The Cheese Touch Symbol Analysis

“The Cheese” is a moldy bit of cheese left out on the school basketball court. Legend holds that anyone who touches the Cheese is infected with the “Cheese Touch,” which they can pass to others by touching them. Consequently, students who are thought to have the Cheese Touch are socially ostracized and treated as if they are literally infections. The Cheese Touch thus symbolizes the bullying and exclusion of certain students based on largely arbitrary factors. In Greg’s middle school, social status is all-important, and students struggle to fit in and be perceived as “cool”—an elusive designation that relies on measures such as clothes, wealth, looks, and athletic ability. Students who happen to fall outside those prevailing norms, like Greg’s “weird” neighbor, Fregley, are socially excluded. The Cheese Touch illustrates what happens to those who don’t conform to certain standards of behavior, speaking, and even dressing. Greg’s preoccupation with popularity might sometimes seem excessive, but the idea of the Cheese Touch emphasizes the high social stakes of fitting in at middle school. For example, one student who had the Cheese Touch, Abe Hall, was bullied so relentlessly that he left school at the end of the year. The Cheese Touch symbolizes the ways that, for young teenagers like Greg, the loss of social status and exclusion from the wider peer community can be devastating.