I am the Cheese

I am the Cheese is a fictional novel written in 1977 by Robert Cormier about a kid suffering from amnesia that has lost both of his parents. The plot, according to Adam Farmer, the protagonist of the story, involves him riding his bicycle from Monument, Massachusetts to Rutterberg, Vermont, in order to visit his father in the hospital and bring him a package.

 Reality is gradually revealed to the reader, as every chapter or so the scene switches back and forth between Adam riding his bicycle to Vermont and Adam meeting with what we can assume is his psychiatrist- Brint. In order to emphasize the dissociation/loss of reality that Adam experiences, the story is told in first person in the chapters that he rides his bike, and in third person when he is with his psychiatrist (bike riding Adam does not remember these meetings). Adam’s past is, notably the fate of his parents, is revealed to the reader during the meetings with Brint. It is revealed that Adam and his family had to receive new identities after his father testified against a government conspiracy in order to protect themselves. Mr. Grey is appointed to protect their family and help them adopt their new identities. However, Mr. Grey ends up killing Adam’s mother, putting his father in the hospital, and giving Adam a concussion, which results in amnesia. This is revealed to the reader at the same time it is revealed to Adam, which he rediscovers during one of the meetings with Brint. This meeting occurs when Adam finally makes it to the hospital, to learn that his father had died long ago, and he has been making the trip from Massachusetts to Vermont on his bike for three years in order to piece together his memory for Brint, who is investigating both the murder of his parents and the knowledge Adam may have of the government conspiracy. The book ends with Adam beginning his trip once again.

I am the Cheese relates really well to Chapter 9 in our textbook because of its subtleties with memory and amnesia. Throughout the excerpts from the meetings with Brint, the reader learns of the many pieces of flashbulb memories Adam has-such as a dog he meets acting as a retrieval cue for an emotional memory in which his father fought a dog. Adam’s explicit memory retention has been damaged, and the repetition of his bike trip, coupled with Brint’s interrogation of him serve as a priming technique to help him remember the details from the past about his family and about Mr. Grey. Adam’s amnesia is peculiar: he can continue to make memories in the present up to a point-until he arrives at the hospital and is interrogated again, whereupon something triggers either the repression of everything he had learned and/or the regression to the Adam that existed before his first bike ride, just after his father was put in the hospital. It is implied by the end of the story that this process is to happen again