However, I Am the Cheese proved to be a success. When Cormier sent the manuscript to the publisher of his previous novel, The Chocolate War, he was confused and depressed, convinced that he was alienating his new young adult audience because of the complex and ambiguous story. Started in 1975, I Am the Cheese began Cormier's experimentation with first-person, present-tense narration. Adam is alone in the world, his mother dead and his father missing, and he lives in a hospital.Īnother point is that his father had taught him the song, possibly as a way to reinforce the new name, "Farmer," they had adopted. The song contains several characters, each taking someone with them when the farmer leaves, yet the cheese has nobody.Īdam believes that he is the cheese. He sings many of these songs throughout the novel. This quote is the last verse from " The Farmer In The Dell", a song that Adam sings during the book: Aunt Martha - the only relative they're allowed to talk to.The elderly couple - the man helps him out of the ditch, while the woman criticizes him.
Old man by the gas station - warns him about trusting strangers.Whipper and friends - bullies in Carver.Junior Varney - a troublemaker and thief in Hookset.Dupont - a friendly doctor in a mental hospital Adam is his patient Arthur - a fat man in the town of Hookset who tells Adam of Junior Varney.Grey - agent in the Witness Protection Program Brint - Adam's questioner and "guide" as his psychotherapist.Amy Hertz - Adam's friend and love interest.He pretends to work for an insurance company. David Farmer (Anthony Delmonte) - Adam's father, a former newspaper man.Adam Farmer (Paul Delmonte) – teenage protagonist.At the end of the last tape, Brint recommends authorization to murder Adam. Each time, Paul is unable to handle his realization of his past and embarks on his delusional bike ride across the ground of the facility. The last chapter implies that WPP agents killed the family and reveals that Paul is regularly interrogated on the topic. Adam/Paul survives and is taken to a government mental asylum.
The family moved to Monument and escaped several close calls with their identities, but the parents are killed in the penultimate chapter in a car collision. His father, "David Farmer", was a newspaper reporter who was enrolled in the Witness Protection Program (WPP). The subject receives psychotherapy and is interrogated by Brint.Īs the book continues, it is revealed that Adam is the subject, formerly Paul Delmonte of a small New York town. The story alternates with transcripts of tapes between a "subject" and Brint.
The novel opens with protagonist Adam Farmer biking from his home in the fictional town of Monument, Massachusetts, (based on Cormier's hometown of Leominster, Massachusetts ) to visit his father in the fictional town of Rutterburg, Vermont. I Am the Cheese is a young adult novel by the American writer Robert Cormier, published in 1977.
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