49 pages • 1 hour read
I Am the Cheese
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 26-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary
In the transcript, Adam discusses his mom. Since he uncovered the truth, his mom avoided him. One day, Adam came home early. His mom offered to make him lunch and began to cry and open up. The worst part of their life was the uncertainty. A car driving down the street or a woman at the grocery store was a possible threat. Even Grey was a potential threat. Grey told them his government number in case of an emergency, but Louise disliked Grey. They were too dependent on him and should have questioned his authority.
Louise wanted to relocate to New Orleans, but Grey opposed it. The people Dave testified against had links in New Orleans. Yet the people had connections everywhere, like an “evil growth.” As Louise showed Adam the things she kept—Dave’s army jacket and old hat, Adam’s baby items—someone rang the doorbell, frightening Adam and his mom. The person at the door was Amy.
Adam tells Brint that a “dark cloud” sometimes passes over his thoughts. He wants to know where his mom and dad are. He wonders what’s going to happen to him next.
Chapter 27 Summary
In Hookset, Vermont, Adam becomes a spy. He watches the Varney home and the people coming and going. Adam spots a boy his age (Junior Varney) with his bike and confronts him. Junior calls Adam a liar and threatens to “massacre” him. Adam pulls the bike away from Junior, and Junior pushes Adam down. As Junior tries to leave with the bike, Adam dives at his feet and knocks Junior to the concrete. Reunited with his bike, Adam pedals to Rutterburg.
Chapter 28 Summary
In the transcript, Adam requests Brint late at night. Once again, Adam speculates about whether Brint is a doctor. There is a doctor, and he wears a white coat and gives Adam medicine. Brint prefers a business suit. Maybe Brint is a psychiatrist. Brint wonders why Adam mistrusts him and pushes Adam to remember pleasant moments.
Adam thinks about a Number he and Amy did at a large church wedding. In the church’s parking lot, they entered unlocked cars, turning up the volume and turning on the windshield wipers. When the owners turned on the cars, they’d be startled. A man (possibly the church janitor) ran out of the church and tried to apprehend Adam, but Adam and Amy got away and laughed about the incident over milkshakes.
That same day, Grey called: A wiretap indicated that people might know about Adam and his family—the people mentioned Monument. Adam and his family should go away. They’d had to go away before. They went to Maine to avoid media coverage of Monument’s 200th anniversary. When a witness mentioned a former journalist, they went to California. For the third time, they took a road trip around the Northeast.
Chapter 29 Summary
In Belton Falls, Adam arrives at the Rest-A-While Motel, but the cabins look deserted, and the office is a mess. Adam hears a dog outside, but the dog is a small cocker spaniel, so it doesn’t scare Adam.
At a gas station across the street, the long-haired worker looks at Adam and his bike “without interest” and directs Adam to a phone. He calls Amy, and the sick man answers again. He doesn’t know Amy or any member of the Hertz family, and he’s had his phone number for three years. Adam hangs up and calls Directory Assistance, and the operator tells him there’s no Hertz family in Monument.
After the gas station worker says the Rest-A-While Motel closed almost three years ago, Adam hears a scream. It’s himself screaming. As he runs across the street to the motel, a car almost hits him. He bangs on a cabin door—he wants to go in.
Chapter 30 Summary
On the road trip, Dave guessed that Grey was being overcautious. They ate at McDonald’s, booked a cabin at the Rest-A-While Motel, and then had dinner at a quaint restaurant, the Red Mill. His mom smiled, and Adam felt warm, like he was in another cozy black-and-white movie—Frank Capra’s classic romantic comedy It Happened One Night (1934).
The Farmers drove to Vermont the next day, and a car followed them. Dave pulled over and let the car pass. The people in the car were on Grey’s team, so Dave suggested they leave their car and take in the stunning view. A car rushed toward them, and Adam saw his mom be hit by the car and die. He heard voices—Dave “got away.” Dave ran, but he was hurt, so the mysterious people would “get him.” Down on the pavement, Adam saw “him”—the man in gray pants. The man ordered his team to “remove” Louise and apprehend Adam.
Chapter 31 Summary
Adam is in deserted Rutterburg. He looks for a phone booth but doesn’t find one. As Adam approaches the hospital gates, Dr. Dupont waits for him. He tells Dupont he didn’t take the medicine, and Dupont puts his arm around Adam’s shoulder.
Mr. Harvester, the maintenance person, calls Adam “Skipper” and welcomes him back. Whipper, Dobbie, and Lewis also welcome Adam back, but Adam doesn’t like them. Whipper tries to steal Adam’s box, which contains Pokey the Pig. While Adam rode his bike around the hospital grounds, all three boys chased him, knocking him off it and into a ditch.
Adam hears the dog, Silver, growl, and he sees the switchboard operator, Luke. He spots the bigger-bodied Arthur, who stays on the second floor. He’s aware of Junior Varney, who also tries to steal his bike.
Adam asks Dupont if his dad is dead, but Dupont is evasive. Nonetheless, Adam realizes his dad didn’t get away—he’s dead. To lift his spirits, he sings “The Farmer in the Dell.” For the first time, he sings the verse where the cheese “stands alone.” Adam thinks he is the cheese.
Chapter 32 Summary
In a final report, Brint recommends keeping Adam confined until “termination procedures” receive clearance. Brint confirms that Dave (Witness #599-6) and Louise died, and they removed their remains and moved Adam to the hospital without involving local officials. Brint recommends reinstating Grey (#2222). Brint doesn’t believe Grey allowed the “termination” of Dave and Louise.
Chapter 33 Summary
The last chapter repeats the start of the first chapter. Adam is on Route 31 in Monument, Massachusetts, peddling his “old-fashioned” bike. The wind harasses him, but he keeps pedaling.
Chapters 26-33 Analysis
In the final section, the narrative culminates in the deaths of Adam’s parents and his removal to a secure facility. This not only provides an ending in a chronological sense but reveals the connections between the various narrative strands.
As the sense of jeopardy grows towards the murder scene in this section, Louise becomes the main focus of Human Responses to Constant Threats and Fears. Echoing the man from the gas station in Chapter 3, Louise doesn’t trust people. She fears every car on the street and thinks any woman at the grocery store might pose a risk. Louise doesn’t believe there’s a solution to the sinister world, telling Adam, “The people your father testified against are members of a huge organization, linked perhaps with other organizations. Like an evil growth: cut off one part and another part still grows” (172). The simile helps the reader see “evil” as a mutating virus or disease, part of an inescapable structure of corrupt power.
Louise links to the theme of Constructing and Manipulating Identity. She tries to counter the suffocating influence of Grey’s dictums and helps to raise the reader’s suspicions, creating dramatic irony. She is detached and lacking in deference for the authorities: “[Adam]’s mother was really the rebel. She often spoke resentfully, almost contemptuously, of Mr. Grey” (176). As a “rebel,” his mom seeks to keep her identity and not surrender to Grey and the government. Her nonconformity reveals agency but, the novel suggests, this cannot save her.
In this last section of the novel, diction becomes increasingly important in creating suspense and in demarcating good and evil characters. The objective, technocratic diction in Chapter 32 augments the theme of Constructing and Manipulating Identity. The transcripts turn people into numbers. Grey becomes #2222, and Dave is #599-6. Through words, Dave and Grey become data. What’s at stake isn’t human life but a formula. Diction helps Cormier keep the end mysterious. Adam hears voices, and he sees “[g]ray pants. Him” (221), but “gray pants” doesn’t automatically mean Grey, and even if Grey and his team are there, there’s a lack of indisputable evidence that Grey and his team killed Adam’s mom and dad or helped kill them. Dave assumes the people following them in the car are Grey’s people, but Dave isn’t infallible. In Chapter 23, a hired killer dresses as a cop. In Chapter 30, killers could have dressed as members of Grey’s team. When Brint suggests “termination procedures” or waiting “until Subject A obliterates” (233), the coded diction resists clear answers, but its inhumanity is chilling and distasteful.
The theme of Journeys as Psychological Persistence and Resilience grows complex as Adam’s journey is confirmed as an imaginary one. The cyclical nature of the novel suggests that Adam’s journey will continue in his mind, although whether this is a positive sign of resistance or a negative sign of distress is left ambiguous. In Chapter 31, the novel finally makes clear reference to the “cheese” of the title. Adam sings the verse from “The Farmer in the Dell” that supplies the book’s title, and the cheese represents Adam. Like the cheese, Adam is alone. His mom and dad are dead, he doesn’t have any friends at the psychiatric hospital, and Amy is someone he made up. When Adam declares, “I am the cheese” (229), he signals both his isolation and persistence. In the song, the rat takes the cheese, but the cheese stays standing. Perhaps Adam can keep going. The end suggests survival. As the repetition of Chapter 1 concludes the book, Adam reiterates, “I keep pedaling, I keep pedaling” (234).
Unlock all 49 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Robert Cormier
