Jaws Character Analysis

Brody Martin-Police Chief
Chief of Police is a title given to an appointed official or an elected one in the chain of command of a police department. In both Jaws the movie, Directed by Steven Spielberg, and the novel Jaws, written by Peter Benchley, Martin Brody is a middle aged man who is happily married and a father of two. As a long time officer of the NYPD, Brody advances his policing career by being offered a job as Chief of Police on Amity Island; Brody discovers that “with great power comes great responsibility,” as he quickly realises that his power and his responsibility to protect the public as the newly appointed police chief is being undermined by the local people, a great white shark, and even himself. To combat these challenges,

Brody is a selfless hero that tries to act in the best interest of everyone else, always putting himself as the last person he thinks to help. This is a quality that not a lot of people possess as their morals may not be in the right place; Luckily Brody does have very good morals, which is why he was such a good candidate for Chief of Police. But actions speak louder than words, and Brody has plenty to show for it. Although his mind is in the right place, the one thing stopping Brody from going out onto the water to help people and try and capture the shark, is his fear of water. His fear is shown fairly early on in the film when someone asked him to go into the water, and he quickly rebutted against it. As the story progresses, Brody’s fear of water is a looming problem that impedes on most of his decisions throughout the story and film. Although, Brody is not a coward either, and to his dismay, he constantly goes against his fear by putting himself into situations where he never thought he would be. From the moment he accepted Quint’s deal, he knew he would be sailing with Quint and Hooper . . . on a boat . . . in the water.

The shark represents man vs nature throughout the whole story up until the end. From the very beginning of both the film and novel, it starts off looking through the shark’s perspective. The novel’s intro gives some exposition about sharks, including one important definition about anoxia: “Once, if ever, it stopped, it would sink to the bottom of the ocean and die of anoxia” (Benchley 3). This definition not only acts as exposition, but also foreshadows how the shark eventually dies in the end of the novel. After the expository phase of both the movie and novel, the shark attacks its first victim--a drunk woman named Crissy. The kill set off a bloodlust instinct in the shark that made it hungry for more, and that there is more food for him at this beach; This is why it keeps coming back, because normally sharks to not attack humans unless they are in distress. Unfortunately for the Crissy, she was swimming in an unconventional way which made her appear to the shark as prey. Throughout the rest of both the story and novel the shark proves as a nuisance to the mayor, Chief Brody, and the people of the town. After the death of the guy in the pond, and near death experience of his child, Brody seems to realize that this is a pressing issue that needs to be resolved now. Since nobody seems to be effective in hunting down the shark, Brody takes it upon himself to go after it by hiring Captain Quint and taking