The Cay

             The dramatic, believable, and compelling novel, The Cay, is about a young boy named Phillip Enright, who lives with both his mother and father in the narrow, gabled, green house in Willemsted, on the island of Curacao, the largest of the butch islands just off the coast of Venezuela. War was something Phillip never had seen before but what was also happening on the whole world at the time. Now the enemies finally attacked their small, warm, blue island in the Caribbean. Phillip's father had worked in the refinery where he was working on the program to increase production of aviation gas for the war. Being that war was accumulating during that time, the chances of many communities being torpedoed or attacked was very uncertain, which made Phillip's mother very uneasy. She"d often discuss with Phillip's father about leaving the island and he would reply, "No place is safe". When Phillip finally found out he might have to leave the island after being so used to it, he tried to think of what ever he could do. But there was no convincing his mother. Finally, Phillip and his mother set off to Virginia safely. On their way, away from the island on a boat, they were torpedoed at about three o"clock in the morning on April 6, 1942, two days after leaving the island, resulting in their separation and lost at sea. .
             A long time after he was lost at sea, he opened his eyes to see, as he described, " a huge, very old Negro. He was ugly. His nose was flat and his face was broad; his head was a mass of wiry, gray hair. His name was Timothy." As Phillip was growing up his parents felt very dissimilarly towards blacks and she would tell him they were different. At first Phillip felt nothing toward the old man, considering that before when his boat was torpedoed, he was hit in the head by a piece of timber which damaged several nerves. When he woke up he was in tremendous pain from the accident.