In "The Breakfast Club" five contrasting personalities, each secure in his identity and yet filled with insecurities, spend a Saturday confined in detention at their school, Shermer High, in Illinois. Each character has a troubled life as foreshadowed in their presence in detention. As we take a look at each individual character and their backgrounds, we analyze each exclusive characters persona and true personality. In today's world, as well as when the movie was shot, in 1985, it seems as though families shape, intentionally or not, their children into petite reflections of themselves. School, thru peer pressure and thru the various academic and social clubs, serves to enhance the socialization process begun at home. Fortunately, adolescents of every age are quite aware of what they are going through and have the ability to "break the fast" forced on them by the socialization process which begins in the home and is reinforced at school, not only by students and parents but disciplinarians like Mr. Vernon as well. .
John Bender, the main character in the film, is seen as the "criminal". His persona is portrayed in the film as a typical high school "bully". He is a very rebellious character, who clearly wants to be seen as the tough guy to everyone, for example: smoking cigarettes and talking dirty to Claire, when he said, "come on Sporto, level with me. do you slip her the hot. beef. injection?" when talking about her sexual life, if one, with Andrew. Bender seems to be very outspoken and always looking for trouble. He makes himself an instigator of many situations causing people to initially dislike him. His appearance alone is what I believe causes many people to have negative thoughts about him, he wears biker gloves, ratty clothes, has uncut hair, and has cigarette burns on his body. Bender definitely has a lot of issues that he doesn"t care to talk about, and its apparent that he deals with them by using dry humor and sarcasm.