In The Breakfast Club, John Bender and Brian Johnson portray adolescents who are at the opposite ends of the identity spectrum, yet they are both coming to terms with being adolescents.
Brian Johnson is the stereotypical "nerd." His family has socialized him into accepting nothing less than straight A's. They value education very highly, which is apparent by their license plate of EMC 2 (for Einstein's E=MC2). His identity status is that of Foreclosure. He is "well organized, goal-directed, neat, clean well behaved," (Marcia 155) a straight A student, and belongs to academic clubs. He has a very high sense of morals and is generally obedient and conforming. Most importantly, he is strongly committed to the values set forth by his parents. He identifies them as being the goals of his parents, but accepts them as his own, thus he is trapped in middle adolescence. Brian believes strongly in "the promise" described by Balkan; "if a younger person does all the things he is "supposed to do" during his adolescence, he will then realize success in his adulthood" (Balkan, 12). .
The promise forces Brian to torn between trying to "fit in" and staying committed to the values he has adopted from his parents. Through introspection he has discovered that he does not like what he sees in himself, yet he is not ready to do any exploration to change this. He freaks out when Bender hands him the marijuana to hold on to, because until that point the most rebellious thing he had done were to possess a fake identification in order to vote and bring a flare gun to school. Brian tries to impress Bender in an attempt for acceptance by claiming he is not a virgin, somehow making him more of a man, by identifying with sexuality. When this attempt fails, Brian later makes another attempt at acceptance by smoking marijuana with everyone. Despite these deviations, by the end of the movie, Brian has maintained "virtually unquestioned, the values and occupational directions" set forth by his parents (Marcia, 155).
