Robert Cormier’s I Am
the Cheese is technically listed as a crime novel. The book is written in
parallel narratives—one a first-person account of a boy running away to visit
his father, and the other written as a transcript of therapy/interrogation
sessions. The story covered in the transcript grows with gripping intrigue as
Adam learns that his life is nothing that he thought it was, and that he is not
the person he believes he is either. The unfolding of this grand scheme of organized
crime, hidden identity, and a search for justice is exciting and will extend
the imagination of readers. However, more valuable is the other narrative—a
smaller, simpler story of one boy’s attempt to faces daily fears and anxieties.
Life is hard, and disenchantment understandable. This story emphasizes that
daily challenges are often the most frightening, forcing the struggles of the
real world on the reader. However, by placing this next to a narrative that is
on a much grander level Cormier paints these mundane struggles as noble and
validates their difficulty.
The opening scene in the novel is one that many children
have experienced—the exhilarating and terrifying feeling of riding quickly on a
bike. Adam has thirty-five dollars, a dilapidated bike, and he didn’t take his
medication that morning. This moment illustrates the extent of power children
can create, and the simultaneous fear it creates. The next chapter introduces
the next narrative—the transcript—and immediately that narrative is imbued with
a feeling of spookiness, urgency, and panic. Adam recalls he and his father
running away, and they don’t even know what from. These first two scenes,
despite their differences in scale and tone, connect to each other in many
ways. First, there is the feeling of running away from something you don’t
understand. In the transcript that is played out quite literally. In the
narrative, however, it is more cloudy and consequently more true to life. Adam
thinks of everything he is leaving behind—a bad grade, his isolating interest
in Thomas Wolfe, his exciting but
nervous relationship with Amy, and his dependence on medication. These fears
look miniscule compared to the menacing threat that causes his family to flee
in the other narrative, but because they are placed next to each other means
that the same tone is applied to each.
This pattern continues throughout the book. When, in the
transcript, Adam discovers that his family has a hidden identity and that he
is, in fact, Paul Delmonte, the next thing that happens in the narrative is
Adam realizing his bike has been stolen. Again, comparatively a stolen bike is
miniscule in the context of lies and alternate identities, but the parallel
pattern of the narrative validates the urgency of the stolen bike. For a child,
the fear of a stolen bike is very real—as real as the secrets of the Farmer
family. As another example, when Adam and his family again are forced to run
toward the end of the book, the story happening in the other narrative Adam
arrives in Belton Falls and experiences the fear of being there alone, at
night, with strangers all around. The uncertainty in both of these events is
the same.
At the end of the book these narratives meet together. In
the story told through the transcript, Adam reveals that his parents were
murdered (though it was staged to look like a car crash). The illusion
surrounding the other narrative is then broken, and the adventure Adam has been
experiencing is less exciting than ever—he has just been acting out his own
delusions. However, the tragic solitude cause by his parents’ murder is here
paralleled with Adam’s discovery that he “is the cheese”—a reference to the
song “The Farmer in the Dell” and the line “the cheese stands alone.” Adam
realizes that he is alone and has nobody. It’s a tragic end. The book does not
soften the blow, but lets this loneliness stand. The hardships of the exciting
crime story Adam reveals then pale in comparison to the realization everyone
ends up having in life—that they are the cheese.
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