ESSAY – Coming of Age
ESSAY – Coming of Age
Address the considerations of race and gender in “Moonlight” in a way that suggests you are attempting to empathize with the characters / understand their ENTIRE situation in CONTEXT, which means considering their socio-economic backgrounds, the kind of community depicted in the film, the poverty / class situation. How does “Little” (Chiron) address the stresses of pressure from his peers, his mother’s addiction, pressure to become something he isn’t, etc. What does a small comfort like a bath look like for him? Who can he confide in? Where does he get relief?
Think also about the ways in which he is betrayed. Does Juan indirectly betray him? Kevin? His mother?
Is Chiron’s trapping in the end inevitable? How did he arrive there? What does coming of age look like for Chiron? Does he experience self realization? Kevin remarks that “this ain’t you” when he sees Chiron by the end. What does he mean? Is Chiron true to his character? Are we shaped / influenced by societal conditioning? How much autonomy do you think Chiron had growing up?
Incorporate some of the race information I sent and you may also include ideas from “Tough Guise” and Jackson Katz’ earlier TED Talk.
Your essay should be a MINIMUM of four pages typed, double spaced, Times New Roman font and MLA formatted (video links below to help), which means NO extra spacing or bold or excess quotes to pad the length of your essay. In other words, if you add in extra spaces between paragraphs or make your margins bigger or include lengthy block quotes to lengthen your essay, I will reduce your earned grade by an entire letter grade for not following MLA formatting.
Include at least three parenthetical citations (and a Works Cited page) in your essay, formatted correctly.
TO THINK ABOUT:
Is Chiron’s identity ultimately shaped by him or by others? How do his nicknames play into this idea?
Just after teaching Little to swim, Juan explains that his former nickname, “Blue,” was given to him by a stranger who remarked that black boys look blue in the moonlight, a touching and poignant anecdote. Little asks if Juan continued to go by that nickname, but Juan answers, “At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you’re going to be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.”
Nicknames lend a call-and-answer structure to Chiron’s control of his own character. The world calls him “Little,” but he decides he likes his given name better. Kevin calls him “Black,” and he decides he likes the hardness of such a name. In this way, it seems that Chiron is actually in control of his own destiny and identity, and it’s clear entering the final chapter of the film that Black believes he’s grown into the man he was supposed to be. This confidence is disrupted, however, when Kevin begins to question him about his transformation into “Black,” clearly doubting the authenticity of his new persona. Throughout the film’s final chapter, similarities between Black and Juan also continue to crop up; the crown on Black’s dashboard was clearly inherited from Juan, for example. Thus, by the end of the film, it remains unclear whether Chiron was ever in control of his own identity, as naturalism would indeed suggest that at least a portion of his “Black” persona is inherited from his childhood father figure.
In a way, then, Chiron’s decision to shed the nickname Little—implied by the new chapter title, “Chiron”—seems like an indication that he has chosen to follow Juan’s advice. Soon after this, however, we hear Kevin call Chiron “Black” even as we hear others address him as Chiron. Of course, Chiron directly addresses this when on the beach with Kevin, asking him, “what kind of dude goes around giving other dudes nicknames?”
In the final chapter of the film, entitled “Black” after the nickname that Kevin gave him, we understand that Chiron has chosen to keep the nickname even in the wake of Kevin’s betrayal, growing into the tough guy image that Kevin has always encouraged Chiron to adopt; remember, Kevin wrestles Chiron so he doesn’t come off as “soft” in front of their male peers
What do the colors blue and black represent for Chiron and for us, as viewers? Can we understand them literally in terms of race?
In some ways, blue and black embody the dichotomy of “soft” versus “hard” in which the characters struggle to place themselves throughout the film. Both Chiron and Juan ultimately seem to opt for a performance of toughness or “hardness,” embodied by gangster lifestyles. Visually, this takes shape not only in the color of their skin but also in their dress, particularly in Black’s case, where black and gold shade everything he owns. In contrast, blue seems to serve as the film’s visual expression of softness and vulnerability in men like Chiron. Of course, blue is discussed literally when Juan describes the night a woman told him that “in the moonlight, black boys look blue” and awarded him “Blue” as a nickname. At the same time, Juan rejects this nickname, implying that it felt untrue to his identity as a grown man, and reminds Little of the primacy of blackness, saying that black people were the first people on earth. From moonlight to the ocean, blue seems to embody the sensitivity and vulnerability of not only the black male body, but specifically of Chiron’s body and identity in the face of a world that is constantly seeking to toughen him up, whereas the blackness of night or Black’s car or Terrel’s shirt embodies that toughness. As Chiron ages, his character seems to migrate from this vulnerability, expressed in the blue and Miami teal that dominate the film’s beginnings, into a kind of hardness that is expressed by blackness, even as that feels somewhat untrue to the Little we watched at the start of the film. Black and blue serve both as visual and emotional expressions of performed, archetypal weakness and toughness, or even racial blackness.
Additional Reading –
* Make No Mistake, Moonlight Is More Than Deserving of Its Best Picture Oscar Win
– https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Personal-Essay-About-Moonlight-42996675
* The Link Between Racism and PTSD – https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culturally-speaking/201509/the-link-between-racism-and-ptsd
* When black death goes viral, it can trigger PTSD-like trauma – https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/black-pain-gone-viral-racism-graphic-videos-can-create-ptsd-like-trauma
* What is Systemic Racism? [VIDEO] – https://www.raceforward.org/videos/systemic-racism
* Racism Is Real [VIDEO] – https://youtu.be/fTcSVQJ2h8g
ESSAY DETAILS:
You must have a very clear, specific thesis in your introduction
You must write in the present tense
You must avoid the passive voice as much as possible
You must use academic vocabulary and liven up your diction
You must have a topic sentence for each paragraph
Each paragraph must support your topic sentence
Your argument must be logical and well thought out
You must use specific information to support your argument
You must have a thoughtful conclusion
Perhaps most important, you must write a convincing argument that supports your thesis.
MLA formatting is required.
Try to include an original title specific to your focus. Their Eyes Were Watching God essay does not cut it!
HELPFUL INFORMATION (I strongly recommend you review – you will lose points for incorrect formatting, excessive grammar errors, poorly constructed thesis statements, referring to an author by their first name, etc):
MLA WORKS CITED PAGE
Review this video – https://youtu.be/4Vo8_Jw71JI
IN-TEXT CITATIONS
Review this video – https://youtu.be/HTaUHS1mnv
MLA ESSAY FORMATTING
Review this video – https://youtu.be/24Y31UrG2q4
* Formatting quotes in your essay (MLA style) – https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/
* Argument thesis statement – https://youtu.be/8wxE8R_x5I0
* Synthesis thesis statement – https://youtu.be/c7HtCHtQ9w0
* Developing a paragraph – https://youtu.be/XA-joXQKyXE
* Review “Common Errors” (i.e. differences between “it’s” vs. “its” and “their” vs. “there” vs. “they’re”, etc) – http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/proofing_grammar.shtml AND https://www.grammarly.com/blog/top-10-student-writing-mistakes-finals-edition/
* Titles of essays, articles, books, and poems – italicize or use quotation marks? Read the difference here – http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/punctuation/titles-using-italics-and-quotation-marks.html
* Refer to an author or artist in your essay first by the person’s full name, then subsequently by the person’s last name. For example, you would mention “Sylvia Plath” initially, then refer to her throughout your essay as “Plath”. See the first entry here – https://www2.bc.edu/~wilsonc/tenc.html
* THESIS STATEMENTS IN LITERARY ANALYSIS PAPERS
http://www.syracusecityschools.com/tfiles/folder716/unit%2003-Thesisstatementc.pdf
IN ADDITION:
You may of course include any relevant points of interest from pervious assigned readings / viewings. Here are a few more that may apply to your analysis:
* “From the Poets in the Kitchen” by Paule Marshall – http://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/09/books/from-the-poets-in-the-kitchen.html?pagewanted=all
* Ch. 1 from The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois http://odelleducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/EBC-Unit-Text-G11-Du-Bois.pdf
* “How it feels to be colored me” by Zora Neale Hurston h
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