The Breakfast Club: Exploring Peer Relationships

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The movie The Breakfast Club is a perfect example of peer relationships in the adolescent society. It shows the viewer some of the main stereotypes of students in high school you have a jock, a nerd, the weirdo, a rebel, and a prep. Over the course of a Saturday detention the different types of peers learn a lot about one another by hearing what each one has done to get into Saturday detention as well as why they chose to do it. The first character that intrigued me, probably because I could relate to him the most was Andrew, the "jock." A jock is the group of people that are athletically inclined and are usually part of a sports team. When all the students were confessing what they had done he seemed the most regretful of his actions. Andrew being a great wrestler at school saw an unsuspecting teammate that was much smaller than he was and decided to jump on him and start beating up on him. What made his case so extreme was that not only did beat up on his teammate but he taped his butt cheeks together. The perception that I, as well as the members of the breakfast club, had of Andrew was that he couldn't think for himself. He also thought the same thing because he said that he felt pressured by his dad to do something mischievous because he (his dad) used to get into mischievous acts often while he was in high school. So while he was looking at his smaller teammate he said that all he could here was his father telling him about being a winner and doing so many unnecessary things just because he was an exceptional athlete. When Andrew told his story it seemed that all the other people were going to cry because they could see that he regretted doing what he did. The next character that intrigued me was Brian, the quote-on-quote "nerd." A nerd is a person that is academically inclined and is known for striving to get good grades and being socially inept. His confession of why he was in Saturday detention seemed a lot more serious then it actually turned out to be. He was in Saturday detention because he had a gun in his locker. He bought the gun to kill because he had intent on killing himself.

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