42 pages • 1 hour read
Squeeze Me
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Themes
Justice in America
The theme of the broken US political and legal system pervades much of the novel. At numerous points, characters must take matters into their own hands rather than relying on the authorities to dispense justice. A malfunctioning legal system is brought to the reader’s attention at the county, state, and national levels. Angie is the victim of a system that rewards the guilty and punishes the innocent. Although she mutilates Pruitt, she is defending herself from his attack. It might be argued that feeding his hand to a tame alligator is egregious. However, the punishment that follows is even more ridiculous. Because Pruitt is now handicapped, the politically correct local authorities go easy on him, not wishing to be perceived as heartless toward the physically impaired. Angie loses her job, the alligator loses its life, and Pruitt is set free with a slap on his remaining wrist. Angie becomes disillusioned with the system and finds other means of achieving justice.
Multiple miscarriages of justice at the state level prompt Skink to eventually resign as governor. He sees political maneuvering, greed, and corruption on a daily basis, and the display demoralizes him. He tries to remove himself as far as possible from the chicanery of high office by retreating to the swamp, but news from the outside world still manages to reach and enrage him. Like Angie, he finds a different way to destabilize the status quo. He shakes the smug composure of the privileged by unleashing a horde of deadly reptiles in their midst.
On a national level, Diego is the victim of a colossal miscarriage of justice instigated by POTUS himself. Because the immigrant is illegal, he feeds into the false narrative that the President constructs so that he can justify closing the country’s borders. Once he is in jail, his only possible solution is to kill himself to escape the unjust world in which he is forced to live. Fortunately, Angie takes up his cause and brings him justice before it is too late.
Dangerous Demagogues
The novel paints an unflattering picture of a greedy, self-absorbed man occupying the highest office in the land. This self-absorption, in itself, isn’t the issue. The author implies that the worst aspect of the situation is the President’s ability to grab the microphone at the national level. Social media enables him to tell any story he chooses and then have that story disseminated to millions. The fact that the president is allowed to spew verbal attacks casually after finishing a round of golf indicates how little forethought goes into the messages that he transmits to the nation. Twitter is seen as a particularly dangerous weapon in the hands of the wrong person. No attempt is made to check facts, or even spelling, before a tweet is sent.
The problem isn’t simply one unhinged man spouting ridiculous opinions. The problem is his instantaneous access to masses of even more unhinged followers. The novel depicts the consequences of the President’s illegal alien conspiracy theory. Diego’s life is endangered not simply by a politically corrupt legal system or ICE but by radicals inside his jail and demonstrators outside its walls who hang on the President’s every tweet.
When Angie tries to fight fire with fire by leaking Uric’s suicide note to the liberal media, the President twists the message and spins it into a yarn about foreign terrorists intent on attacking his regime by killing his most devoted followers. Because the individual spreading lies and innuendo is the President, no one challenges his statements. No one questions his facts. The blind obedience to authority among his followers confers an aura of infallibility on POTUS simply because he is the President. If he says something is true, it must be so because he said so. Demagogues are dangerous at any time in history. The author implies that they are lethal when supplied with social media accounts.
Humans Versus Nature
Angie and Skink are both ecologists at heart. They see the incursions of humanity into previously wild habitat as an abomination. The author seems to believe that most humans are incapable of coexisting peacefully with nature or its other inhabitants. Urban sprawl in southern Florida is dangerously compromising the survival of multiple species because humans don’t know how to manage the environment responsibly. They take an adversarial attitude toward it.
Angie encounters many examples of humans who are terrified of the wildlife that occasionally invades their kitchens and porches. She does her best to humanely relocate the animals whose own homes have been displaced by the encroachments of civilization. Even well-meaning interventions by pet owners can introduce imbalances in the ecosystem. The explosion of the Burmese python population in southern Florida is the direct consequence of people who purchase baby snakes as pets and then grow tired of them as they mature. Once released into the swamps, these snakes decimate the indigenous wildlife with their voracious appetites. To further complicate the situation, global warming expands the python’s potential range farther north, thus making its introduction into Palm Beach a viable threat.
Because the novel’s President denies the existence of global warming and eagerly supports the interests of commerce at the expense of the environment, the book paints him as personally responsible for the growing environmental crisis, not only in Florida but in the nation and the world. Skink’s plan to release the pythons near Casa Bellicosa is a way of closing the loop. He wants the President to personally experience the consequences of his thoughtless policies. Instead of chickens metaphorically coming home to roost, the pythons come north to feed. Sadly, the President seems to lack the intellectual capacity or attention span to open his mind as Skink wishes.
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