The Cay reflects Theodore Taylor's experience in the motion picture industry.

Like a movie script, the novel presents an exciting and suspenseful plot in a series of dramatic, vividly described scenes.

Also cinematic are Taylor's effective use of dialogue and his choice of an exotic setting. Cleverly written, the dialogue provides background information while advancing the plot. The setting, the Caribbean during World War II, is portrayed in extensive sensory detail consistent with Phillip's role as narrator.

Early in the book Phillip describes visible characteristics of the people and places he sees, but after he goes blind details of sound, smell, and touch become predominant.

Taylor skillfully combines a number of relatively conventional plot elements: an adventuresome young boy's conflict with an overprotective mother, a helpless town menaced by a wartime enemy, a shipwreck, the need to survive on an uncharted island, the developing cooperation between...