Good Will Hunting and Bell Hooks' Keeping Close to Home

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Going off to college is probably one of the best things a person can do to further their education. The promise of a degree from a university seems achievable but is shadowed with the many challenges that come with a higher edification. Often many college students find themselves bothered by these obstacles which can determine whether the college student succeeds or not. There are many endeavors in college but it depends on how the student reacts to these situations.

This synthesis will examine the motion picture Good Will Hunting and an essay by an author Bell Hooks entitled Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education. Both of these accounts tell of a struggle that the protagonist character in the story had to deal with. Each of these charters comes from similar backgrounds but one deals with emotional conflict while the other character deals with the problem of economic classification. In either way each of these selections both deal with the struggles of an higher education.

In Good Will Hunting the main character Will Hunting is a janitor at Boston’s prestigious M.I.T. His ability to solve complex mathematical equations has earned him notoriety through out the mathematical department. Will Hunting is not a student, he is merely a bright young 20 year old kid with a troubled past. Will Hunting is exposed by Professor Gerald Lambeau when he is caught working on another mathematical equation. Professor Lambeau discovers his troubled past when he attends Will Hunting’s court hearing. Lambeau Finds out that Will Hunting has had many run-ins with the law and offers to give Will Hunting direction instead of being sent to jail. Will Hunting is ordered by the court to attend psychiatric sessions to he...

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...n Boston. Hooks had to deal with on going internal struggle that classism played on the attitudes of people who were not low class. She talked about needing money to survive at Stanford but also since her family back in the south was low class the money that she made was sent back home to her family to help out. Both of these characters over came tremendous odds; but Good Will Hunting was just a movie and Bell Hooks Keeping Close to Home was an actual account of the endeavors that she faced during the career at Stanford University.

Work Cited

Van Sant, G. (Director). (1997). Good Will Hunting [Motion Picture]. United States: Miramax Films

Hooks, B. (1989). Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education. Boston: South End Press

Fiske, R., & Cyrus, V. (2005). Experiencing Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: Fourth Edition. Boston: McGrawHill

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