Everlasting Personality
In the movie Breaking Away directed by Steve Tesich, released in 1979, Dave dreams of becoming a competitive cyclist. He has three best friends, Mike, Cyril, and Mooch. The four friends are from the working class and they have just graduated from high school. They have spent their lives with each other in Bloomington, Indiana, swimming in the abandoned quarry together and fighting for each other against the mocking Indiana University students. As a result of the fight against the college students, they get an opportunity to compete against the college students at the Indiana University Little 500 bicycle race, which was great for Dave, the cyclist, and Mike, who has to crush someone so he can feel better about himself. However, the four friends’ relationships begin to crumble. Dave, Mooch, and Cyril suffer from the precarious relationship with his friend Mike during Dave’s process of reaching his dream because Mike does not manage to reflect on himself. Ultimately, the movie ends showing the four friends filled with triumph after winning the Indiana University Little 500 bicycle race, but from the beginning through the happy ending, Mike remains insecure.
In a late scene, Tesich illustrates Mike as an insecure person. When Dave is racing in the Indiana University Little 500 bicycle race, he gets injured and the biker has to be changed. The next rider should be Mike, but he refuses to get on the bike out of worries and embarrassment which makes Mooch ride instead of him. He only changes his mind when the college student calls him a coward. He makes no real effort to pursue his goal of beating the college students in the race, but is overly sensitive to the mocking comment from the college student because of his self-consciousness. He sees this bicycle race not as an opportunity to excel, but as a risk of embarrassment and failure because he is not confident. He does not recognize the race as a great and rare experience which usually only college students can experience. For Mike, every opportunity is an unhealthy risk.
Throughout the movie, Mike’s insecurity makes him be half-hearted and rude towards people. Tesich wants the audience to think about Mike’s insecurity because it makes Mike feel so miserable and discouraged that he quits trying for his goals and ruins all of his valuable relationships. Mike avoids facing his problem because he does not want to admit that he has flaws. Viewers learn the lesson that to achieve something, one has to try hard and believe in one’s possibilities and see the world from a more hopeful point of view than Mike’s. The story leaves the audience reflecting on how tough the consequences of an insecurity like his can be.
Dave and his father struggle with the relationships and ultimately manage to be honest and reflect on themselves; Mike doesn’t.
Mike’s insecurity leads him to have a fixed mindset. He never dares or tries to do anything. Mike was a quarterback in high school, but now he feels miserable as he watches the college students practicing for the football game on campus because he is in working class which makes him harder to go to college. He says to his friends that he is “always gonna live in this stinkin’ town reading the newspaper about the new hot-shot kid in the college team which is never going to be me.” He says he is never going to be Mike the quarterback, or even Mike the cutter, and that he is “always going to be just Mike”. Mike’s statement illustrates that he has a lack of confidence and thinks he has no opportunity to be anything in this “stinkin’ town”, which he blames for everything. Not trying to face his problems directly makes him feel more miserable, whereas he could improve himself by admitting that he has some problems to fix in his personality. While Dave tries very hard to be a cyclist, Mike just pities himself. Even before trying, he thinks he cannot be something because he is insecure.
Mike is insecure. After Mike discovers that college kids beat Cyril up, Mike says “If they want a fight, we’ll give them a fight.” Mike’s statement illustrates that he is self-conscious. Instead of taking the case peacefully, the reason why Mike has to fight against them is that he has to step on someone so he can feel better about himself because he is embarrassed about who he is. Also, Mike thinks the college students attacked Cyril because they see the four friends just as a townie, and can’t bear it.
