Identity Development In The Breakfast Club

Steve Jobs once said, during a commencement speech at Stanford, “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice” (Goodreads). Every single person on earth is a unique individual with their own thoughts and actions. In life every person goes through a stage of growth and development, both mentally and physically, where they are striving to become a more complete human being not constrained by their youth. This stage usually develops during adolescence, happening in the teenage years of one’s life. It also happens that this is occurring during the time of school when children are starting to study harder material and deal with more complex social situations.
Sometimes this can overwhelm a child, but it is instrumental

in helping them to go through the stage of Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development known as “Identity vs. Role Confusion” (Weiten). In this stage of development, happening between 13-21 years old, an individual is looking for their identity, which is defined as “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual” (Merriam-Webster) (Weiten). This means that the individual is searching to find their own morals, beliefs, and what distinguishes them as a person from the rest of society. The opposite side of the search for identity is that someone could be stuck in “role confusion” or where they are too caught up in what their peers are doing to be able to think for themselves (Weiten). This search for identity is something that everyone goes through in life and due to it being such a struggle, it has been portrayed in several different ways such as movies and music.
Another way that the search for identity is shown is by James Marcia’s theory. The way that this theory is organized is that an individual can be one of four stages at a given time. The stages are broken up into whether or not a crisis has occurred, causing a person to figure out what their actions in life are, or if commitment to a way of life has happened or not. The four stages are; achievement where both crisis and commitment have been achieved, foreclosure where commitment has occurred but crisis has not, moratorium where crisis has occurred but commitment has not, and finally diffusion where neither commitment nor crisis has been conquered. Life is considered to be productive when you are either in achievement or moratorium because you are searching for a purpose in life. (Weiten). Two of the films which show a great deal of the search for one’s identity are The Breakfast Club and Ferris Buller’s Day Off.
In the movie The Breakfast Club, several students are required to come into school and serve a Saturday detention for various reasons. The students are all of completely different backgrounds ranging from jocks, popular kids, nerds, and outcasts. The several characters are; Bender, a “criminal”, Claire the popular girl, Andrew the jock, Brain the nerd, and Allison the “outcast.” The detention starts out with the principal coming into the library and assigns everyone to write a 1000-word essay on describing who they think they are as a person. As soon as the principal leaves to go back to his office, everyone starts to arguing. The arguments that start happening are caused by disagreements in values from which each one believes in. Slowly but surely, each one starts to warm up to talking to the others but however still cannot find common ground with one another (The Breakfast Club).
Eventually, after having the whole crew wander the halls together to get marijuana from a locker, Bender is locked in closet after getting caught in the hall. When Bender escapes and rejoins the rest of the group in the library, they all finally start to come together as a group. This first happens when the rest of the group keeps it a secret that Bender escapes and then with them all smoking the marijuana together in the library. A short time after this, the whole group is sitting together on the floor of the library when they are having a conversation about what each person would do for a million dollars. This conversation allows each of them to grow closer to one another but causes some tensions due to it. The point whether or not they will be friends and say hi to each other on Monday comes up and makes everyone uneasy. However, slight romances between Bender and Claire along with Allison and Andrew develop, which go against what they think of the social norms for people in their friend groups. Finally, the Saturday detention is let out and everyone goes home while the principal reads their collective essay (The Breakfast Club).
The movie begins with a monologue from the essay written where they wrote “You see us as you want to see us...as a brain, athlete, basket case, princess, criminal…that’s the way we saw each other at 7 am this morning, we were brainwashed” (The Breakfast Club).

Two of the characters from The Breakfast Club who show major identity development are Bender and Andrew. Relating to the opening monologue, Bender is considered to be the criminal while Andrew is the athlete. At the beginning of the movie Bender could be considered to be in diffusion because he is neither facing a crisis (that he would care about) or making a commitment to anything. This is compared to Andrew who would be thought to be in achievement because he is planning on wrestling in college and overcome obstacles to become a very good wrestler. During the movie, Bender changes in the fact that he changes into moratorium because although he has not yet committed to anything yet, he has at least faced a crisis which forces him to start thinking about his actions. He does this by actually getting to know the others by talking to them instead of just trying to annoy the principal. Andrew shifts from being in achievement to going into moratorium. This is because at first Andrew seemed to be full of himself but by the end, after revealing some major issues he has with his father, he seemed to no longer be sure that wrestling was his true calling to make himself happy as a person. Due to this, Andrew has faced the crisis of dealing with his father and revealing it to the others but is not able to face his fear yet (The Breakfast

Club).
In the movie Ferris Buller’s Day Off a high school senior and friends skip school on one day to explore Chicago and go enjoy a beautiful spring day. The movie starts out with Ferris faking an illness to his parents to be able to get out of school for the day. He then calls his best friend Cameron who is actually sick to come and join him for the day. After a little bit of arguing back and forth between them, Cameron eventually joins in and goes with Ferris in Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari, although Cameron is not comfortable with it. The two of them make up a fake story about how Ferris’ girlfriend Sloane’s grandmother died in order to also get her out of school. After picking up Sloane, the three of them roam around Chicago for the whole day. Several times during the day they almost run into Ferris’ father while traveling (Ferris Buller’s Day Off).
After spending the whole day out, they go to pick up the Ferrari from a car garage and realize that they had driven it around almost 200 miles. Since the car was not supposed to be driven, this freaks out Cameron to the point where he seems to not even be in his own body. Eventually they go back to Cameron’s house and instead of still feeling sorry for himself, Cameron takes out his aggression towards how his father treats him on the car. Since they were trying to take off the miles on the odometer by putting it in reverse, when Cameron accidentally kicks the car off the stand the Ferrari ended up drives itself out of the house and down into the ravine behind his house (Ferris Buller’s Day Off).
All while this is going on, the dean of students, Ed Rooney, goes to Ferris’ house in order to try and find him, since this is not the first time that Ferris had skipped school. Rooney snoops around Ferris’ house and eventually goes inside after Ferris’ sister, Jeanie, comes home. When Jeanie finds Rooney in the house she kicks him and calls the police. Eventually after Jeanie gets picked by her mother at the police station, who was brought there because the police thought she was doing a prank call, her and Ferris arrived back at home at the same exact time with Ferris arriving just in time not to get in trouble (Ferris Buller’s Day Off).
In Ferris Buller’s Day Off the main character who shows identity development is Cameron. At the beginning of the movie, Cameron is very apprehensive of going out during the day with Ferris since he was sick, and even more worried about taking his father’s Ferrari out for a drive. Due to this apprehension and the fact that he only does things when Ferris tells him to, Cameron would most likely be foreclosure since he will blindly commit to an action after enough persuasion without actually thinking about all the different angles about how he could be affected. Following when he found out that the extra 175 miles were put on the Ferrari, Cameron seemed completely out of it and not in touch with reality before recognizing that because of the fact that he allowed them to take the car out that he would have to face his father and explain himself. This means that after finding out this that Cameron goes through a brief stage of diffusion where he is totally lost before then going to achievement where he is committed to facing his father (Ferris Buller’s Day Off).
Erikson’s theory of identity development where, during adolescence, a person faces the struggle of identity versus role confusion is very evident in these movies. One example is, that in The Breakfast Club, this is portrayed is because in the beginning of the movie each person is represented as being a completely different stereotype. However, by the end of the movie during the ending monologue they said that “We found out that each one of us is a brain…and an athlete…and a basket case…and a princess…and a criminal” meaning that they all embody every one of the stereotypes in themselves (The Breakfast Club). This is also shown in Ferris Buller’s Day Off because when Ferris is off in the parade and Cameron talks to Sloane he brings up the point that although him and Ferris are best friends that he does not think that they will still be that close in college since they are fundamentally different people. This supports Erikson’s theory because Cameron decided that he wants to stay friends with someone since they have the same values rather than just being friends just because (Ferris Buller’s Day Off).
The Breakfast Club and Ferris Buller’s Day Off are two movies that show a lot of identity development in their characters. Both movies are considered to be “coming of age” films meaning that the characters go through this form of identity development where they realize their place in life. It is also convenient how these movies are both considered to be classics where numerous people considered them to be their favorites of all time. This very well could be due to their strong messages about involvement and going against social norms. In a way, one of the only ways that a person could find their identity is by going against the social norms. If one was to stay within the social norms, then they would stick with the roles in which they are set in rather than finding who they are really. Just like Paracelsus once said, “Be not another, if you can be yourself” (Goodreads). If you are able to find your identity, then you will realize how different and special you are from everyone else.