The Cay: Hero’s Journey

1. The Cay:Hero’s Journey By: Greg W.

2. Ordinary World • Phillip lives with his mother and father in a gabled green house is Willemstad, Curacao, an island in the Caribbean.

3. Call To Adventure • Phillip’s mother states that she would like to go back to the U.S.A. because of WWII that is happening at the time. Phillip’s mother would like to take Phillip as well.

4. Refusal of the Call • Phillip doesn’t want to leave, and he thinks about hiding. Eventually though, Phillip decides that he doesn’t have a choice and agrees with his mother that he will go.

5. Crossing The Threshold Once Phillip and his mother get on the boat to leave for Panama (their first stop) their ship is torpedoed. Everyone gets in the lifeboats, but the ship turns and they all fall into the water. A piece of timber hits Phillip on the head, and he was knocked unconscious. Someone then pulled Phillip onto a raft. 4 hours later, Phillip regains consciousness on the raft with a black man, named Timothy. After a little while on the raft, because the piece of timber hit him on the head specifically on the part of your brain called the occipital lobe, which supplies you with vision, he goes blind and becomes completely dependant on Timothy.

6. Meeting the Mentor • Once Phillip wakes up on the raft he meets a black old man named Timothy, who familiarizes Phillip with everything and teaches him the fundamentals of surviving.

7. Allies and Enemies • Timothy, Stew Cat, Phillip’s mom, Phillip’s dad, and Henrik van Boven are Phillip’s allies. The Germans are Phillip’s enemies.

8. The Innermost Cave • Phillip and Timothy spot an island and dock there. Sadly, there are no people or water. Phillip and Timothy must set up camp there and prepare for the fact that they may be their for the rest of their lives. The cay they have docked on is in the Devil’s Mouth, so no native schooners can enter there because of the vast coral reefs. Phillip has only one concern while staying there: Timothy is old- old enough to die there.

9. The Ordeal • While on the cay, Timothy spots a tempest (or a hurricane) coming in. They frantically make sure everything is safe, such as their water, their food, and themselves. Once the hurricane comes, they tie a rope to a strong palm tree and tie their arms to it so they won’t be swept away by the water or the wind. Timothy is using himself a shield to protect Phillip and takes the full force of the storm instead of Phillip. After the hurricane, Phillip realizes that Timothy isn’t their. He looks everywhere, and finally feels down at palm tree forest floor. There was Timothy, laying on the ground, dead.

10. The Reward • Phillip digs a grave for Timothy, and everything that has happened hits him all at once. He was blind, surviving on an uninhabited cay, all alone, with no one but Stew Cat, who wasn’t even a person. Luckily, Timothy has taught him so much about the cay that he knows where everything is, and can survive. He even knows where their fishing hole is! After a while of living on the cay, a boat comes next to the cay and spots Phillip’s fire (he made one earlier). They take him on to the boat and take him to where is parents are, waiting for him.

11. The Return With the Elixir • Phillip reunites with his parents and later gets his eyes healed. Once the bandages came off, he could see again. He only had to where glasses from there on out, which isn’t so bad. Phillip two very important things on that cay: One, he learned how to survive (obviously), and two, (he had grown to learn form his parents that black people were different and they live differently) that blacks are just the same as whites, they are just a different skin color.