HUM 3285: Postmodern Adolescent Literature
Dr. Perdigao
Spring 2012
Postmodernism and I Am the Cheese
Shift in late twentieth century with developments in postmodern (poststructuralist theories—linguistics to literature)
Psychoanalytic, feminist, reader response, New Historicist readings of texts—new ways of interpreting texts, ideas about texts shaped by contexts, developments in psychology, ideas about identity construction
Postmodernism: shift in ideas about literature, language from a structure to decipher to endless play
Meaning as shifting, unstable, language as less stable, with gaps and ambiguities
Poststructuralism—questioning authority; demystifying logocentric, phallocentric, ethnocentric orders; “master narratives” replaced by “little narratives”
Metafiction
Fiction about fiction; scenes of reading or writing within a text to reflect acts of writing and reading the text itself; Russian nesting dolls
Cormier’s I Am the Cheese(1977)
Authoritative narrative undone, three strands
Bike ride
Sessions
Memories
Monument, Massachusetts to Rutterburg, Vermont
Power and identity
“Adolescents function as social outsiders, not yet accepted into the established order; their separation from the realm of social power now constitutes their virtue” (Spacks 10)
“The adolescent is an outsider, not a full member of his society: virtually everyone who thinks about the subject perceives that. Is this position one of weakness or strength?” (Spacks 290).
“The bike was waiting in the garage and that’s how I wanted to go. By bike, by my own strength and power. For my father.” (3)
“I went to the kitchen and took out the bottle of pills from the cabinet and decided not to take one. I wanted to do this raw, without crutches, without aid, alone” (4)
“I keep pedaling despite the weariness and the pain” (5).
Sessions, making meaning
Brint
“I’m not sure where to begin” (6)
“What I mean is, I don’t know whether I actually heard to words or if I’m filling them in now, like blank spaces on a piece of paper you have to complete” (8).
“He wondered if he should tell him about the clues” (10)
Escapism: “If I can step outside myself like this, maybe I can go to other places. The possibility delighted him, made him forget. Forget what? He wasn’t sure—something—something just hovering at the edge of his mind, scurrying away when he tried to capture it” (24)
Repression?
World outside the hospital
“There are no universal moral systems invoked, no absolute codes of behavior, no comprehensive attempts at explaining the evil in the world (and there is evil in these books). Adolescents are counseled to accept what is, and to take responsibility for their own actions” (MacLeod 128).
Bad guys vs. good guys—connection to Caroni’s realization inThe Chocolate War:“Were teachers as corrupt as the villains you read about in books or saw in movies and television?” (112).
“And he did see—that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn’t trust anybody, not even yourself” (115).
“‘ . . . you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore’” (14).
“‘Don’t trust anybody, Skipper. Ask for identification if a stranger comes near you. But you can’t trust identifications, either. They can forge anything today—passports, licenses, you name it. So if you have to go, Skipper, be careful. Be careful’” (14).
Assignments: Numbers
Establishing ties
Family roles: “cutout figure whose caption said Father” (32)
Mother, lilac
Amy Hertz
Paul Delmonte
pp. 57-118
Memory, Rememory, and Identity
“‘I have a feeling you already know about them. I have a feeling you know everything, even my blank spots’” (69).
“‘Why should I carry on this charade?’” (69).
“He didn’t want to pick up the burden of remembering any longer. He wanted to coast awhile, float, not let it matter, drift” (69).
Power in the pedaling, authority
“Retreating” in therapy
“And yet there was something good in the talking, in the discoveries. He had learned that the talking was discovery, words would come to his tongue that he had not known were lying in wait for him. That facts of his life would appear the moment he told them. The empty spaces were filled, the terrifying blankness that loomed before him sometimes at night in the darkness when he’d wake up, not knowing who he was or where he was. In the talking, the blank spots were filled in” (70).
World of adults vs. world of children (71); lines established
Two birth certificates
Thursday phone calls
“The word hung in the air, isolated from the others. Nephew” (73).
“‘We’re alone in the world, Adam—you and your mother and me. That’s why you’ve got to grow up strong and brave and good. You’re the last of the line and you’ve got to keep it going. . .’” (73).
“What comes next?”
“The blanks. All the blanks. If you know what they are, fill them in for me. . .” (83).
“Who am I? I am Adam Farmer. But who am I? I am Adam Farmer. But Adam Farmer was only a name, words, a lesson he had learned here in the cold room and in that other room with the questions and answers. Who is Adam Farmer? He didn’t know. His name might as well have been Kitchen Chair. Or Cellar Steps. Adam Farmer was nothing—the void yawned ahead of him and behind him, with no constant to guide himself by. Who am I? Adam Famer. Two words, that’s all” (83).
“‘Do you suppose it’s because you really don’t want to remember? . . . . Perhaps one part of you wants to remember and another part doesn’t’” (84).
“It’s possible that you went into retreat because you were getting close to remembering—and there will be pain in the remembering. You realize that, don’t you? It’s possible that the gray man represents the key and at the last moment you refused to use the key, afraid of what would be lurking beyond the door the key would open’” (107).
Gray man
“‘Of course you have to know. It’s your right to know. You’re not a child anymore. I’ve been telling myself that for a long time. But there never seemed to be a good time for it . . .’” (118).
“‘That my name is Paul Delmonte, that there is no Adam Farmer’” (118).
pp. 119-168
Power, Authority, and Self-Awareness
Us vs. Them
Brint’s role
Question of authority
Questions who Brint is (148)
Brint as guide, MacLeod’s definition of the guru figure? (122, 148, 151)
Manipulation of power
Survival
Telling of the story—as personal history
“Suddenly I had a history, something I realized I had never had before” (119)/
Adam’s father’s story
Anthony Delmonte, reporter at the Telegrapher
“Roscoe Campbell, owner and editor of the Telegrapher, encouraged Adam’s father to go beyond the superficial aspects of stories, to find the meanings below the surfaces, to root out what might be hidden or not apparent to the casual reader” (120).
Louise Nolan’s story, “tragic parents”
No one to trust, even in the government
U. S. Department of Re-Identification (128), now Witness Re-Establishment Program (131)
Del-mon-tee (123)
Adam Farmer (133)
Claims former self (158)
Knowledge of death—Trites and the case of Harry Potter
Introduction of death as symptomatic of adolescence
Surviving the series—division between children’s and adolescent literature (idea of Self vs. fragmentation)
Awareness of mortality
Bomb
Police man/hit man
The Chocolate War—middle-age as certain death (Jerry’s mother, parents as already-dead)
Death of self written into the story with introduction of Paul Delmonte
Adam’s death as “breakthrough” (135)
Idea of masculine identity—power, control
Grey/Thompson as God (155), 2222
Threat to sexuality (139), connection to Janza’s taunts in The CW
Arthur
Junior Varney
Whipper
John Wayne film vs. mafia reality
Idea of power, control
American institutions
American hero
Idea of divulging all of the information
Threat, control
Mother’s role, remembering her (at center, like in CW)
Loss of centers, decentered center, absent presence
Never Knows (152, 156)
Presence of religion, Catholicism (155)
Now as spy in bike journey—intersecting narratives (164)