Squirm

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-16

Chapters 17-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Protecting the Vulnerable

The Dedication to Squirm reads, “For all those who stand up” (v). While these words might initially seem cryptic, they represent the core theme of the novel, for Squirm is filled with characters who stand up for those who are vulnerable. As the larger message of the plot unfolds, the protagonists act proactively to thwart a variety of bullies who harass women, children, and animals. However, Billy is not the only character who exhibits a tendency to defend the weak; all the major players have at least one episode in which they stand up for what’s right. For example, although Billy’s mother, Chrissie, is often portrayed as a slightly wacky mom who loves eagles, she also has the moral strength to kick a passenger out of her Uber when he makes a pass at her while simultaneously calling his wife and pretending to be a faithful husband. Chrissie’s action is intended to teach a cheater a lesson, and it also helps to establish the ethical tone of the story as a whole. Similarly, when Summer is eight years old, she attacks her abusive father with a snow shovel after he beats her mother, Lil, and this incident proves to be his final abusive episode before he is carted off to jail. Within the realm of animal welfare, Dennis makes a career out of his vigilante activities to thwart poachers who like to kill endangered species for sport; he even risks his own life to protect animals. Finally, even a relatively minor character, Axel Burnside, turns down a $20,000 fee from Baxter; unlike the big-game hunter, Burnside outright refuses to help kill an endangered Florida panther.

With these bold ethical actions as a backdrop to the story’s primary action, Billy functions as both protagonist and narrator, demonstrating his willingness to help the helpless on multiple occasions. Initially, he helps himself by planting a rubber snake in his locker to deter other students who habitually break into this space. Later, he takes on a bully who is beating up a boy named Chin simply because the latter is too small to fight back. Billy will later intimidate this same bully and his cronies into keeping their distance from Chin by leveraging his reputation as “Snake Boy” (8). These early instances serve to demonstrate Billy’s cleverness and bravery, for he later uses the same tactic of exerting psychological pressure when he warns Rusty not to stage another panther hunt.

The book’s best example of protecting the vulnerable occurs when Billy, Dennis, and Summer join forces to stop Baxter from killing a female grizzly bear with two cubs. In every instance described above, the story’s heroes aren’t the strongest in the conventional sense. If anything, Baxter physically resembles the stereotypical hero, but his wealth and physical strength have made him an arrogant bully. Thus, the novel suggests that standing up to bullies doesn’t require superior physical strength. It simply requires a sharp brain and a kind heart.

The Limits of the Law

Billy’s desire to protect the vulnerable is primarily driven by the failure of the authority figures in his world to take necessary action to stop injustices before they can occur. For example, after Chrissie tells him that he should have let the teachers handle the bully’s altercation with Chin, Billy rightly points out that had he gone through the proper channels, Chin might have been beaten unconscious before any adults could intervene. Immediate action was required, so Billy took matters into his own hands. Ironically, he receives his mother’s disapproval for doing the right thing in this moment. A similar dilemma later confronts Dennis, for if he chooses to report Baxter to law enforcement, the police will not take any official action unless an endangered animal has already been killed. They have no interest in preventing a crime, only in solving it after the fact. Consequently, Dennis makes the same decision as his son and thwarts Baxter’s many attempts to score a trophy kill.

It is significant that in her past, Summer also found herself confronted with the same kind of problem. As a child, she repeatedly saw her father beat her mother. Lil did nothing to defend herself, so her eight-year-old daughter came to her rescue. Telling the authorities that Summer’s father represented a threat did no good until after Lil was seriously injured. Thus, it is Summer’s personal choice to take action against her abusive father that ultimately ends the disastrous cycle of abuse that he was inflicting upon her and her mother.

Aside from the individual incidents that force the characters to take action when the authorities refuse to intervene, the book also highlights the ridiculously ineffective nature of conservation legislation. For example, grizzly bears are only considered to be a protected species until their numbers begin to increase. At that point, the government will once more issue hunting licenses for them. Billy rightly points out the absurdity of preserving a species simply so that hunters will be allowed to kill it off again later. As his narration states, “Dad says some western states will soon start selling licenses to hunt the grizzlies, like in the old days. In other words, we saved an animal from extinction just so we could start killing it again. How messed up is that?” (130). His statement implies that the authorities are a force that actively encourages brutality rather than using legal constraints to prevent it. In fact, Baxter’s principal incentive for killing a grizzly bear is that it will soon be off the endangered list. This status change will make the species less rare and thus less of a thrill to kill. This set of circumstances implies that the intervention of compassionate souls like Billy and his family is the only counterbalance to the absurd limits of the law.

The Virtue of Eccentricity

Billy comes from a quirky family. His father skips around from job to job but always quits on a Thursday. When he decides to abandon his family, he does so on a Thursday as well. He then lies to both his new and old family by saying that he works for the government when he really devotes his life to stopping poachers from destroying wildlife. To a lesser extent, Dennis’s passion for nature is echoed in his ex-wife’s obsession with bald eagles. She watches their nests protectively and is devastated whenever one is abandoned. Chrissie relocates her family on a regular basis so that she can position herself near an interesting nesting site. In an echo of his parents’ intense interests, Billy himself is fascinated by snakes to the point that he captures them, keeps them in bins in the garage, and eventually releases them back into the wild. He knows how to handle even the deadliest species and uses this knowledge to frighten both teenage bullies and the more serious adult variety represented by Baxter.

These individuals each display eccentric behavior, but within the context of the novel, each of these eccentricities become helpful when the characters must deal with the threat to the environment that poachers like Baxter represent. If Billy were an average teen, he might recoil at the thought of his father’s real job. Instead, he finds the idea of standing up for the rights of endangered animals appealing, for it is simply a more ambitious variation of his own attempts at school to stand up for weaker students who are being victimized by bullies.

Chrissie’s eccentricity regarding eagles also proves useful to the development of the plot, for her interest makes it possible for Billy to lure her to Montana, where golden eagles live. She is also fascinated by the Crow heritage of Lil and Summer and knows that they share her respect for the natural world. She finds even more common ground with Lil when the two commiserate over being married to an oddity like Dennis. The only conventional member of the Dickens clan is Belinda, but even she finds common ground with Summer the two can relate to one another as teenage girls who recognize how annoying boys can be.

If the original Dickens clan had been conservative and traditional in its outlook, or if Lil and Summer had been too closely tied to their Indigenous culture, the likelihood of forming bonds of friendship between Dennis’s families would be remote. Instead, their respective eccentricities make it possible for them to be open-minded to other ways of living and thinking. The consequence is a harmonious balance between the Dickens family of Florida and the Dickens family of Montana, not to mention their fearlessness in defending those in need.