Summary
In the library, Allison suddenly speaks, revealing personal information about Brian until she shows she stole his wallet and looked through it. Bender and Claire are sitting together, looking through each other’s possessions. Claire is looking through photos of girls Bender keeps. She asks whether he believes in monogamy. He asks why she has so much stuff in her purse. Brian tells Andrew he has a fake ID so he can vote. Allison dumps her purse out for Brian and Andrew. She says she carries so much stuff because you never know when you have to run away. She says her home life is unsatisfying.
Brian asks if she’s going to be a bag lady, subjecting herself to the dangers of Chicago streets. Andrew asks Allison what the deal is at home, saying that if she carries around all that crap, she either wants to run away or wants people to think she wants to run away. She tells him to eat shit and then leaves. Andrew follows her and asks if she wants to talk. She tells him forcefully to go away. As he leaves, she asks if he thinks he really has problems. He asks if what is going on at home with her is "real bad." She is silent and teary. Eventually she says, “Yeah.” She says her parents ignore her. Andrew nods, as though he understands exactly what she means.
Meanwhile, Vernon and Carl sit and talk together. They have been drinking beers. Vernon says the kids get more and more arrogant every year. Carl says the kids didn’t change, Vernon did. Vernon says that it keeps him up at night to imagine a future in which these kids are running the country while he is old. Back in the library, the students sit on the ground and discuss the craziest things they’d do for a million dollars. Allison says she is a nymphomaniac and doesn’t need a million dollars to do sexual things. She says her psychiatrist “nailed” her when she told him about her condition.
Allison asks Claire if she’s ever had sex. Claire says it’s no one’s business. Allison says it’s a double-edged sword: If a girl says she hasn’t had sex, she’s seen as a prude; if she has had sex, she’s seen as a slut. Andrew says Claire’s a tease. Claire asks if it bothers Allison to sleep around without being in love. Bender says she is a tease because she uses sex to get respect. Claire says her words are being twisted—she doesn’t use sex, period. Everyone pressures her into answering the question. Eventually, Claire shouts that she’s never had sex. Allison says she hasn’t either—she’s not a nymphomaniac, she’s a compulsive liar. She says she would do it, because sex is okay if you love someone.
Claire gets angry that she was tricked into answering. To defend Allison, Andrew says they’re all pretty bizarre, but some hide it better. Claire asks how he is bizarre. Allison says he can’t think for himself. Andrew says she’s right. Andrew admits that what got him detention was taping Larry Lester’s “buns” together. He says skin and hair came off the kid’s buttocks when they removed the tape. Andrew says he did it to impress his father, who always had stories about hi-jinx. Andrew says he saw Larry and noticed his weakness in the locker room. The next thing he knew, he jumped on him while his friends cheered him on. Afterward, in Vernon’s office, all Andrew could think about was Larry having to go home to his father and explain what happened to him.
Andrew becomes teary-eyed as he talks about the humiliation Larry must have felt. He asks the others how you could apologize for something like that. He says it’s all because of him and his “old man,” adding that he hates his father. Andrew says his dad is a mindless machine he can’t relate to. He mimics his father’s insistence that Andrew “win, win, win.” Andrew says he sometimes wishes for an injury so he wouldn't have to wrestle anymore.
Brian says it’s like him and his grades. When he steps outside himself, he doesn’t like what he sees. Claire asks what he doesn’t like. Brian says he feels stupid because he’s failing shop class. He explains that a ceramic elephant lamp project he made in the class didn’t work, so he failed. Bender gets heated at Brian’s assumption that shop would be an easy A because of the “dopes” that take it. Bender says he takes shop and that Brian must be an idiot.
Allison interrupts to say she can eat and play piano with her toes. Brian says he can make spaghetti. Bender says he wants to know what Claire can do. Claire says she can’t do anything, but then shows her strange talent: putting a lipstick tube in her bra, and bending forward to apply the lipstick evenly. Everyone claps, amused.
Bender gets angry though, saying he doesn’t even count. He tells Claire she got everything while he got “shit.” He aggressively taunts her, asking about her diamond earrings, suggesting her father bought them for her. She tells him to shut up. He says, “You know what I got for Christmas this year? It was a banner fucking year at the ol’ Bender family. I got a carton of cigarettes. The old man grabbed me and said, ‘Eh, smoke up Johnny!’ So go home and cry to your daddy, don’t cry here.”
Analysis
Hughes builds on the themes of rebellion and bonding when the students get high together. Although Claire, Andrew, Brian, and Allison have shown reluctance to go along with Bender’s acts of rebellion against Vernon, they symbolically side with Bender once again by smoking his pot. The cannabis has a calming effect on the group, easing the hostility among them and giving them an occasion to be less guarded.
While stoned, the students learn about each other by going through each other’s possessions and wallets, and by asking questions. In this scene, Allison speaks the most she has so far, revealing that she carries so much in her purse because she fantasizes about escaping. Andrew is drawn to her upon learning this, as he senses that her troubles at home are similar to his. In a knowing moment of eye contact, the two bond over their family dysfunction. The two are similar in that they exhibit signs of emotional repression, neither quite knowing how to put words to the anger and grief that arises when one is raised in a dysfunctional home.
In one of the most recognizable scenes in the film, the students sit on the floor of an upper level of the library. During this scene—some of which Hughes asked his cast to improvise—the students move from idle chat to emotionally raw topics. The topic of virginity arises again as Allison confesses to having nymphomania—a compulsive, uncontrollable need to have sex. However, in an instance of situational irony, Allison reveals she is actually a compulsive liar, and is a virgin. The theme of resentment arises as Claire realizes Allison tricked her into revealing that she has never had sex.
Hughes builds further on the theme of resentment with Andrew’s comments about hating his father, who is obsessed with winning and dominance. In this monologue, Andrew shows his sensitive side as he discusses how he felt immense remorse for having bullied a weaker kid, something he did only to impress his overbearing father. Despite being perceived by others as an aggressive jock, Andrew is full of emotional turmoil from being raised by an unfeeling “machine” of a father. In this way, Hughes shows that Andrew is much more than the stereotype he appears to be on the surface.
In the intimate atmosphere, Brian also reveals what brought him to be in detention: Just as Andrew feels pressure to always win at wrestling, Brian feels pressure to excel in academics. To keep his grade average high, Brian enrolled in shop class, believing the mechanical nature of the class and apparently low intelligence of the students who take it would make it an easy A. However, in an instance of situational irony, Brian’s expectations were undermined when he failed to create a functional elephant lamp and got a bad grade.
The theme of resentment arises again when Bender disrupts the vulnerable atmosphere by taking issue with Brian’s low opinion of shop students. He also returns to randomly harassing Claire, whom he resents because he believes his impoverished and violent home life makes him more of a victim than her. To make his point, Bender presents the juxtaposition of her diamond earrings and the carton of cigarettes he got for Christmas, a gift that emphasizes the parental neglect he deals with at home.
