JAWS: Masterclass in Characterization

Original Theatrical Poster by the Late Roger Kastel 

Recently, one of my favorite movies dropped on Amazon Prime Video: Steven Spielberg's JAWS. This is a movie that I was afraid of as a kid. It was single-handedly responsible for an irrational fear of sharks for me, which has since subsided into a healthy fear of sharks based on knowledge and understanding. However, as I've age and become more interested in the techniques of storytelling (as a writer), it's become a movie that I've grown to deeply admire.

Now, there are many things that this film gets right—the score, the script, the casting, the melding of real-life shark footage with other cinematic techniques, the careful balance of humor and terror to create a perfect emotional experience—each one of which could take a whole essay to explore on their own. It is proof that the collaborative process of Hollywood films can, sometimes, produce something wonderful. However, I only want to focus on one aspect of this film. JAWS is a perfect film to study if one wishes to understand how character motivation should work, especially when it comes to the motives of the protagonist of a story.

In the film, our protagonist is Police Chief Martin Brody, played by Roy Scheider. Within the first several scenes in which we spend time with him, we come to understand him. Eric James Stone, a brilliant short-story writer, once said that the best advice he ever got on how to write good characters was to determine two things: figure out what your character wants and fears and then place them in a situation where they have to face that fear to get what they want. Simple—but that, of course, doesn't mean it's easy. 

What does Brody want? That's easy to deduce if you watch carefully. The greatest expression of this comes when he's on the boat at night with Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss, just after they've gutted the first shark the fishermen caught.

"I'm tellin' you, the crime rate in New York will kill you," he says. "There's so many problems, you never feel like you're accomplishing anything. Violence, rip-offs, muggings—kids can't leave the house, you gotta walk 'em to school, but in Amity, one man can make a difference."

Brody, at his core, is a protector. As a cop, he wants to protect the people of Amity, and by extension, he wants to protect his family. Even if that means getting on the wrong side of the most powerful people in Amity, he will do what he has to do in order to do his job. Despite the restraints that the Mayor and town fathers put on him though, he does his best. 

Now, what does Brody fear? Again, that's easy to figure out if you watch carefully. 

In the scene of the film where the older swimmer comes up to him on the beach, just before the second human victim (the little boy, Alex Kittner, on the yellow floaty raft; I say human victim because the dog dies before him off-screen—poor Pippin), dies on the beach, the man makes it clear tot he viewer. "We know all about you chief. You don't go in the water at all, do you," he says, as he's taking off his swimming cap. Brody, pride lightly bruised, then says the famous line, "That's some bad hat, Harry."

He's afraid of the water, and more specifically, as he says to Hooper just before he goes out on a boat the first time after getting drunk, he's specifically afraid of drowning. 

So, we know what he wants and we know what he fears. Armed with this knowledge then makes the emotional turning point, an hour into the film, all the more impactful and makes his eventual victory at the end of this movie all the more satisfying. 

Close to the one-hour mark of the film, after Brody's faced just endless opposition to wanting to close down the beaches and he's reached the compromise of having a dense shark-watch armada watching for the shark, the third human victim dies. Just before it happens, he told his son, Michael, for he and his friends to take their boat into the estuary pond, under the assumption that they'll be safer since the shark's never attacked there. Then, while the shark-watch armada is busy with the two kids pranking everyone with the fake shark fin, the shark heads into the estuary. 

It makes a B-line for Michael's boat. However, just before it makes it to Michael, it runs into that guy in the tiny rowboat checking to make sure Michael and his friends are okay due to them having seamanship technical difficulties with the sail. Its size knocks everyone out of their boats, but it only kills the rowboat guy before turning around and heading back out to sea. 

It is the wake of that moment, after Michael's friends drag him from the ocean showing that he's unharmed, after Brody grabs a towel for him to help him alleviate the shock he's in, when Brody looks out at the open ocean after the shark leaves the estuary, that Brody's motives change. 

He realizes that he can no longer do his job, and more importantly protect his family, by staying on land; he's going to have to face his fear of being out on the ocean to remove the threat to his family in its domain. How does the film show us this? While in the hospital, Brody first has that exchange with his wife (who is just such a sweetheart of a character). He asks her to take Sean, their younger son, home. "Back to New York?" she asks. "No," says Brody, "Home here." Those simple words are a statement of intent. He then goes to the mayor, who up to this point has been Brody's chief human antagonist, and makes him sign the contract to hire Quint to kill the shark.

Another key rule of writing a main character (although there are examples that show this doesn't always have to be the case), is that they should have the central role in resolving the conflict. In the case of JAWS, resolving the conflict means eliminating the shark, and the writers of this film did just that.

As the Orca continues to sink, both Quint and Hooper are removed from the picture, leaving only Brody aboard the ship. At first, he simply does what he can to survive, to not get eaten by the shark. Finally, after a close-call with the shark, where he pulls back the hammer on the Chekov's Gun with the scuba tank (something they beautifully foreshadowed early on in the Orca's voyage when Hooper explains how compressed air can explode if mucked with), he then climbs to the highest point on the ship, the last bit with will sink with Quint's gun. As the shark makes its final charge in to kill him, tank in its mouth, he shoots round after round, before finally, that last lucky shot lands and the shark explodes in a geyser of blood.

Undoubtedly, this is a scene that PETA and the Sea Shepard Conservation Society loath, but for us (who know that no actual sharks were harmed in the making of this movie—we hope), who've followed Brody through this two-hour long emotional journey, it is the great moment of catharsis. Brody has gotten what he's wanted and faced his fear, earning the ending that we all remember. 

Brody's characterization, as I said before, is only one thing that JAWS does so perfectly as a film. At its heart, the story is a simple one, but its execution is done so well, so smoothly, that no matter how old this film gets, it will always be one of the gold standards of cinematic storytelling.