I+Am+The+Cheese+Reader+Response+SLR+=)

sbug232 Ruby Group November 30, 2007 //__I Am the Cheese__// //Reader Response// You don't know if your parents are alive or dead. You don't know where you are. You don't know who anyone around you is. You don't know who you are. And you don't know who you can really trust. You don't even know if you can trust yourself. All you know is that you stand alone. Pretty scary, right? In the psychological thriller, __I Am the Cheese__, "Adam Farmer" suffers greatly from this issue. It is what he calls the "Never Knows." In his case he ends up never knowing anything. But all people suffer from the "Never Knows on a lower level, too. Also, just about every main character in almost every book I've read has suffered from "Never Knows" on a lower level. "Never Knows" are quite obviously a terrible thing to have to worry and think about, so it is unfortunate that we all do sometimes think and worry about these "Never Knows" much more than we actually should. And if you think too much about them, you may just end up as crazy as "Adam Farmer" did. When I was younger, I would think a lot about my "Never Knows" each night. The thing that I struggled the most with was never knowing if someone might try to break into our house. This probably shouldn't have been a major concern of mine because we have an alarm system that we set every night and there have not ever been any break-ins in my neighborhood since my parents began living there 17 years ago, but it was something I worried about. I have a dimmer switch in my room, and I used to make my parents dim my lights only half-way. They always thought this was because I was afraid of the dark, and that was partly it, but the reason that I was afraid of the dark was because if someone ever broke into our house and came into my room, I wouldn't be able to see them so I wouldn't know which way to go to get out. In shorter terms, I would never know where they were, who they were, what they were carrying, and most importantly, where to go to get away. I thought I would never know if someone broke in if we forgot to set the alarm, and I wouldn't, but I should have been more confident in the things I did know. I did know that we have only forgotten to set the alarm about two or three times the moment they came in the alarm would most likely go off and I would be able to rush out. I did know our escape plan and how I would get out. And I did know that there hadn't been a break in on our street since my parents moved in. Whenever I started thinking about all the different things that I would never know, I would freak out, the same way "Adam" did. But luckily for me, I had all these things that I did know that would calm me down and put me to sleep. All these things are what kept me from going crazy. I read __Bridge to Terabithia__ a couple of years ago and it has the perfect example of the "Never Knows." The main characters were best friends Jesse Aarons and Leslie Burke. Jesse had a crush on his music teacher Miss Edmunds and one day she invited him to go to a museum with her. Leslie lived right next door to Jesse and Jesse didn't know what Leslie would do without him that day because they usually went t their little hide-out in the woods they called the kingdom of Terabithia. It had rained the day before and the river that they had to swing across on a rope was very high and he didn't want her crossing it on her own so he thought a lot about inviting her to go with him and Miss Edmunds to the museum. But he decided against it because he wanted to have some alone time with his teacher. Like I said, he never knew what she would do without him, and it turned out she decided to cross the river on her own and visit Terabithia. Yep, you guessed it, when swinging across on the rope her hands slipped and she fell off into the incredibly deep, flowing river and died. Now I bet you're thinking, how did Jesse keep himself from going crazy after his best friend died and he felt like it was his fault and he never would know what else might happen. The only way he kept himself from going nuts was by thinking about what Leslie would want him to do. How she wouldn't want him to think about it. How she would just want him to make crossing the river safer. So that is what he focused on. He ended up making and wonderful bridge to get to the magical land of Terabithia. This just shows how the "Never Knows" are greatly incorporated in many other novels. The president is also faced with "Never Knows." After September 11th he never knows when there will be a terrorist attack. He also doesn't know who to trust. He must be scared that one of the en working for him is not someone that he can trust, or someone that may be a terrorist. People don't like he because he has not stopped the war and I am not saying that I am for the war but he has a very hard and terrifying job and is faced with more "Never Knows" than we know. Obviously, the "Never Knows" issue raised in __I Am the Cheese__ connects to me personally, other books, and the world. Just imagine how awful it must have been for "Adam." The "Never Knows" that I connected to are much smaller than his "Never Knows," and you have no idea how much those smaller "Never Knows" scare me. So I can't even begin to comprehend how scary it must have been for "Adam." Just think, you don't know whether you'll wake up tomorrow morning or not.