Allison Reynolds: The Basket Case Of The Breakfast Club

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Allison Willis was known by the name of Ali to her friends and she too was a high school dropout. Allison had many outbursts and often times acted crazy but her parents seldom said or did anything because they felt it related back to when she was raped at the age of fourteen. Lisa introduced Bobby and Allison in a selfish attempt to better the relationship that she (Lisa) had with Marty.

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The iconic coming-of-age movie The Breakfast Club, focuses on the development of five, seemingly very different high school students. In the movie we are presented with the five main characters all with stereotypes that they identify with. Claire is the princess or the beauty queen, John, often referred to by his last name “Bender,” is the criminal, Brian is the brain or the nerd, Andrew, is the athlete, a wrestler , and finally Allison is the basket case or the weirdo. The story is set in saturday detention where they are forced to spend eight hours with people from other cliques that they would normally never interact with. The day progresses and the characters interact with one another, smoke, dance, break rules, and reveal very personal parts of themselves with the others. The story ends with some of the characters making an attempt to change their identity with the realization that even with the boxes they have been put into they are not that different from one another.

Allison actually was born a “bastard” (Amazon 78), and her life was further complicated through dealing with her

She admits that as a child she was uncomfortable with herself, specifically her gender identity: “I secretly wished I’d been born a boy” (Boyden, 23). As an adult, she struggles finding the balance between masculinity and femininity stating that her uncle would be judgemental towards her due to the fact that “His tomboy niece is really just a sissy girl” (11). On her quest, she attempts to accept her feminine identity while modeling the same way her sister, Suzanne, does. This endeavor brings her into a deep state of confusion where she loses her individuality. People begin to refer to her as Suzanne, including Annie herself.

I had to choose between Allison’s mother, Anne Nelson, and her fiancé Lon Hammond, Jr. as other characters that had a major impact with the story. They both had major roles, but I choose the connection between mother and daughter. In the book and in real life, parents play an important role in relationships. Allison’s father had earned his money from tobacco farming and they wanted her to marry someone from a southern prominent family. During the era this story was taking place, it was important to marry someone with a similar economic background or above. Wealthy families were looked down on if their children married below their social status. Every mother wants the best for their child and wants them to find a spouse that is going to

It is in her Prologue that she begins to use biblical allusions. She mentions King Solomon and Abraham, justifying her five marriages by saying that many of the religious greats had several wives. By comparing herself to these religious figures, Allison wants to make it clear that she has enough authority to dictate the validity of marriage. This authority was given to her by God just as it was given to the fathers of Christianity, and in addition to being blessed with authority she was given sexuality. There is a spiritual connection between

In the movie The Breakfast Club, five seemingly different adolescents are assigned Saturday detention where they learn that although they each fit a particular stereotype, they all have the same characteristics, but they are expressed differently because they have different experiences, strengths and weaknesses that makes them who they are. In the movie, Bender is the “criminal”, Brian is the “brain” and Allison is the “psychopath.” Each of their situations, strengths and weakness are similar to students that are in our classrooms currently or we may have in our classrooms in the future. For each student it is important to understand their learning differences and as a teacher, how I can use their strengths to help them become