Good Will Hunting Analysis

Good Will Hunting, by Gus Van Sant, is a well-respected movie meant to inspire others. It reflects how nature and nurture work together in creating a mature human being. In the film we watch a man with a matured brain go through a struggle between his past and his future. He knows that he is highly intelligent but he chooses not to show it often due to his childhood abuse. While watching the movie, the audience doesn’t realize that there is a lot of science being depicted. The movie goes along with the theme of nature versus nurture as well as how the brain generally works. Specifically, the movie seems to focus on the general function of the brain and how different surroundings can make and break the personality of human beings.

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Roger R. Hock shows us that we are made up of male and female hormones based on a test done by Sandra Bem (Hock 199-207). When we look at Will, he seemed to have a rough masculine appearance according to the test. He was quick to start fights and he was emotionally unresponsive throughout most of the movie. Will hated therapy and when he finally found a person that loved him dearly, he threw that love away for fear of it not working out. These “masculine” traits are often called forms of defense mechanisms. We often see Will perform these kinds of acts and can characterize them as regression and sublimation (Hock 237-238). Though Will is a grown man in the movie, he still acts like a teenager that loves to make fights because that is all he has ever known. The unemotional side of Will can be categorized as a male trait of sublimation because even though he might have desired love, he would always reject it in case the love didn’t last. To get a sort of love, he used the girl he met and slept with her for a sense of love. However, as soon as it started to get serious he left her thus showing a sign of regression because he wanted to go back to a time where he was

Some face tragic and painful pasts that they bottle up inside. On the contrary, people can also live a normal life with their parents, a nice house, and pets. The honest truth is that you can never really know someone even if you are related to them. Everyone keeps secrets that boil up inside of them and there will always be something to trigger them. One of the worst things to do is run away from fears and life because it can set you back from your true potential. I can see myself in Will because I too have run away from growing up many times in the past couple of years. I was so excited to go to college when I graduated. However, after getting there it wasn’t what I expected. I started to try and make it through but I did not try to expand my horizons. As I started to push myself to make friends and create a life for myself I still realized that it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. When I realized this I started to run away again because I didn’t want to be like some of the people in my life that haven’t done much to make their own life. I thought that I was stepping backwards so I took bigger steps backwards in fear of creating the wrong future for myself. In certain ways Will and I could be considered alike because we took steps back in fear of what was to come. Just like Will I always want to be right because I am scared of choosing something that is wrong for me. I think that anyone