The Breakfast Club

In the 1985 movie, The Breakfast Club, five diverse detainees are forced to spend a Saturday in detention (Hughes, 1985). When they first arrive, their stereotypes and biases keep them blind to the fact they could possibly have empathy and understanding for the different dilemmas they are all going through. At first glance, The Breakfast Club is a heartwarming story of a group of adolescents who turn from being strangers to realizing they have a lot more in common than they thought. After looking beyond the surface, it is obvious the story consists of many problems adolescents have to deal with every day. The Breakfast Club exemplifies the major struggles teenagers must deal with such as adolescent egocentrism, identity confusion, parent-adolescent conflicts, and peer pressure.
Adolescent egocentrism is a theme that remains constant throughout the movie. According to John Santrock, author of Essentials of Life-Span Development, adolescent egocentrism is the heightened self-consciousness of adolescents (Santrock, 2012). All of the characters display self-absorption to a varying degree, but Claire is the epitome of adolescent egocentrism. She is too preoccupied with her own view of the world and how she is seen by her peers to attempt to sympathize for others and their problems. After she initially arrives to detention, she takes a quick glance around at her inferior company and states there must be a mistake. She cannot handle the fact she will have to spend the entire evening with people who are so much lower on the social ladder than she is.
In addition to her pretentious attitude, Claire also suffers from a severe sense of self. In the scene describing how difficult her life is she states, “Do you know how popular I am? I am...

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...conform to their peers when they are uncertain about their social identity and when they are in the presence of someone they perceive to have higher status than they do (Santrock, 2012).
In conclusion, The Breakfast Club is more than just a tale of a group of teenagers who spend a Saturday in detention together. It is a story of the adolescents bonding together to realize their situations aren’t quite that different. From pressures of parents to peer groups and cliques, the effects of letting societal pressures dictate who they think they are resulted into them landing into the position they are in. The movie embodies many of the dilemmas that adolescents are forced to face and overcome. From adolescent egocentrism to identity confusion, the characters prove that although they may appear different on the outside, their problems and struggles aren’t very different.