Throught the movie Good Will Hunting displays many attributes of Transcendentalism, including Individualism, Idealism, Self Reliance, and Rejection of authority, some of the most prominent are the ideas Self Reliance and Individualism. Throughout the movie, the main character Will, a man who values "good, honest work" such as laying brick because “there's honor in [it],” develops and grows as a person, while maintaining his distinct personality and what makes him Will Hunting. Will enters a relationship with the Harvard student Skylar, however, when she asks him to move to Washington with her, he rejects her harshly. Not because he doesn’t love her (despite what he says), but because he cannot trust himself enough to acknowledge that he cares about her. Because, as his therapist Sean pointed out, Will doesn’t “know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself,” and Will has never dared to do so because he’s afraid that he might not be loved back, as he has experienced in the past.Though it is hard for him to do, Will eventually learns to trust himself and his judgement and to allow himself to trust other people- like Skylar, as demonstrated when he abandons his new job and leaves a note for his therapist Sean that he "had to see about a girl." This demonstrates the shift in Will, and his ability to rely on himself and his own feelings as well as maintain his individualism through his spontaneous ways. In “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson says “if I am the devil’s child, I will live then from the devil.’ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature,” this statement holds true in the film Good Will Hunting, as Will goes with his gut and abandons the well-paying job he accepted and takes off to “see about a girl,” to see about Skylar.