The Breakfast Club Essay Example for Free

The Breakfast society EssayThe plot follows five scholarly persons at fictional Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois as they report for Saturday grasp on March 24, 1984. While non complete strangers, the five teenagers are each from a distinguishable clique or affectionate group.The five students Allison, Andrew, Bender, Brian, and Claire who seem to have nothing in common at first, come together at the high school library, where they are harangued and ordered not to speak or move from their seats by the antagonistic principal, Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason). They are to remain for a period of eight hours and fifty-four minutes (from 706 A.M. to 4 P.M., the only indication of time being on a clock that is 20 minutes fast). He assigns a 1,000 word essay (in which each student must write some who he or she thinks they are) and then leaves them mostly unsupervised, returning only occasionally to check on them. Bender, who has a particularly shun relationship with Mr. Ve rnon, disregards the rules and riles the other students mocking Brian and Andrew, and sexually harassing Claire. Allison remains oddly quiet except for the occasional random outburst.The students pass the hours in a variety of ways. in stages they open up to each other and reveal their inner secrets (for example, Allison is a compulsive liar, Bender comes from an abusive household and Brian and Claire are ashamed of their virginity). They also signalise that they all have strained relationships with their parents and are afraid of making the same mistakes as the adults around them. However, despite these developing friendships the students are afraid that once the detention is over, they will return to their very different cliques and never speak to each other again.At the request and consensus of the students, Brian is asked to write the essay Mr. Vernon assigned earlier (the win of which was to be a synopsis by each student detailing who you think you are), which challenges Mr. Vernon and his preconceived judgments about all of them. Brian does so, but instead of writing about the actual topic he writes a very motivating letter that is in essence, the main point of the story. He signs the essay as The Breakfast Club and leaves it at the table for Mr. Vernon to read when they leave. There are two versions of this letter, one read at the beginning and one at the end, which are slightly different illustrating the change in the students judgments of one another and their realization that they truly have things in common.