Deception in Moonlight and Giovanni’s Room Essay Example

‘Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of the truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.’ (Criss Jami, 2012). Deception is a direct cause for the destruction due to the fact that the whole truth is not revealed. This leaves the main characters of Moonlight and Giovanni’s Room to wonder what could have been, had they chosen to act based their individual truths rather than emotions that are linked to surpressing those truths. 

‘Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive.’ Concludes Chiron’s life story, the main character of the film Moonlight which was directed by Barry Jenkins. Moonlight is categorized as a coming-of-age film which shows us the three life stages Chiron went through: early childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Due to the unbearable hardships Chiron had to face from a young age, the argument that living a double live was forced onto him can be considered valid. For instance, Moonlight provides us with a number of scenes in which Chiron experiences sexual confusion: him asking Juan what the f-word means and why the other children call him that, having wet dreams that include his childhood friend Kevin and the sexual encounter he had with Kevin on the beach. After the beach scene Chiron seems to be in a serine state of mind which had not been shown before. However, this peacefulness is short-lived once Chiron is thrown back into his reality: dealing with his drug addicted mother and facing his high school bullies. Yet it was the moment in which Kevin initiated the brutal beating that Chiron received from his classmates, that finally seemed to break Chiron.

‘The one who speaks mere portions of the truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.’ Is the perfect quote to refer to Giovanni’s Room’s main character David, an amazing novel written by James Baldwin. The book describes the recollections of the young American David, who struggles to accept his deepest desires due to society’s expectations of what manhood entails. During the course of the storyline we can clearly read how badly David tried to separate his public and the life and the one he lived behind closed doors. After being separated from his fiancée Hella, David meets and Italian immigrant by the name of Giovanni, to whom he clearly feels a strong connection. The two proceed to start a relationship  of some sort that never ends up labeled due to David’s concern of what other people might think. This in turn causes him to make the decision to deliberately withhold information about his sexual orientation and relations to Giovanni from his fiancée Hella when she returns. 

Chiron’s double life is born from Kevin’s betrayal, from which he eventually reveals he he never truly healed from. This results in Chiron involving himself in the criminal circuit to make ends meet, while hiding his sexual desires to continue to exact his dominance. Unlike Chiron, David seems to act like an opportunist and take advantage of the moments Hella is not by his side to indulge in the idea of being with Giovanni, whether it be in thought or physically. Yet refusing to accept his sexuality and embrace it with Giovanni by his side and trying to make a wondering woman stay for the sake of presentation. This causes David to abandon Giovanni at his lowest point, which was his arrest for the murder of Guillaumes, and abandoning Hella without notice.