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.