An Analysis of Adolescent Development in The Breakfast Club Essay Example

class, Brian begins to feel as if he is not good enough. He is overcome by feelings of depression that would be otherwise unnecessary if the natural occurrence of failure had been made known to him by his parents during his childhood. However, because this concept was never instilled, he becomes depressed due to his grades and feels like the only relief is to kill himself. He receives detention because of this, as he brings a gun to school — although a flare gun may not have done any sort of damage to himself in the first place — and the gun goes off in his locker. This rebellion originates due to the stress of expectations and the unusual feeling that rule-followers can take from doing things that are against the rules. In the same way, he participates in multiple instances of misbehavior during his day of detention such as escaping from the library without permission and doing drugs. In a way, this makes him feel like less of an outcast with the four other students because the rebellious acts bring them all together in a strange way. Compared to the other four students who attend the detention, Brian is relatively unchanged by his experience. Circumstantially, his life is the same with the constant pressure from his family.

Mentally though, he does not feel like he is abnormal. He learns that it is okay to be different and that people's differences and imperfections make them identifiable in the world. He learns the importance of failure in the path of one's life and that without it no one learns. He also discovers a bit of insight on

the mindsets and morality of other people within different cliques. For example, the popular kids may feel the pressure from their friends that he feels from his parents, the rebels like Bender use delinquent behaviors to combat a terrible home life; and strange personality types like Allison may just be looking for a place to belong. In essence, he learns that everyone has their problems and those shape each person into who they are and who they will become. Brian is the most identifiable character because he reveals the stress that can occur when parents have high expectations of their child's performance and the dejection that often comes with failure. Through a serious of bad decisions due to depression and social isolation, he is sent to detention. There he befriends four very different people who pull him out of his comfort zone and into their own shoes. Over the course of his day in detention, he learns that people are different and that it is okay to fit in differently than others as long as you are satisfied with the way you live your life and accepting of failures and struggles that occur along the way.