In the following essay excerpt, Mertz discusses how I Am the Cheese can be used to study literary style and structure.

I am the Cheese is consistently one of the most difficult novels for my college students, yet also one of their favorite works for analysis. Cormier's novel is particularly appropriate for dealing with two concepts that inexperienced readers seem to find particularly elusive: style and structure. Because a number of essays have analyzed Cormier's work, and this novel in particular, I will try to avoid repeating what has been stated elsewhere. The most recent study of Cormier is Patricia J. Campbell's

Presenting Robert Cormier (1990), one of the books in the Laurel-Leaf Library of Young Adult Authors. In her chapter on I am the Cheese, Camp-bell states that the "triple strands that are braided together to make the story, the three alternating levels on which the narrative...