John Bender's Role Identity

In “ The Breakfast Club” five high school students have to go to a Saturday detention for eight hours. Each student is from a different social group, or clique. You have the “brain,” the “athlete,” the “basketcase,” the “princess,” and the “criminal.” Although they are not the same and come from different groups, we soon realize that they are it may not seem that way at first, but as time goes by in their dentition, they all begin to realize they really are not different after all and start to recognize traits they share with each other. The criminal. What defines a criminal is as simple as someone who committed a crime, but committing a crime does not exactly make you a criminal. This is a problem because now people who may have committed

Another role identity example is by the way he talks, it is the bad boy attitude that he conveys by the tone of his voice and by the choice of his words. “ Being bad feels pretty good, huh?” (Hughes, 1985, scene 36) This quote shows where Bender is coming from. Since when does being bad supposed to feel good in normal society. “ screws fall out all the time. The world’s an imperfect place.”(Hughes, 1985, scene 19 )John Bender sees himself as falling out of normal society, he feels that he is no longer apart of it and justifying it by saying “The world’s an imperfect place” (Hughes, 1985, scene 33 ) One could compare his mannerisms to Jim Stark in the movie Rebel Without A Cause. John Bender appears to be a more modern version of Jim Stark. His tough guy persona also made him a natural leader for the group of detentionees. This is exemplified by when he suggested to get the marugina out of the locker and the group was naturally drawn in to follow him. The group also followed him to where he was going to smoke is marijuana. Clearly, not all members of the group were not marijuana smokers. John’s upbringing also had an influence on his role identity. For instance the relationship with his father. An example of that is the following quote from his dad about John. “Stupid, worthless, no good, goddamn, freeloading son of a bitch.

To a rebel character such as John this would just not make any sense. “Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...and an athlete...and a basket case...a princess...and a criminal...Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.” (Hughes, 1985, scene 39 ) During the Saturday detention the students found that how they originally perceived themselves to be wasn't so, they found that they also had a little bit of each other Bender goes out of his norm by saying “I'm thinkin' of tryin' out for a scholarship.” (Hughes, 1985, scene 20)Then Vernon brings John back to reality by saying that he will probably be the last one to drop out of