I Am the Cheese

I Am the Cheese is a young adult novel by the American writer Robert Cormier, published in 1977.

So a boy is riding around on his bike, trying to get to his dad, who's in the hospital in a faraway city. The same boy, Adam Farmer, is sitting in some kind of interrogation room in a mental hospital, trying to remember his life before the hospital.

I Am the Cheese is an emotional mindscrew novel about Adam Farmer, who is afraid of everything, has to take medication, lives in an asylum, and is in love with a girl named Amy.

Also, the story is set three years after his parents died. He never rode a bike to his dad's hospital. He couldn't have; he never left his own.

A film adaptation was made in 1983.

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Tropes used in I Am the Cheese include:

• Cuckoo Nest: See Mind Screw below.
• I Am the Noun: I Am the Cheese (from the song, The Farmer in the Dell.)
• Mind Screw: Nothing Adam sees or aims for on his bike ride are real, aside from the characters he meets.
• No Medication for Me: At the beginning of the book, Adam dumps all his pills down his sink. He tries to avoid medication from Brint as well, but Adam resists less as the book progresses.
• Unreliable Narrator
• Witness Protection: The Farmer family is a part of this. It's later revealed that their real last name is Delmonte.