The Cay is a 1969 novel by Theodore Taylor
It's WWII and Philip Enright and his mom, Grace, are going back home to Virginia. Philip didn't want to go but with German submarines around Curaçao, his mom insisted. When they're on their way back to the US, the S.S. Hato gets torpedoed and a blinded Philip gets stranded with an elderly guy named Timothy and a cat named Stew Cat. They make their way to an island in the Devil's Mouth region of the Caribbean.
At first, Philip and Timothy don't really get along, as Philip doesn't really have the best view of black people like Timothy.
In 1993, Theodore Taylor released Timothy of the Cay, a prequel centered around Timothy.
A Made-for-TV Movie adaptation was released in 1974, starring James Earl Jones as Timothy and Alfred Lutter III as Philip.
Tropes associated with The Cay:
- Animal Motif: Briefly, Philip compares the German submarines' arrival to hungry sharks.
- Artistic License – Biology: Deliberately under-consuming water to make your supply last longer is actually a terrible survival strategy. As any survival expert will tell you: water is a person's single most pressing need, as the human body needs a certain amount of water to function properly; consuming less than that amount can cause a plethora of health complications, which makes it far less likely that a person will survive long enough to make it back to civilization. If you're thirsty, it's a sign that you need water.
- Bittersweet Ending: Philip (with Stew Cat) is rescued from the Devil's Mouth, eventually, but it's after Timothy succumbed to his injuries from the hurricane and he's left to survive without him. Later, he has surgeries and gets his sight back.
- Book Dumb: Timothy is pretty knowledgeable with fishing, shelter building, and surviving without the usual comforts but he's really fascinated with Philip's knowledge about islands. However, this plays into why he's superstitious, as he never went to school.
- Character Development: Philip really goes through so much in the story between being caught in a shipwreck where he doesn't even know if his mother survived to having his life change completely after going blind. He's prickly and rude to Timothy at first but in time, they form a strong bond. When Timothy dies, Philip must use what he learned from him to eventually survive and soon be able to get rescued, reunited with his parents, and get his sight back.
- Disabled Means Helpless: A blinded Philip relies on Timothy to survive.
- Empathy Pet: Stew Cat plays this role. When Philip starts to cry, Stew Cat comes.
- Flat Character: Philip's parents don't have a lot of characterization to them, besides that Philip Sr. works a lot and Grace is racist, homesick, and overprotective.
- Funetik Aksent: Timothy's accent is written as this. Example:Timothy: "She started dis terrible whar, eh, young bahss?"
- Innocent Bigot: Philip had some prejudices towards black people, like Timothy. He, at first, thinks black people are more different than him when he sees Timothy eat a raw fish (seeing that freaks him out), assumes Timothy (and all black people) must be from Africa, is initially disgusted with interacted with Timothy, and calls Timothy "ugly and stupid" at one point. Of course, considering his mother's interactions with people of color and his own lack of interactions with them, it's not hard to see why he has those views.
- Philip begins to warm to Timothy when Timothy says he was born in Charlotte Amalie (in Saint Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands), and Philip realises that that makes Timothy a U.S. citizen.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Philip eventually sheds his bigotry and truly enjoys Timothy's company. Even after his rescue, he prefers to spend time with people who had also known Timothy, as he feels closer to them.
- Morality Pet: Wanting to keep Stew Cat around rather than throw him off the raft like Timothy wanted (he believed the cat was bad luck) is one of our earliest hints that Philip is a good kid rather than a hateful bigot.
- My Beloved Smother: Grace, in comparison to Henrik's mother, is rather overprotective.My mother was always afraid I'd fall off the sea wall, or tumble out of a tree, or cut myself with a pocketknife. Henrik's mother wasn't that way. She laughed a lot. She said, "Boys, boys, boys."
- Nice Guy: As Philip does learn, Timothy's a pretty good guy and, while he's stern, he's certainly patient with Philip's initial bigotry.
- Parental Abandonment: Timothy doesn't remember his parents, just a woman called "Hannah Gumbs". We learn in Timothy of the Cay that he was abandoned as a baby.
- Shipwreck Start: The story is kicked off when the ship that Philip and his mother are onboard is torpedoed, stranding him on an island in the Caribbean with Timothy and Stew Cat.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Philip used to spend a lot of time with his dad, Philip Sr, but, WWII in full swing, the latter is always busy, even on Sunday.Philip: "I'm sorry, guy, I have to work."
- Vague Age: We don't know exactly how old Timothy is (and he doesn't know either) but he's called "old". In Timothy of the Cay, he does a lot of guessing as to how old he exactly he is. This plays into his advantage when it comes to getting jobs.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Philip's mother Grace is afraid of flying, which is why they take a ship to the mainland... which gets torpedoed.
Tropes specific to Timothy of the Cay:
- Only One Name: Though he would later go by "Timothy Gumbs" on license, Timothy still thinks of himself as just "Timothy" as he's never had a last name.
- Parental Substitute: Tante Hannah took in Timothy when he was baby, as mentioned in The Cay. From what we can see, they were quite close and Timothy thinks of her fondly, as, when he was out to sea for four years, he wanted to bring her back clothes, and, some time after she passed away, he renames his boat, the Tessie Crab, to Hanna Gumbs, after her. Although Timothy and Hannah were not blood relations, he called her 'Tante' (aunt). When required to put down a last name, he chooses Gumbs and uses it for the rest of this life.
- Prequel: The first half centers entirely around Timothy and what he was doing before he met Philip.
- Survivor Guilt: Timothy, when the rest of the crew and passengers of the Hettie Redd drowned despite his best efforts to save them. He even wished he drowned in the storm.
