"Moana" is a movie from 2016 about an adventurous teenager who sets out on a mission to save her people. As she goes through this mission, she meets many different obstacles throughout her journey , including Maui, the demigod, and a crab called Tamatoa. Along with Maui, she fixes what he messed up and brings hope and happiness to her people. But I am not here to tell you how confident and compassionate Moana is; I am here to tell you about the great load of symbols and themes present in this amazing movie.
The first symbol in the movie would be the amazing mother nature of Motunui, Te- Fiti.
Majestic and green, the blanket of plants covered the island known as Te-Fiti while the golden sunlight made its way through all of the leaves. Te-Fiti symbolizes how we as people are ruining the ecosystem and how if we continue to do so, it will eventually turn against us. This goes hand in hand with the theme of the world being our canvas, so we should keep it beautiful.
Think about it; when all the crops were dying, we already knew at that point that something bad was going to happen, and the mood essentially changed from crazy cute to a kinda sudden serious sweetness and feeling of adventure to see if Moana can successfully complete her journey. We knew she was going to be able to, of course; it is a Disney movie so we expected nothing less, but how she gets from where she is to the end is the adventurous aspect of the movie.
This leads to the next two symbols, including the boat — the lovely wooden boat that she uses to get past the next symbol: the rapid reef.
The boat that creates a series of interesting twists and turns throughout the movie symbolizes how we can not let things hold us back. Moana follows that perfectly when she does not exactly know how to row a boat and that does not stop her from completing the mission to help her people because she gets Maui to teach her his ways of “way-finding."
Even though she was scared, Moana jumped into to the deep end and helped her people by learning a new skill. In her case, it included learning something new which goes to show how she will do anything in order to succeed. This goes on and brings justice to the theme of how failure and patience are needed in order to succeed.
The patience aspect being how she successfully learned to way-finding, which is completely true, especially in Moana’s case, because the only reason she wants to go on this adventure is to break the curse and bring good for her people. In a sense, it is as if all that she does is for her people and that is only because she wants the best for them since it has been drilled into her that she is the next queen.
However, the boat is not the only thing that helped Moana succeed throughout the movie. Yes, it was a major part, but the other part was the reef. The reef shows how sometimes we need to face our fears and travel to the unknown because if we do not, then we will always be curious about it.
The first time she tried she failed, but like with the boat, she did not give up, tried again and succeeded. She did this not because she wanted to simply see what was over the reef but because she was thirsting to see what was over the reef. This signifies the theme of how sometimes some boundaries are meant to be broken and how that should not hold us back, even if there are people holding us back.
In Moana’s case, it was her father telling her how amazing Motunui is and how no one should or would ever even think about going past the reef. Which in a way is great, he is protecting her, but he is also confining her and showing her the ways of her home and how she needs to be there for her people in order to help them through the thick and the thin.
Moana is an amazing movie about a passionate girl who goes on an adventure. It has many symbols and themes that help define it even more. I only highlighted the three: the reef, the boat and the earth angel Te- Fiti because I felt that these three are the ones that defined the whole movie perfectly. With each one symbolizing something different, they all help bring the significance this movie deserves.
