Character Analysis: The Cay

Have you ever faced a conflict in your life but felt you were changing as you solved this conflict? Theodore Taylor wrote the novel The Cay in which the main character Phillip develops positive character traits through the conflicts he faces. Phillip is a boy who is in the midst of World War II and becomes deserted on a lonely cay with a resourceful black man. In The Cay, Phillip’s character reveals that through many conflicts he develops maturity, bravery, and independence. Phillip demonstrated maturity after learning from his mother that not all people are equal as evidenced in the novel when he accepted Timothy for who he was no matter his race. At the beginning of the novel Phillip was very quarrelsome towards Timothy as he tried

This is proven in the novel when he decides to do the tasks Timothy tells him to do and try new things. Towards the middle of the novel Phillip and Timothy had been doing work one week and on the fifth day Phillip decides to try and climb the palm for the coconuts at the top. In the novel it states, “I think it was the fifth afternoon of this week that I blurted out to Timothy, ‘I’ll climb the palm now”’ (Taylor 98). This would show that Phillip developed bravery and had the courage to climb the palm tree. He had been telling Timothy he was too scared and realized he was was brave enough to try it even being blind. Phillip develops another character trait over the course of the novel as he faces other

By developing maturity he could now work together with Timothy and find ways to help them accomplish the responsibilities of the cay. From this maturity came bravery which allowed him to realize that he was capable of doing tasks on his own. Also from this bravery came independence which helped him to survive after the death of Timothy. As you can see phillip developed these positive traits throughout the novel. These character traits came from difficult conflicts he faced from the events he was caught up