Moonlight Character Analysis

The movie Moonlight follows the story of the character Chiron, as he transitions through three main stages of his life beginning with him as a poor little boy from Miami, followed by his adolescence, and lastly his life as young adult. Throughout his childhood and adolescence Chiron is often teased and called homophobic slurs by the other neighborhood kids. The movie is about Chiron learning how to cope with the different struggles in his life such as his sexuality, his relationship with his mother, falling in love, and heartbreak. In this paper I will be analyzing the character development of Chiron in his three stages of life as well as Kevin’s character. I will also be analyzing the fighting scene in act 2 and the genre of the film.

Before

As a teenager Chiron has a romantic encounter with his childhood friend Kevin. After this encounter Chiron begins to accept himself and begins to come to terms with his sexuality, this changes however, as a result of the fight. As a teenager Chiron faces the dilemma of having to choose either outing himself as gay, and risk being isolated and further harassed, because all of his peers are hypermasculine, or ignore his feelings in order to fit in. Chiron’s ambivalence with his sexuality leads him to ignore the issue and he continues to have mixed emotions about it into his adulthood. Finally, Black is the name Chiron goes by as an adult, who is now a drug dealer living in Atlanta and now a fully hardened criminal. Black has yet to find himself and is now merely a representation of what others wanted to him become. Black has yet to come to terms with who he is, he has not thought about his sexuality and has simply repressed all his emotions. Black has not been in a relationship, nor has he ever been intimate with anyone since his encounter with Kevin at the beach the night before the

Chiron refuses to give her any names and the principle says she cannot help him if he does not cooperate, she tells him that she understands it might be difficult for him to want to snitch on his classmates, at this point Chiron proclaims “you don’t understand, you can’t understand”, Chiron begins to cry and the principle’s voice slowly fades into the background until she is fully droned out, we hear Chiron’s breathing begin to grow louder and he stops crying and gets a serious look on his face. This part of the scene shows the audience the internal struggle Chiron is facing aside from the physical altercation he was just in, his statement to the principle indicates that she cannot understand his struggle because even he does not understand, he has not yet accepted himself as being gay and is struggling to understand himself and why he is the way he is when all he wants to do is fit