Tools of Characterization

Characterization in Good Will Hunting

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It tells us a lot about Will that he spends his nights solving extremely complex math problems and his days drinking with his buddies and working construction. He also likes to throw a punch every now and then.

But whenever we see Will do things, we know that there are two forces at work: The first is his natural genius, and the second is the violent emotions he feels over being abused as a kid. Put 'em together and you can pretty much understand everything Will does in this movie.

Family Life

Maguire and Will can relate to each other over the fact that they've both had big family losses in their lives. Maguire lost his wife Nancy to cancer and Will's parents abandoned him when he was just a baby. He also spent the next fifteen or so years in really abusive foster homes.

Maguire knows that he can never understand what Will has gone through, but he also reminds Will that he (Will) can never understand what Maguire has gone through, either. So on the one hand, they bond over their shared sense of loss, but they also bond over the fact that neither one of them will ever truly understand the pain that the other has felt.

Location

It's no coincidence that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck decided to create a main character who comes from the Southie neighborhood of Boston… because this is where the two screenwriters come from, too. Hometown pride, y'all.

Having Will Hunting come from Southie is a not-so-subtle way of saying that a world-class genius can come from anywhere. The neighborhood also helps establish that Will is pretty rough around the edges and not shy about getting into fistfights. But coming from this kind of neighborhood also means that Will is more willing trust Sean Maguire as a therapist, since Maguire is from the same neighborhood and Will respects him a little more for this reason.

Occupation

We're not really sure why Sean Maguire became a therapist, but based on what he says, it has something to do with wanting to help people find happiness on their own terms. But if you ask someone like Gerald Lambeau, he would tell you that Maguire chose the job he did because he's scared of the work and effort it would take to be a real success in life.

Will Hunting makes a similar judgment when he first meets Maguire, and who knows? Maybe Will and Lambeau are right. But that doesn't make Maguire a failure. It just means that he wants to live on his own terms… which is the same thing Will wants out of life.

Speech and Dialogue

One of the first things you might notice about Will and his buddies is that they have thick Boston accents. Or for those who have a real ear for that sort of thing, they have Southie accents, which come from a specific Boston neighborhood. And these accents tell us that Will and his buds come from a hardcore working-class background. You ain't going to find any silver spoons in these guys' mouths.

They were born scrappers and they'll stay scrappers. But somewhere along the way, we also have to wonder how this background is going to jibe with Will's level of intelligence… Will, at least, thinks that everyone will look down on him for pronouncing smart "smaht" and card "cahd."