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.
