Pedagogy

The Cay is the story of a boy named Philip Enright, living on the island of Curacao from the island of Venezuela during World War II, as he and his mother tried to escape the harmful effects of war. They had a shipwrecked on their sail but Philip survived the accident and only to be trapped in an island, together with a blackman named Timothy and a cat called Stew. The aftermath of the ship put into shambles left Philip blind into a cay at the Devils Mouth of the Caribbean and forced him to adapt to his new world of darkness and survive the challenges on the shore including the hurricane.

Philip is full of energy in at the peak of his youthful days, in his eagerness to venture even the detrimental war. His mother is dreaded in foreseeing the fate that war will bring them. Timothy, the black man never needed to save Philip eventually became the boys eyes in his blindness.

This one-sitting book highlights the capability of every human to survive in any given situation, the survival of the fittest (Spencer, Herbert. 1864). On their journey to survival, they learned to set aside self-serving bias especially on the part of Philip who has a very vivid impression of what black people are as what his mother would tell him. There was transformation on the treatment Philip fostered to Timothy when he was made to realize how to be self-reliant. It was on the constancy of good treatment that radically changed the basic foundation of Philips perception on black people. On the other hand, while it triumphantly emphasizes on survival, it also recognizes that no man is an island, that we need companion to make this journey of life worth-living  people to whom you can find the meaning of joy, despair and little victories with. I recommend that this book be read in a more effective way than simply be cynical with the bit-fanciful settings that environs it.