Jaws Page 1 - 176

Summary- The book starts off with the reader as the shark. It is constantly moving to keep itself afloat. It relies purely on instinct. Then the reader moves onto the beach where two couples are flirting. The man stays on the beach and falls asleep while the woman starts to enter the frigid night water of mid-June. The reader is then pulled into the body of the shark as it senses movement in the water. It attacks its prey with one massive bite and  then falls back into the ocean waiting for more food. The man awakes early in the morning to find his partner missing. He searches his rental home with no luck. He wakes up his friend and they call the police of Amity, the town that they are staying at. Hendricks, a patrolman, picks up the phone and reports the case. Amity is usually quiet with few events. It is a small town on Long Island with a population of about 1,000 which rises to about 10,000 in the summer. Amity depends on the summer for most or all of the town's profit. The summer was the season that "made" the town. Hendricks proceeds to call Brody, his chief. Brody is then introduced as the police chief of Amity. He is married to Ellen, and has three children. She was a popular girl before settling down and she often longs for her past. She is quite young looking for her age, unlike Brody which leads to both pride and jealously on Brody's part. Brody meets up with a few policeman including Hendricks to question Tom Cassidy, the man on the beach. They all then go and search for a body on the beach where Tom was. They search for awhile before Hendricks finds a clump of seaweeds which turns out to be the mutilated body of Tom Cassidy's date. They all vomit from disgust and writes down shark attack as the cause of death. Brody then meets up with his friend Meadows, the editor of the Amity newspaper. Meadows calls Hooper a young shark expert who works at an Oceanographic Institute. Based on the mutilated body the murderer is presumed to be a Great White shark. Meadows decides not to publish the attack because the chances that the shark will attack again is almost inexistent and the attack will scare away tourist who the town depends on. Brody is against this and decides to close the beaches because he is scared of another person getting hurt. The mayor, Vaughan, confronts him and threatens to remove Brody from police chief if he closes the beaches because it will be economically bad for the town. Brody keeps the beaches open. A boy is going for a swim in the water soon after the attack. His mother reluctantly lets him go and stays at shore, sleeping on a towel. The reader is once again put into the body of the shark as he rips the boys body from the hip with no effort. Two people swimming closer to shore see splashing and all of a sudden the boy was gone. His mother awakes to the yelling and soon after, Brody receives a call of a shark attack. A TIMES reporter was at the beach at the time and goes to question Brody as he is informed that there has been another shark attack, this time on an old man. Brody is then attacked by the boy's mother as she screams that Brody is a murderer for not closing the beaches. The news of the attacks are out to the public now and the beaches are closed whether the mayor likes it or not. The town decides to hire a person to catch the shark. Brody goes to check up on him only to find a chunk of his boat missing with a shark tooth stuck in the wood of the boat. Hooper is called in to make sense of this predicament. Brody is once again faced with breaking the news of the death to a person, the wife of Ben. He is once again screamed at and blamed for the death. Hooper informs Brody about the nature of the sharks and tells him it is probably best to leave the shark alone and wait fro it to leave. Vaughan calls Brody later that night and pressures him to open the beaches just for the Fourth of July weekends because of the bad business. Brody refuses. Ellen asks who is Meadow's friend helping them stop the shark and she says she once knew a Hooper long ago. Ellen goes down to the post office to get her mail when she met Hooper. It is revealed that Matt Hooper is the little brother of the boy Ellen used to go out with. Ellen catches up with Hooper and the meeting reminds her of the past she had left behind. Hooper tells Brody that the shark has not been active and there has been no signs of him recently. Ellen decides to hold a party to sort of come back to her old life. Ellen invites Hooper and a few other friends of theirs. Ellen seems attracted to Hooper, a lot of years younger than her, and Brody is feeling insecure. Hooper interests everyone with his shark talk while Brody is feeling quite left out at his own party. After the party Ellen is even more depressed because she still misses her past. Ellen invites Hooper to lunch without Brody behind his back which turns out to be an affair at a motel. Brody comes home and questions why Ellen left work early, and she said she wasn't feeling well. Suspicions rises when he finds out that Hooper was also missing from his patrol of the ocean that day.

Quote- "The eyes were sightless in the black, and the other senses transmitted nothing extraordinarily to the small primitive brain"(Benchley 9).

Reaction- The writing style of Peter Benchley really caught my attention. His use of perspective to tell his story is amazing. By switching from prey to hunter he conveys a sense of terror to the readers brain. The main perspective is one of the town. You, as the reader, get a sense of all the events happening while following the story of Brody as he attempts to protect his town from a predator. Another writing trait is his decision to split the novel up into three separate parts in order for the reader to clearly see the story's progression.