I Am the Cheese

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"I Am the Cheese"
LC Class
PZ7.C81634 Iac[1]

I Am the Cheese is a

American writer Robert Cormier
, published in 1977.

Plot

The novel opens with

tapes between a "subject" and a doctor, Brint. The subject receives psychotherapy
and is interrogated by Brint.

As the book continues, it is revealed that Adam is the subject, formerly Paul Delmonte of a small New York town. His father, "David Farmer", was a newspaper reporter who was enrolled in the

mental asylum
. The last chapter implies that WPP agents killed Adam/Paul's father and reveals that Paul is regularly interrogated on the topic. Each time, Paul is unable to handle the realization of his past and embarks on a delusional bike ride across the ground of the facility. At the end of the last tape, Brint recommends that Adam is "terminated" or continued to be questioned.

Characters

Title

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 the bait in a trap. Adam is alone in the world, his mother dead and his father missing, and he lives in a hospital.

Another point is that his father had taught him the song, possibly as a way to reinforce the new name, "Farmer," they had adopted.

Literary significance and criticism

Started in 1975, I Am the Cheese began Cormier's experimentation with first-person, present-tense narration. 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. However, I Am the Cheese proved to be a success.

Awards and nominations

I Am the Cheese was named to five annual book lists according to the publisher description of the 20th anniversary edition.[1] It won the 1997 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. It is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity.[2]

Film adaptation

Main article: I Am the Cheese (film)

I Am the Cheese was released as a movie in 1983, directed by Robert Jiras and starring Robert MacNaughton, Hope Lange, Don Murray, Lee Richardson, Cynthia Nixon and Robert Wagner. The screenplay was written by David Lange (Hope Lange's brother) and Robert Jiras.[3]

Publication history

WorldCat libraries report holding Danish (1986),

Catalan (1987), Spanish (1998), Chinese, Polish, Serbian and Korean-language editions.[4] It is also available in Hungarian (1990).[5]

References

  1. ^ a b "I am the cheese" (first edition). Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  2. ^ "Phoenix Award Summary". Children's Literature Association. Retrieved 2022-10-25.
    See also the current homepage "Phoenix Award".
  3. ^ Maslin, Janet (November 11, 1983). "Movie Review: I Am The Cheese (1983)". The New York Times.
  4. ^ a b c d "Formats and Editions of I am the cheese". WorldCat. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  5. ^ "Formats and Editions". worldcat.org. Retrieved 2022-10-25.

External links

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