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dreadpiratekelJaws
Peter Benchley
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before - there is this village on Long Island, and it's summer 1974, and there's this shark and it's killing people. Which is a problem. It’s a problem because a) dead people and b) this coastal village’s livelihood is based on tourism, namely summer tourism and now the tourists could end up as shark food. So, there is a kind of willful ignorance and pretending everything is fine on behalf of village officials because they need that summer people's money. They need them to come and not be worried about ending up shark food. Then there are more shark attacks, and it gets to the point where something has to be done about the shark. So, the local sheriff ends up teaming up with a visiting Marine Biologist and a salty sea Captain whose feelings towards the shark are very Captain Ahab-like. And they go shark hunting.
You might have seen the movie. I have seen the movie, I’ve seen the movie many times. I’ve watched the documentary about the movie, and I own books about the making of the movie, but despite my hyper-fixation on Jaws, I’ve never before read the book that started the whole thing. I was worried that because I know the movie so well, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the book on its own. Oddly, I haven’t read this before. Typically, my first stop when I board the hyper-fixation train is to read the source material if it exists. And yet… So I decided that here in February 2024, the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, I would give it a whirl.
I will not list all the differences between the book and movie; they share the same DNA but the characters are not the same. The plot hits some of the same points but the book has subplots that got tossed for the movie version. For better or for worse. (I think for better…)
I found Jaws to be a mean novel. Our 'heroes' are not especially heroic, and I’m not saying that I’m rooting for the shark, but - the characters are unlikeable. Sure, this is not a shining moment for any of them. It is a high-stress situation where tourists are getting snacked on by a shark, but the characters come off as jerks. That made me want to rush a bit through the book just so I could say, 'Okay, done with these people.' Even the characters that just sort of drift through the narrative are often irritating distractions. As a reader, I found myself eager to get back to the shark.
Minor spoiler, but the why of the shark's behaviour is speculated on; we don’t get a clear answer. At one point in the novel, Hooper (the shark specialist brought in to try and help) discusses how something in the environment could have changed, causing a ripple effect. He gives examples of fish in unusual areas. Keeping in mind that this was written in the 1970s, I still found it very relevant. It serves as a reminder that meddling with nature can lead to chaos for humanity. It also reflects what was happening in Amity; we get a few asides of how the townspeople are coping now that their summer revenue is drying up. The shark has caused a change in their environment, and everyone is being impacted.
The shark has a huge impact on the events of the novel, but there is a lot more going on than just a vicious great white. It felt like maybe a bit too much, honestly. There's class conflict between summer people vs. the winter (all year round) people, a whole subplot with the mafia, marital drama, and through this sea of chaos swims the shark. It was a lot! I like books that have a lot of plot, but I felt like I was encountering subplots from all sides when I had originally come for the man vs. shark story.
The version of the book I read had two articles written by Peter Benchley. In these articles, he discussed what we thought we knew about great whites in 1974 compared to what we knew in 2020. He then added what we knew in 2005. It is made very clear that the actions of the shark in the novel are very fictionalized. Fictional license exists for a reason, and I did find the actions of the fictional shark the most interesting parts of the book and could have done without a lot of the drama the human characters engaged in.
