Jaws is a novel by American writer Peter Benchley, published by Doubleday in 1974. It tells the story of a large great white shark that preys upon a small Long Island resort town and the three men who attempt to kill it. The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he read about the exploits of Frank Mundus, a shark fisherman from Montauk, New York, in 1964. Doubleday commissioned Benchley to write the novel in 1971, a period when the writer worked as a freelance journalist.
Through a marketing campaign orchestrated by Doubleday and paperback publisher Bantam Books, Jaws was incorporated into many book sales clubs catalogues and attracted media interest. First published in February 1974, Jaws was a great success; the hardback remained on the bestseller list for 44 weeks and the subsequent paperback edition sold millions of copies, beginning in 1975. Although literary critics acknowledged the novel's effective suspense, reviews were generally mixed, with many finding Benchley's prose and characterizations amateurish and banal.
Film producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown read the novel before its publication and purchased the film rights. Steven Spielberg was selected to direct the movie adaptation, Jaws, released in June 1975. Spielberg's film omitted all of the novel's subplots and focused primarily on the shark and the characterizations of the three protagonists. The film version of Jaws is credited as the first summer blockbuster and was the highest-grossing film in motion picture history up to that time. Three sequels (with no involvement from Spielberg) followed the film, all of which were met with mixed to negative responses.
Synopsis Jaws is set in the fictional town of Amity, a small, seaside resort located on the south shore of Long Island, halfway between Bridgehampton and East Hampton. One night, after her intoxicated date passes out on the beach, a young woman named Christine "Chrissy" Watkins skinny dips alone in the ocean where she is attacked and killed by a massive great white shark. The next morning, her partially eaten remains are found washed up on the beach and the coroner concludes she was the victim of a shark attack. Amity Police Chief Martin Brody then orders the beaches closed, but he is overruled by mayor Larry Vaughan and the town's selectmen who fear damage to summer tourism, Amity's main source of commerce. With the collusion of Harry Meadows, editor of the local newspaper, news of the attack is kept quiet.
A few days later, the shark kills a young boy and an elderly man within half an hour of each other. Ben Gardner, a local fisherman, is hired to catch the shark but he disappears at sea. Brody and his deputy, Leonard Hendricks, discover Gardner's deserted boat anchored off-shore, covered with large bite holes, one of which has a large shark tooth stuck in it. The boy's mother and Gardner's widow angrily blame the deaths on Brody for not closing the beaches after they learn of the earlier attack on Chrissy Watkins. Wracked by guilt, Brody orders the beaches closed and has Meadows investigate Vaughan's business affairs to find out why he is so determined to keep them open. Meadows soon discovers that the mayor is heavily in debt to the Mafia who have a great deal of money invested in Amity real estate and are pressuring Vaughan to keep the beaches open in order to protect their investments; if Amity's market value should fall, Vaughan stands to lose everything, including, possibly, his life. Meadows also recruits Matt Hooper, a young, affluent ichthyologist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for help on dealing with the shark. When shown the tooth found on Gardner's boat, Hooper determines it to be from an unusually large great white shark.
Meanwhile, Ellen Brody, the Chief's wife, is suffering from depression and lamenting the loss of her youth and the privileged lifestyle she had before becoming a wife and mother. Coincidentally, when Ellen was a teenager, she dated Hooper's older brother a few years before marrying Brody. Ellen becomes fixated on Hooper as a link to the past she desperately longs for. After Hooper attends a dinner party at the Brody's, Ellen, intent on recapturing her juvenescence and joie de vivre, decides to seduce him. The following morning, she telephones Hooper at his hotel and invites him to meet her for lunch at a restaurant several miles away from Amity. At the restaurant, the two have several drinks and begin flirting with each other; following a sexually charged conversation, they go to a motel. Unable to reach neither Ellen nor Hooper by phone that afternoon, Brody begins to suspect they have had a liaison and he becomes obsessed and tormented by the thought.
After a week with no further attacks or sightings of the shark, Mayor Vaughan convinces Brody to reopen the beaches. By this time, news of the shark attacks have spread; tourists and the media flock to Amity for a glimpse of the killer shark. Brody sets up patrols along the beaches to watch for the fish. The shark returns and a teenage boy narrowly escapes another attack near the shore. Brody again closes the beaches and convinces the town's selectmen to hire Quint, an eccentric, crusty professional fisherman, to locate and kill the shark. Brody and Hooper set out with Quint on his boat, Orca, and the tension between the three men soon escalates. Quint considers Hooper a conceited, rich kid. Hooper is angry over Quint's methods when he disembowels a blue shark and uses an illegally caught unborn baby dolphin as bait. Brody has been wary of Hooper since his arrival in Amity, jealous of his youth, wealth and his connection to Ellen; his suspicions about Hooper and Ellen increase, as he discovers more circumstantial evidence that points to a possible tryst between them.
Their first day at sea is unproductive, but the three come in contact with the shark by the end of the second day. Upon seeing the fish for the first time and estimating the shark to be at least in length and weighing in at roughly , Hooper is visibly excited and in awe at the size of it.
Larry Vaughan visits the Brody house and informs Ellen that he and his wife are leaving Amity. Vaughan speculates on the life he might have led had he married Ellen. After he leaves, Ellen reflects on her life and she realizes the mistake she made missing the life she had before marrying Brody. When Brody returns home a short time later, Ellen kisses him passionately.
On the third day, Hooper wants to bring along a shark-proof cage, in an attempt to kill the fish with a bang stick. Initially, Quint refuses to bring the cage on board, considering it a suicidal idea, but he relents after Hooper pays him $100. Brody tells Quint he will not be paid if he brings the cage on board which angers Hooper and a heated argument between Brody and Hooper ensues. Unable to control his temper, Brody physically attacks Hooper and strangles him for several seconds. With no resolution, the men decide to head out with the shark cage onboard. After several unsuccessful attempts by Quint to harpoon the shark, Hooper goes underwater in the shark cage. The shark attacks the cage, something Hooper did not expect. After destroying the cage, the shark kills and eats Hooper. Brody is horrified and is now convinced the shark can't be killed. He tells Quint that after Hooper's death the town may no longer pay him, but Quint is now determined to kill the shark regardless of the money.
Quint and Brody return to sea the next day. After the shark attacks the Orca and Quint harpoons it several more times, the fish leaps out of the water and onto the stern of the boat, smashing the transom. Orca begins to sink and Quint plunges another harpoon into the shark's belly. As the fish settles back into the water, Quint's foot becomes entangled in the rope attached to the harpoon and he is pulled underwater and drowns. Brody, now staying afloat on a seat cushion, watches the shark slowly swim towards him; he closes his eyes and prepares for death. Just as it reaches Brody, the shark succumbs to its wounds before it can attack. Slowly, the dead shark begins to sink. The lone survivor of the ordeal, Brody watches the lifeless shark spiral downward and disappear into the depths, dragging Quint's body, still entangled in the harpoon rope, with it; he then begins to paddle back to shore on his makeshift float.
Development Peter Benchley had long been fascinated with sharks, which he frequently encountered while fishing in Nantucket with his father, Nathaniel Benchley.. For years, the younger Benchley had considered writing "a story about a shark that attacks people and what would happen if it came in and wouldn't go away." This interest grew greater after reading a news story in 1964 about Frank Mundus, a fisherman who caught a great white shark weighing off the shore of Montauk, New York.Downie, Robert M. Block Island History of Photography 1870–1960s, page 243, Volume 2, 2008
In 1971, Benchley was a freelance writer, struggling to support his wife and children. In the meantime, his literary agent scheduled regular meetings with publishing house editors. One was Doubleday editor Thomas Congdon, who met with Benchley seeking book ideas. Congdon did not find Benchley's proposals for non-fiction interesting, but instead favored his idea for a novel about a shark terrorizing a beach resort. Benchley sent an outline page to Congdon's office, and the editor paid him $1,000 for 100 pages. These pages comprised the first four chapters, and the full manuscript received a $7,500 total advance ().
Congdon and the Doubleday crew were confident, seeing Benchley as "something of an expert in sharks", given the author self-described "knowing as much as any amateur about sharks" as he had read some research books and seen the 1971 documentary Blue Water White Death. After Doubleday commissioned the book, Benchley then started researching all possible material regarding sharks. Among his sources were Peter Matthiessen's Blue Meridian, Jacques Cousteau's The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea, Thomas B. Allen's Shadows in the Sea, and David H. Davies' About Sharks and Shark Attacks.
Benchley procrastinated finishing the novel and only began writing in earnest once his agent reminded him that if he did not deliver the manuscript, he would have to return the $7,500 writer's advance. As this money had long been spent, Benchley had no choice. His hastily written first-draft partial manuscript was derided by Congdon, who did not like its comic tone. Congdon only approved the first five pages, which made it into the published book without any revisions, and asked Benchley to follow the tone of that introduction. A month later, Benchley delivered a broader outline of the story and rewritten chapters to which Congdon gave his approval.
The manuscript took Benchley a year and a half to complete. Benchley worked on the novel in a makeshift office above a furnace company in Pennington, New Jersey during the winter months. In the summer, he moved to a converted turkey coop on the seaside property of his in-laws in Stonington, Connecticut. Congdon dictated some changes to the rest of the book, including a sex scene between Brody and Ellen which was later changed to Ellen and Hooper. Congdon did not feel that there was "any place for this wholesome marital sex in this kind of book". After various rewrites, revisions, edits and sporadic advance payments, Benchley delivered his final draft of the untitled manuscript in January, 1973.
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