Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This is a story about a boy named Phillip who lives with his American parents on the
island of Curacao in the Caribbean.
The island is suddenly attacked by German U-boats, who surround the island and cut off
any supplies from getting in and out. Phillip's mother decides she wants to go back to America
and takes Phillip with her. However, the boat they are travelling on gets attacked and Phillip
is thrown overboard, suffering a head injury.
He awakes in a lifeboat with a large Black man named Timothy and a cat named Stew.
The crew of three drift for a while until they approach a small island. However, Phillip
soon discovers that he is blind due to his head injury. They make their way onto the
island and set up camp.
At first, Phillip is distrustful of Timothy because he doesn't like Blacks, but later
discovers that he needs Timothy to be his eyes while they are on the island.
Timothy teaches Phillip about the island and shows him skills to take care of himself,
like fishing and weaving.
Timothy senses a hurricane and prepares for the storm by tying both of them to a tree.
When the storm hits, Timothy protects Phillip from the wind and rain.
They survive the storm, but, exhausted, Timothy soon dies. Phillip buries him and resumes
life on the island.
Eventually, Phillip is rescued and reunited with his family. He gets surgery to fix his
eyes and vows to find the island where Timothy is buried.
Desert island stories are always difficult to narrate, especially from a first-person
perspective, because we know that the narrator survives. How else could he tell the story?
Racism is an underlying issue in this story. Phillip's mother has taught her son that Blacks
are lower than Whites, an attitude that Phillip has when they first arrive on the island.
However, due to his situation as a blind person, he must learn to get along with a Black man,
subduing his inherent racism. However, we see that his racism is more than subdued as
he befriends Timothy.
Similarly, the author makes Phillip blind, both literally and figuratively. This blindness
forces him to see beyond skin color to the point that he doesn't view Timothy as White
or Black, but just as a fellow human being.
In terms of storytelling, this story presents an interesting perspective on narration. For
the most part, the narrator is blind and so he cannot give physical descriptions of his
surroundings, but must describe his experiences through his other senses.
What's even more interesting is how readers are still able to picture the setting and
images through a blind narrator. You'd think that it could never work since a lot of people
say how much they like authors who can paint pictures in their heads that are so visual.
But Phillip, as the narrator, paints a picture of an island without visual images, but descriptive
images. In fact, as readers, initially we are all blind when it comes to reading stories.
The author describes images that are in their mind and we must recreate them in our mind
to understand the world presented to us.
This is a great example of the power of the imagination and the written word, that people
are able to imagine something or someplace without having actually been there and seeing
it.