Essay Questions

How does Philip, the narrator, lose his sight?

Being just eleven years old and stranded on a desert island with a complete stranger whose ethnicity you have been taught to fear would be more than enough to create a sense of drama and conflict. But then, almost out of nowhere, suddenly Philip’s ordeal is really put to the test by waking up one morning to discovered he has gone completely blind. The complete loss of vision is not itself a sudden onset, however, as previous to this complete loss he has had to deal with his ability to see severely compromised by blurriness in the form of a haze coming over his field of vision. The cause of Philip’s blindness—which turns out to be only temporary thanks to a series of surgical procedures taking place after he is rescued—is one of the elements of being a castaway that rarely gets attention: sun blindness. The loss begins with his looking directly into the sun and is severely compromised by his later looking into the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the waves.

What is the original central purpose of the rope guide that Timothy builds for Philip?

Eventually, the rope guide is expansive enough to afford Philip the opportunity to explore the island and even, ultimately, allow him to continue fishing after the old man dies. The initial purpose for Timothy constructing the rope, however, is quite precise. In the event that Timothy is too far away to act in the event a plane passed overhead, the blinded Philip would be able to make his way down to the beach with a torch lit by the campfire in order to set a blaze intended to signal the pilots overhead. While this is Timothy’s conclusion at the time, eventually becomes obvious that the always forward-thinking Timothy was not merely considering an eventuality in which he would be too far away to light the signal fire in time, but would be completely incapacitated for, under the worst circumstances, dead.

What is the only object that Philip wants to take with him when he finally leaves the island?

When he is finally rescued, Philip is naturally accompanied by his only remaining live companion, Stew Cat. There is just one single reminder of his adventures on the cay that has the power to remain with him forever, however. It is Timothy’s knife, which at the moment of his rescue is still stuck in the palm tree he drove it into after having sharped its edge using coral. The knife had been one of the few meager possessions which he kept in a tin box, alongside biscuits, dry matches, and a few pieces of chocolate. The knife has been instrumental for their survival, literally to the point of neither he nor Timothy likely surviving had they not had it at their disposal.