63 pages • 2 hours read
Theodore TaylorThe Cay
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1969A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Surviving Against the Odds
The Cay is a survival story. The plot revolves around how Phillip and Timothy first survive on a raft and then on a tiny island for a period of several months. The text is set during World War II, a time when many people had to try to survive under increasingly difficult circumstances. This context broadens the theme of survival to a local and ultimately global scale; after the air attack, Curaçao's water supply is cut off, and the residents become “stranded” on their own island without access to a basic element of human survival. Elsewhere in the world, both soldiers and ordinary people—such as Henrick’s friends and relatives in the Netherlands—fight to survive the violence and privations of war. For Phillip and Timothy, the battle for their lives becomes immediate after the Hato is torpedoed. They can only survive by learning to rely on and trust each other rather than letting their differences separate them. The barrier of racism makes Phillip and Timothy’s initial situation an allegory to war though the hostility in this case is one-sided. A subtler message of Phillip’s journey of Overcoming Racism is that, if the opposing sides of Black and white can get along, so can world powers.
At several points in the story, one or both of the main characters comes close to death. Phillip falls off the raft and Timothy has to pull him back out of the water before he is attacked by sharks. Timothy contracts malaria, and Phillip does his best to help him recover despite having limited resources and knowledge. Finally, Timothy actually does die of his injuries after the storm. At that point, Phillip has to use his own resourcefulness, which he learned from Timothy, to survive alone. Phillip’s blindness adds another level of difficulty to his survival, especially after Timothy’s death. While Phillip’s blindness serves the symbolic purpose of making him “color blind” to Timothy’s race, it is also a plot device Theodore Taylor uses to raise the plot’s stakes.
Survival stories have long been a staple of children’s literature, as they create a sense of adventure and danger that—with the exception of Lord of the Flies—typically does not include a great deal of violence. The Cay is no different: Phillip and Timothy survive without ever killing anything larger than a fish, and then, only for the purpose of survival. Instead of using violence to survive, Phillip cultivates compassion for other living beings. He grows more empathetic toward Timothy and toward the animals living on the island. His increased empathy is directly tied to his survival, as he understands himself as one piece of a larger whole where all living things are striving to survive. It helps him and readers better understand the role of cooperation and understanding, not only in emergency survival scenarios but also in life more generally.
Overcoming Racism
When The Cay was published, Taylor was outspoken about his goal of creating an anti-racist text for young readers. The Cay’s dedication page reads, “To Dr. King’s dream, which can only come true if the very young know and understand,” referring to the “I have a dream” speech of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Phillip’s survival journey is inextricably tied with his journey to deconstruct his own racist ideas. In Curaçao, Phillip lives in a diverse society, but his mother deliberately tries to keep him away from Black people. Not everyone in Phillip’s life has the same experience as him; Henrik, for instance, does not understand what is wrong with spending time with Black people.
Grace’s racism did not form in a vacuum. In 1942, when the novel is set, Jim Crow and segregation were still enforced (officially and unofficially) in many parts of the United States, including in Grace’s home state of Virginia. World War II began to change racial dynamics in the US, as Black Americans, especially veterans, entered the general workforce and migrated to the North after the war. However, in 1969, when the novel was written, racism was far from eradicated. Some of Taylor’s young readers would have been in a situation similar to Phillip’s in that they were in danger of inheriting racist views from the previous generation. In the novel, until Phillip meets Timothy, he never has cause to question his mother’s views. Taylor is providing his readers with an intervention that allows them to question racist views they may encounter without entering life-or-death circumstances like Phillip.
Signs of Phillip’s racism are initially shown in the assumed power dynamic between Phillip and Timothy. At first, Phillip chooses not to use the honorific “mister” to refer to Timothy despite his father’s instructions about how to respectfully address adults. Meanwhile, Timothy addresses Phillip as “young boss” because he is white; it is unlikely that Timothy would address a Black child from Curaçao in that manner. Phillip looks down on Timothy for not being able to read, considers him ugly, and makes assumptions about his heritage. It is not until Timothy reverses the power dynamic by slapping Phillip that Phillip realizes he was wrong: His beliefs made him perceive Timothy as a one-dimensional stereotype instead of a complex and unique individual.
Phillip’s blindness is the main mechanism that enables him to shed his racist views. More than once, Phillip muses that now that he is blind, he no longer perceives Timothy as Black. He means that he is overcoming his racial prejudices, but the resulting passages echo outdated views about race that ignore the importance of a person’s history, culture, and heritage. In this way, the novel countermands the message of many civil rights leaders of the 1960s, which was to be seen as fully human and American while recognizing their unique personal and historical experience as Black Americans. Racial colorblindness is still a popular approach to anti-racism for some Americans; the belief is that when people drop their racial labels, racism will no longer exist. The argument against this view is that the US must still reckon with its historical and present-day racism, and erasing labels only benefits those already in power. Taylor does not address this argument: While the novel advocates against racism, it frames racism as an individual rather than a structural issue.
Coming of Age
Many works of children’s literature are coming-of-age stories, as children and adolescents grow and change a great deal in their formative years. Reflecting those changes in literature can help young readers connect to the characters and pursue their own journeys of change and maturity. The Cay takes place over the course of just a few months, but Phillip matures well beyond his years during this time. He begins the book like many 11-year-olds and is still very much a child. Phillip and his friends play at “defending Willemstad against pirates or even the British” (11) instead of taking the war seriously. When Phillip disobeys his mother and goes to see the U-boat, his disregard for the seriousness of the war signals his childishness, especially compared with his later perspective.
After Phillip gets stranded on the raft, his journey of growth begins. Initially, Phillip is clumsy, unskilled, and uncooperative, not to mention angry and afraid. His unwillingness to help Timothy is only exacerbated after he loses his sight. For the first half of the book, Phillip remains very much locked in his own way of doing things rather than growing more mature.
One aspect of coming-of-age narratives is that to mature, protagonists must reject the worldview they inherit from their parents and learn to make their own judgments about the world and their place in it. Gradually, Phillip stops jumping to conclusions about Timothy and develops a new worldview that rejects racism in favor of practicality and compassion. With Timothy’s expertise and Phillip’s initial refusal to be helped, Taylor points out the impracticality of racism. The message here is that only when people acknowledge each other’s skills and contributions will society progress. In turn, Phillip cares for Timothy when he is sick and helps him write “help” in the sand; Phillip’s reciprocity is a sign of his growth.
Many coming-of-age stories follow the hero’s journey narrative structure, in which a protagonist reluctantly (or involuntarily, as in this case) sets off on an adventure, meets adversaries and allies, and slays real or metaphorical dragons. At the end of the journey, the protagonist returns home more mature, having learned valuable lessons. Regardless of the amount of time that has passed, the child comes home as an adult. As an archetypal hero, Phillip never intends to go on his adventure to the cay, but when he gets there—with Timothy’s help—he bravely faces and overcomes his challenges.
