The Breakfast Club Identity Analysis

INTRO: Iconic 80’s movie The Breakfast Club is our inspiration for this dialogue. When this group of high school delinquents was assigned to write an essay during detention on who they were, the group sparks up the conversation of personal identity, ultimately discovering themselves. The scene opens with the students serving their detention sentences in the Library. BENDER: [to Claire] Hey pretty lady, what are you doing here. CLAIRE: Go gag on a spoon. If you MUST know, nothing major, just ditched to go shopping. BENDER: THAT’S IT?!?! I pulled the fire alarm, I was going to end up in here anyway. I’ll be here for the next six weeks[lounges in chair- to Brian] How’d you get here? I thought the only place you belonged was in the inside

Now we have to write an essay too? How am I supposed to know who I am? BRIAN: It 's easy, all it is, is an essay on personal identity. Who we really are, what makes you you. For example, I believe that we are our brains; it is where all our decisions are made, even the bad ones, like the ones that got us stuck here. So the good and bad in us is all in our brain, it is us. We are all our brains... CLAIRE: ...But we have never seen our brains, we know they are there, but if you took my brain out and your brain out and put them side by side, you could not tell which is mine and which is yours. Therefore, I think we are our bodies. That is what we see in the mirror, that is what we identify with, that is how others know who we are. Hence, that is us. BRIAN: You don 't look the same as you did five years ago, and you won 't look the same in 50. How are we supposed to recognize something which is constantly changing? CLAIRE: Your brain is constantly changing; you are always learning new things, meeting new people and making new memories. If you are saying that if something changes it is not the same, then your argument is

We aren’t the bookshelf at all, we are the books. Since you two bimbos are so obsessed with book analogies, I will put this in terms your underdeveloped brains can understand. The bookshelf is kept by maybe God or whatever mystical force of the universe keeps us all in line. The bookshelf is something us mortals will never be able to see. The only thing we can see and be sure of is the fact that we are the book. Everyday our brains are unconsciously scribing ourselves onto pages which make up the book, us. For example if you changed the cover, one would still say the book is the same. If you ripped out a couple pages, the book would still be the same. What I am trying to say is we are this invisible thing that exists in the body and the brain. BRIAN: So if you ripped out all the pages of this book you’re speaking of, would they still be the same person? In other words why do people who have lost all their memories still considered, legally, the same person? CLAIRE: Yeah Bender your argument does not make sense. People 's “cover”, physical appearance, is changing constantly, yet they are considered the same person. BENDER: Claire are you ever focused on anything besides your looks? CLAIRE: At least I have something to brag about and am not a low life like you. BENDER: (to Claire) Bag your