Blindness In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Cay

In the Cay, Phillip has gone through many adventures and many new things and had to learn to deal with these situations and learn to survive and to deal with others as company. In The Cay, Phillip’s character reveals that through many conflicts, he developed reliability, strength, and independence.

Phillip demonstrates reliability after experiencing blindness as evidenced in the novel when he fell off the ship and couldn’t do anything because he realized he couldn’t see. In the book it states “Then I realized that the pain had gone away. It had gone away but left me blind.”(Taylor 45) In the book Phillip woke up on a little raft with a stranger he didn’t know and he was trying to find his mother but couldn’t find anything but the sky, water, …show more content…
In the book it states “Timothy, I’m blind. I can’t see to work.” (Taylor 70) and Phillip kept doubting himself and giving himself a harm time for not believing in himself and not wanting to try to do anything on his own to prove to himself that he can do things while he is blind and he can survive on his own. Later on in The Cay it states “ I accomplished a lot in three day, even putting a new edge on Timothy’s knife.”(Taylor 116-117) and since Timothy had died Phillip had to teach himself to survive on the island on his own since he didn’t want to learn when Timothy was alive and Phillip has taught himself many things to be able to survive on his own on the island. In the beginning of the book Phillip couldn’t do anything on his own because he always depended on others. While Timothy and Phillip were on the island together, Timothy tried to teach Phillip how to do things around the island so Phillip could survive on his own but every time Phillip would say no because he was blind and thought that he couldn’t do anything. Then a huge storm came one day and Timothy got in front of Phillip the whole time to try to protect Phillip and when it was over Phillip was calling for Timothy but he didn’t answer and he assumed that he had died because his father used to always tell him “Phillip, sometimes people die from just being very, very tired.” (Taylor 114). After the storm went away Phillip finally understood why Timothy tried to teach him things. After some days of being on the island he taught himself to tell time by looking up at the sky, he was able to climb a palm tree to get coconuts, and made a bed with palm fronds. During his time here on the island alone he learned to not depend on others and learned to do many things around the island as an independent