cheese

            The book I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier, is a very worrisome book to me. My sophomore year in high school, all the books my teacher had us do, ended with either the narrator going crazy or already being crazy, this was one of those books. In addition to being a coming-of-age novel, I Am the Cheese also follows the path of an "orphan" quest, similar to The Catcher in the Rye. In the orphan quest, a child, whose parents loom heavily in the background, seeks to find himself on the road and often wants to find his parents. Cormier reverses the typical orphan structure, as Adam discovers he is an orphan only at the end of the novel, rather than at the beginning, where the central character's orphanage is usually established. In most orphan quests, the orphan runs across several surrogate parental figures. Sometimes these are not always the optimal parental replacements, and the orphan is lucky if he can find even one wise and nurturing elder. The narrative format of this book is rather varied. Adam Farmer, the narrator/main character, tells parts in third person or sometimes first person, depending on what's happening. Not to mention, this book is written as a flashback, of Adam's past. .
             Adam has been isolated from the rest of the world, by his parents for the safety of their family, his entire life. This is one reason he continually sings "The Farmer in the Dell" while indicating that the cheese stands alone and he is the cheese. Adam always hesitates or stops singing to himself after he get to " Heigh-ho, the merry-o, The cat takes the rat- (Cormier 21). The other characters leave the cheese deserted which is how Adam feels subconsciously, yet unlike other teens Adam is not very openly angry at the liberties denied to him, or even very confused about why his family seems to be "not quite right." Yet, once he finds out the truth his small fears become uncontrollable as he becomes more and more paranoid as the novel continues.