“The greatest influence in your life, strong than your willpower, is your environment. Change that, if necessary. Until you are mentally strong, you can never be what you want to be what you want to be without a good environment.”(Paramahansa Yogananda) In the Cay, Philip must change as a person before he can understand another person. Philip slowly goes from childish and innocent to strong and independent throughout the course of the novel.
In the beginning of the novel Philip can be described as innocent. Phillip’s mother is upset because Philip left the house so he could see the submarines “I told you not to go there , Philip,’ she said angrily.’We are at war! Don’t you understand?,’ ‘We just wanted to see the submarines,’I said.”(Taylor 13) Philip shows innocent in this quote because he doesn’t see the submarines as extremely dangerous and acts as if they’re giant toys. This is significant because its shows how childish he can be and how he doesn’t understand the concept of war.
At the climax of the novel, Philip can be described as strong. After the death of Timothy, Philip begins to rebuild, search for food, and wait for an aircraft to come by despite being blind.”I must feed myself and Stew Cat; I must rebuild the hut and build another signal fire down on east beach; the I must spend each day listening for…show more content… When Philip returns to Curacao, he no longer hangs out with Henrik but instead talks to the older black men.”I saw Henrik van Boven occasionally, but it wasn’t the same as when wwe’d played the Dutch or the British. He seemed very young. So I spent a lot of time along St. Anna Bay, and at the Ruyterkade market talking to the black people.”(Taylor 136) Philip’s time on the island has aged him so much he now much more relates to the adults than kids his own age. This is significant because being forced to survive in such terrible circumstances has basically ripped his childhood from
