Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Richard Vernon, Parents

The entire adult world is the antagonist of the five members of the Breakfast Club. There's apparently no adult who has any wisdom or help to offer them—maybe Carl, but he only really interacts with them for about a minute, which isn't enough time to really impart anything.

Their parents are uniformly clueless: Brian's parents continue to pressure him academically despite the mental strain he's clearly under; Allison's parents ignore her; Andrew's dad mindlessly drives him to compete against his will; Claire's parents use her as a tool in their conflicts with each other; and Bender's dad burns him with a cigar for spilling paint in the garage.

The teacher supervising detention, Richard Vernon, is just as bad: He seems to hate Bender on a personal level, and he thinks that the kids are worse than they've ever been, even though he's the one who's changed and forgotten what it was like to be young. Even though adults are supposed to have gone through what the students are now going through, they apparently don't remember anything about it whatsoever. The students come up against this massive wall of ignorance and their task is to surmount it.