judge a book by its cover.