42 pages • 1 hour read
Squeeze Me
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Symbols & Motifs
Burmese Pythons
Burmese pythons appear everywhere in Squeeze Me, and the book takes an ambivalent view toward the reptiles. As lovers of nature, both Angie and Skink are fond of the creatures. During her LSD trip, Angie sees them possessing a surreal beauty. While Skink gives his biggest python a dose of the drug before turning her loose, this isn’t an act of cruelty. He knows she is about to be killed and wants her to feel good to the end. Both characters view the snakes as any other wild creatures—neither good nor bad. They are simply trying to survive.
The pythons, however, also symbolize the consequences of humans meddling with nature. They are not indigenous to Florida, having been imported as exotic pets. When their human owners tire of them, the pythons are abandoned in the swamps to fend for themselves. Once on the loose, they wreak havoc with the ecosystem by preying on many endangered native species. Further, the only reason that the pythons are able to expand their feeding range is because of the global warming that the novel’s President chooses to ignore. Skink’s plan to introduce them in Palm Beach would never have succeeded if winter temperatures north of the Florida Keys had not grown warmer every year.
Skink intends the python apocalypse to be a wake-up call for the denizens of Casa Bellicosa. Because the elite live in an insulated world, their concept of life as one continuous party is never challenged by reality. They blithely choose to ignore global warming and the ecological disasters that their President’s policies promote. The pythons offer them a brief glimpse of the consequences of their willful blindness.
Lowlifes and the Wealthy Elite
In Squeeze Me, the reader is treated to a variety of crude, lazy, stupid characters who are only interested in what they stand to gain at the moment. They have an impaired capacity to foresee the disastrous consequences of their impulsive actions. The author is known for using these oddballs in many of his other novels. Such characters are often generically called “Florida man” by Hiaasen’s fans.
Given the setting of the novel in the ultra-rich environment of Palm Beach, the introduction of such individuals is jarring. Even the sight of the vehicles they drive can cause an uproar around Casa Bellicosa. Ajax’s fishing boat drifting near the perimeter of the club sends a swarm of Secret Service agents to investigate. When Prince Paladin and Uric arrive to consult with Teabull about the snake carcass in their SUV, the property manager is appalled that they didn’t sneak in through a back entrance.
As unsavory as they are, such characters provide rich comic material. Pruitt is the perfect foil for Angie because he represents everything she deplores. He is a poacher who mutilates a baby deer with his boat motor simply because he can. When Angie thwarts his plans to bring the fawn home for dinner, he becomes obsessed with revenge. Unfortunately, he can’t put his rage on hold long enough to formulate a rational plan for getting even. He acts rashly and always finds himself in a deeper mess afterward.
Uric and Prince Paladin demonstrate the same lack of foresight. The latter is greedy enough to snatch jewelry off a decaying corpse while letting his partner do all the work of digging her grave. The pearls that are left behind will eventually be the proverbial trail of breadcrumbs leading to the killers. Later, Uric murders Prince Paladin simply because he doesn’t want to share the payoff with him. Then, he compounds his error by blackmailing Teabull.
In contrast to the lowlifes, the elite are made up of the 1% segment of the population that controls 99% of the country’s wealth. In the novel, Palm Beach is the home ground for this group. Ironically, they share the same disregard for consequences as the lowlifes. At opposite ends of the financial spectrum, both groups fail to stop and think before acting.
Of course, the President is the prime example of mental carelessness. Without verifying any facts, he goes on a social media rampage to pin a murder charge on the innocent Diego simply because the latter is an illegal alien. The Potussies eagerly fall in line with this theory because the President is singing their xenophobic song. Kiki blindly drifts into the fatal embrace of a python because she has been partying too hard. It would never occur to her that danger could lurk anywhere in Palm Beach. Her friend Fay Alex later makes a similar mistake when she wanders into the same garden for a romantic moonlight tryst under the predatory gaze of another python. Luckily, Fay Alex only loses her earlobe instead of her life.
In contrast to the book’s lowlife characters, who are generally uneducated, we might expect the elite to know better since they’ve been schooled at the country’s most expensive colleges. In the end, there is hardly a difference between the two groups. The Cornbright boys illustrate this similarity on several occasions. After vying greedily for years to be included in their mother’s will, they immediately find a way to deplete their inheritance right after her death. The two have a near-fatal accident on jet skis when they plow right into the carcass of Ajax. The lowlifes and elite collide, quite literally, on the Intracoastal Waterway. Lowlifes are stupid because no one has taught them to be otherwise. The elite are stupid because they believe their wealth exempts them from the need to think rationally or exercise impulse control.
Conch Pearls
Because of their distinctive pink color and irregular shape, conch pearls are visually distinct. This instant identifiability makes them ideal clues in a mystery novel. The pearls advance the plot of Squeeze Me in a variety of ways. The trail of breadcrumbs begins with Kiki’s broken necklace. While Prince Paladin manages to steal most of the pearls before Uric notices the theft, a few are left inside the snake carcass and the SUV. When the vehicle and its unsavory cargo bounce across the railroad tracks, two pearls drop onto the rails.
One pearl is found by Diego and becomes the sole piece of evidence connecting him to Kiki’s death. Another pearl is subsequently found by Crosby on the same railroad tracks. Though the second pearl corroborates Diego’s story, the author wishes to make a point about the corruption of the legal system. With the President on a tirade about illegal aliens, no one in the courts wants to offend him by freeing his favorite suspect just because some new evidence has been found to exonerate the immigrant.
After Kiki’s corpse is unearthed, the media focuses on her missing jewelry. This coverage attracts Mockingbird’s notice, and she wants to have some jewelry of her own made from the rare conch pearls. The pearls once again function as clues in a different mystery. When Spalding is able to source some pearls from South Africa, his buyer is Mockingbird’s lover, Keith, who wants to present the First Lady with an early birthday gift of a set of conch pearl earrings. Spalding’s suspicion that the two are having an affair is confirmed by this transaction. He then spreads the rumor through the Winter White House. Without this secondary story of intrigue, Angie would never have the leverage to force Mockingbird to help her free Diego. It doesn’t become apparent until the end of the novel, when all the disparate story lines intersect, how much of the plot’s momentum hinges on these tiny pink pearls.
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By Carl Hiaasen
