Jaws (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jaws is a novel by Peter Benchley from 1974. Originally called the novel Jaws ( dt. : Pine ). Benchley was inspired by real events such as the Jersey Shore shark attacks in 1916 . The novel became an instant hit and stayed on bestseller lists for 44 weeks. The film adaptation ofthe same name by Steven Spielberg was released the next year.

The translation used to this day for the German-language editions comes from Egon Strohm and was first published in 1974 by Ullstein Verlag .

action

The action takes place in the fictional Amity, a small town on Long Island that is heavily dependent on beach tourism. One night, before the swimming season, a young tourist named Christie Watkins is killed by a great white shark . When her body washes up, the cause of death is obvious. Police Chief Martin Brody closes Amity's beaches, provoking opposition from Mayor Larry Vaughan and the city council. They do not want to endanger the tourism business and put Brody and the reporter Harry Meadows under pressure. Meadows is downplaying it in the local paper.

The beach reopens and the shark kills an old man and a boy. The fisherman Ben Gardner is sent to hunt the shark, but disappears without a trace. Brody and Deputy Leonard Hendricks find Gardner's boat, which has apparently been attacked by a huge shark. In the boat, Brody finds a huge shark tooth. Brody makes serious accusations and finds out Vaughan's motives for keeping the beach open: The Mafia has invested money in real estate in Amity and is putting pressure on the mayor. Meadows calls in ichthyologist Matt Hooper at the Woods Hole Institute .

Hooper's older brother was a former lover of Brody's wife, Ellen. They both have a brief affair in a hotel room. Brody suspects something and for the rest of the novel is obsessed with the thought that Hooper slept with his wife. After nearly killing another boy, Brody defies political pressure and closes the beaches. He hires the fisherman Quint to kill the shark. Brody, Quint and Hooper take Quint's little boat, the Orca , out to sea. The three unequal men are at odds with each other, Brody and Quint have great antipathies for each other. Obsessed with the idea that Hooper slept with Ellen, Brody even tries to strangle him once.

All attempts to kill the animal fail, and Hooper drops into the water in an anti-shark cage to inject poison directly into the shark. The shark destroys the cage and kills Hooper. Quint is obsessed with killing the shark and harpooned it several times. The last harpoon hits the shark fatally and this pulls Quint down with it, because the rope of the harpoon has wrapped around his foot.

The damaged orca sinks and Brody paddles back ashore on a raft.

filming

The film producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown read the novel before its publication and secured the film rights.

The story was in 1975 by Steven Spielberg filmed . Spielberg changed some of the plot. The conflict between Brody and Hooper based on the adultery is absent and Hooper does not find death. The film became a worldwide hit and was the most successful film of all time until Star Wars ' success (1977). Today the work is a classic among horror films. The whole genre of animal horror film was founded by him.

A total of four films in the series had been released by 1987: Jaws (1975), Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws - The Reckoning (1987).

Others

By the time the film came out, 5.5 million copies of the book are said to have been sold. By 2006 the book had sold 20 million copies. In the years following its release, Benchley felt guilty about the sharks' bad name and was heavily involved in the marine conservation movement. In a 2000 article for National Geographic magazine , Benchley said he would no longer write the novel today. The animal is not evil, but occasionally confuses careless people with prey.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Downie, Robert M .: Block Island History of Photography 1870-1960s. P. 243, Volume 2, 2008
  2. ^ Sam Knight: 'Jaws' creator loved sharks, wife reveals . In: The Times , February 13, 2006. Retrieved January 26, 2008. 
  3. ^ Summer of the Shark . In: Time , June 23, 1975. Archived from the original on June 19, 2009. Retrieved on December 9, 2011. 
  4. ^ Peter Benchley: Great white sharks . In: National Geographic . April 2000, p. 12. ISSN  0027-9358 .