A Short Summary of The Cay

A SHORT SUMMARY OF THE CAY

         

        The story, The Cay, by Theodore Taylor is a wonderful story about Phillip Enright, an eleven year old boy who lives on the island of Curacao in 1942.  Curacao isn’t safe at the time because there are German U-boats surrounding the island on three different sides.  The U-boats have actually already attacked the big Lago oil refinery on the island of Aruba. Everybody knew that the U-boats were going to try to attack the oil refinery on Curacao.  The Enrights had moved to Curacao because Mr. Enright, Phillip’s father, was an expert in oil refineries and wanted to help defend the island. 

Later in the story Mrs. Enright wants to go back to Virginia.  In the middle of the ocean the ship they were on is torpedoed, and 4 hours later he wakes up with a black man on a raft.  Phillip is distraught and even more, greedy.  He begs for more water and he doesn’t want to hand over his clothes for a shelter.  Three days after being on the raft, Phillip goes blind.  One day when the black man, Timothy spots land, Phillip stands up and falls into the water and becomes surrounded by sharks. Timothy jumps in after him and saves him.  The Cay shows how a young, white boy and old, black man who have different backgrounds but start to get along and fight against nature for their survival.