Prejudice And Discrimination In The Cay By Theodore Taylor

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In the novel The Cay by Theodore Taylor, Phillip is prejudice towards Timothy. They are stuck on a raft in the middle of what they believe to be the Carribean Sea, when they finally find a small cay to live on. The young boy, Phillip, changed over the course of the novel, primed with a hatred for people of the black race, overall, he realizes that the only difference is the color of their skin.. At the start of the novel, Phillip is prejudice, in the middle, he is tolerant and by the end he has deep respect for Timothy.

Phillip is prejudice towards Timothy in the beginning of the story, his mother always told him they lived differently. Something Phillip does to show he’s prejudice in the beginning by refusing to make the sleeping mats, thinking he’s worthless because he can’t see anymore. Timothy persuades …show more content…

After becoming very angry with Timothy, he throws the palm fronds at him in resentment. Timothy repeated the same thing over, and over, and over, “It’s very easy, young boss, over and under” ( ). Secondly, after being unsure of what his mother always said about black people, thinking she’d always been wrong, he begins to believe it after experiencing Timothy's stubbornness, “Although I hadn’t thought so before, I was now beginning to think my mother was right, she didn’t like them” (pg. 36). Phillip wasn’t used to the heavy labor he had to now that he was living on the cay with Timothy and he had to fight for survival. If Phillip’s companion hadn’t compelled him to do the work, they probably wouldn’t have survived. Timothy was a resourceful man, having been raised to know how to survive on his own, but