I Am the Cheese

I Am the Cheese centers on the experience of constructing and manipulating identity, emphasized by the enigmatic identity statement of the title. The novel, and its title, show that identity is fragile. The signs of this fragility are revealed in Adam’s memories and imagined journey in ways that prefigure the revelation that his identity has been eroded by his real situation of incarceration and corrupt medical “treatment.” Adam’s disillusionment and identity anxiety increase as he learns that people may have to change who they are or discover they’re not who they thought they were. He also begins to perceive that outside influences can also twist a person’s identity: Documents and other people can transform a person. The novel creates two birth certificates for Adam, prefiguring his later dual or dissociative psychological states, and the dual structure of his real and imaginative narratives. When Adam first learns about his false identity, his emotional response sets up his later identity confusion: “Adam Farmer was only a name, words, a lesson he had learned here in the cold room [….] His name might as well have been Kitchen Chair. Or Cellar Steps” (92-93).

In finding that his name is false, Adam feels that his name is therefore meaningless or arbitrary. Associating himself with inanimate objects expresses his sense of disorientation and also his lack of agency. It echoes his statement “I am the cheese” (229). As the narrative will come to show, Adam’s identity is controlled by powerful forces and can be removed—“terminated” or “obliterated,” as Brint says. Adam Farmer is neither Adam Farmer nor Paul Delmonte but only the dehumanized “Subject A.”

Adam increasingly dissociates in this way. During an exchange between Adam and Brint, the narrator notes, “[Adam] had stepped outside himself, departed, gone from this place and was outside looking in, watching himself and the doctor, if he was a doctor” (29). Adam turns into an “is” or a spectator. After he realizes the motel has closed down, Adam becomes an “is” again, admitting, “I realize that the sound I hear is me. I am screaming and I can’t stop” (210). Adam’s dual identity is a result of trauma, and the novel shows his psychological state breaking through from one layer of narrative identity (the Adam of the transcript) into the other (the Adam of the bike journey).

The main motive in the novel for constructing identity is survival, as portrayed by the Farmer family. Alternatively, the main motivation for manipulating it is power and control, as shown by the corrupt forces of Grey and Brint. The interplay between these two motivations is central to the narrative’s suspense and conflict, especially as it becomes clear that the Farmers’ new “safe” identities have made them subject to control and manipulation. The adoption of new identities are a challenge, the macrocosm to Adam’s challenging bike journey. Dave can’t be a journalist anymore, and Louise doesn’t feel like she can have a robust existence, telling Dave, “That’s just what we’re doing: surviving, not living” (127). Adam’s parents established complex lives under their first identities. As Adam was around three when he changed names, he never created a meaningful identity as Paul Delmonte. What jars him is the discovery that his parents were different people: They acted differently and did different things. However, by the end of the novel, Adam’s life is severely curtailed by his new identity: He is trapped in reality as well as figuratively. His situation is the epitome of his mom’s earlier words, “surviving, not living” (127).

No one’s identity is secure in the novel, and powerful people like Grey change identities. He goes from “the gray man” to Mr. Grey to #2222. Dave thinks Grey treats them like puppets, but Grey is something of a puppet, and Brint controls his strings in the final report. Whether Grey retains his identity as a member of the Department of Re-Identification is up to Brint. Brint also declines to reveal his identity and status to Adam, showing that control of identity is associated with wider power.