I Am the Cheese
First edition
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| Author | Robert Cormier |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young adult novel, crime fiction |
| Publisher | Pantheon Books |
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Publication date
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1977 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 233 pp (first ed.ition) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 2645991 |
| LC Class | PZ7.C81634 Iac |
I Am the Cheese is a young adult novel by the American writer Robert Cormier, published in 1977.
The novel opens with Protagonist Adam Farmer biking from his home in the fictional town of Monument, Massachusetts (based on Cormier's home town of Leominster, Massachusetts) to visit his father in Rutterburg, Vermont. The story alternates with transcripts of tapes between a "subject" and Brint. The subject receives psychotherapy and is interrogated by Brint.
As the book continues, it is revealed that Adam is the subject, who was formerly Paul Delmonte of a small New York town. His father, "David Farmer", was a newspaper reporter who was enrolled in the Witness Protection Program. The family moved the Monument and escaped several close calls with their identities, but the parents are killed in the penultimate chapter in a car collision. Adam/Paul survives, and is taken to a government mental asylum. The last chapter implies that WPP agents killed the family, and reveals that Paul is regularly interrogated on the topic. Each time, Paul is unable to handle his realizations of his past and embarks on his delusion bike ride across the ground of the facility. At the end of the last tape, Brint recommends authorization to kill Adam.
This quote is the last verse from "The Farmer In The Dell", a song that Adam sings during the book:
The cheese stands alone
The cheese stands alone
Heigh-ho, the merry-o
The cheese stands alone
He sings many of these songs throughout the novel. The song contains several characters, each taking someone with them when the farmer leaves, yet the cheese has nobody.
Adam believes that he is the cheese. He is alone in the world, his mother dead and his father missing, and he lives in a hospital. He thinks that he is not wanted anymore. Also, as in other works by Cormier, there is a dual meaning to the title. The words "I am the cheese" may also represent Adam's feelings of entrapment: he is the bait used to lure his parents to their murders.
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