Theodore Taylor The Cay Character Traits

The novel “The Cay” by Theodore Taylor is about a boy named Phillip who was shipwrecked when he and his mother were trying to flee Curaçao because of the war on their boat the Hato. When they try to escape their boat gets torpedoed, so this story is about Phillip struggles with his new found friend Timothy and stew cat battling for their survival. So the topic of this essay is how Phillips character traits changed from bad to good throughout the story. So the four main traits that had changed from good to bad being immature, prejudiced and racist, selfish and dependant on others in the beginning and in the end the opposite, he was mature, accepting, selfless and independent from others.

During the beginning of the book Phillip shows character traits that show negativity on his personality and these 4 traits are Prejudiced/racist,Immature,selfish and dependant and here is why. The first trait that I going to show is prejudiced/racist. The main character shows this in many ways but the quotes I

On page Phillip disobeyed him mom by doing this, “ … and checking our food supply, I stole away down to the old fort with Henrik van Bowen who was also eleven.” This means that Phillip directly disobeyed his mother’s orders which makes him immature. The second time out of many when Phillip was immature was when he was on the raft with Timothy drifting in the midst of the sea. And this was on page 37 when Phillip yelled at Timothy saying “‘ You’re saving all the water for yourself.’” This means that Phillip didn’t get as much water as he wanted so he threw a temper tantrum at Timothy which was unnecessary and immature because they don’t know if help is coming or not. Then my third one was that he was selfish and here is why. The first quote I used for this trait happened on the raft with Timothy. It was on page 37 when Phillip got disgusted “He handed me the two largest pieces. ‘ Eat dem,’ he ordered. I shook my head.’” And this means that