Summary:
Discusses the three different perspectives of the story "I am the Cheese", by Robert Cormier. Describes how all three of our perspectives come together in the same moment of his narrow escape from his intended fate.
The story "I am the Cheese", by Robert Cormier, is told from three different perspectives that eventually come together to form the same ending. We see Adam, the main character, as he makes his bicycle journey. We also get to know Adam in his past-tense life. And we see Adam talking to a man we take to be a doctor or psychiatrist of some sort. Through our three different perspectives we learn only small pieces of the whole story at a time, and this makes it feel like a mystery that we, along with Adam, must put together and solve.
Adam Farmer is riding his bike. He is on a journey, which is, we at first believe, to see his father in a hospital. As he rides, Adam is often heard humming the tune to the song "Farmer in the Dell." He has a package, a gift for his father, which we later learn is Pokey, a stuffed animal from his early childhood. Each place he stops, on his journey has some significance to help him remember the parts of his life he seems to have forgotten. Through his entire journey he tries unsuccessfully to contact Amy, the girlfriend he has never forgotten. We eventually learn that his entire journey is actually only a circuit around the grounds of the hospital or compound where he is staying, and this he repeats each day, remembering a little more each time. His last bike ride ends up being an actual escape from the institution.
The second Adam we get to know is learning about his past as we learn it: through flashbacks. We first meet him as a very small boy with a stuffed animal we later learn is Pokey. Pokey is the only tie between Adam's current life and his past. Adam discovers, by sneaking into his fathers study and finding two birth certificates that are identical except for the name, that his real name is Paul Delmonte. When he later confronts his parents, he learns that they are in a witness protection program as the result of some testimony his father gave in some important trial. The entire Delmonte family's identity was "killed" in a faked car crash. We see the family singing "Farmer in the Dell", presumably to help remind young Paul that his new last name is Farmer. We also meet Adam's girlfriend Amy. Finally we learn, as Adam remembers it, that the government who was supposed to be protecting them has killed his parents. Only chance has left Adam alive, and alone, inside the "hospital."
We also get to know the Adam Farmer who is having sessions with a man we are led to assume is some kind of doctor or psychoanalyst. Through their discussions, Adam and the "doctor" are trying to learn as much about the past Adam has blocked out, as possible. It is these flashbacks to his past in which Adam remembers learning his true identity. He also remembers learning that his family was in the witness protection program and that someone found and killed his parents. We realize that Pokey is the only thing left from Adam's first life as Paul Delmonte. The "doctor" is continuously pushing Adam to remember who he spoke to and what he may have told his girlfriend Amy about the trial at which his father testified. Finally Adam realizes that it was the government who killed his parents and who intend to "terminate" him, as soon as the doctor/agent learns as much as he can, through their "sessions." This time, in real time, as Adam rides his bike around the compound, knowing everything, he manages to sneak out the gate and escape.
Adam's journey is a false one on his bike, but a real one into his past. Adam's name is also false, but the memories of his family and the reasons for his false name are real. His escape from his mental block and the institution are also real. Pokey is real. The three perspectives in which we know Adam are both real and imagined in differing aspects. All three of our perspectives come together in the same moment of his narrow escape from his intended fate.
This is the complete article, containing 697 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
