Brody/Beachgoers Not Knowing the Shark is There (Dramatic Irony)
Jaws is wrought with dramatic irony, including any time the audience is alerted to the presence of the shark via POV shots and the return of the non-diegetic music, while the onscreen characters remain in the dark. For example, during the sequence where Chief Brody is relaxing on the beach (itself ironic in a way) and Bad Hat Harry comes up to talk to him while he’s trying to keep an eye on the beachgoers, Spielberg takes the camera underwater to reveal the shark prowling for victims. The audience knows the shark is right there while the swimmers around it, as well as Brody and the other beachgoers, do not.
Quint's Profession (Situational Irony)
One of the most haunting scenes in all of American film is the monologue by Quint about being aboard the USS Indianapolis when it sunk in shark-infested waters after delivering the nuclear warhead dropped on Hiroshima. That scene also caps the most obviously recognizable bit of contemporary irony for audiences. Take a look inside Quint’s shop and you will see it is lined wall-to-wall with the trophies of his kills. From the description he provides in this monologue, you would expect that he would never want to step back into the water again, yet he makes his living purposely going to spots in the ocean where the sharks are.
Brody Killing the Shark (Situational Irony)
The guy who explicitly lets it be known he hates the water; the guy who is almost certainly afraid of the water; the guy who most wants to head back into town and get a bigger boat. Not the shark hunter. Not the ichthyologist. T'was the landlubber that landed the shark.
Quint Being Eaten (Situational Irony)
Having already established the irony of Quint making a living in shark-filled waters despite his traumatic experience aboard the USS Indianapolis, the movie proceeds to ramp up the irony to its ultimate end. Here is a man who refuses to wear a life vest because he would rather drown than bob at the surface as shark bait, who becomes bait nonetheless, a gruesome end inside the belly of a shark after escaping so many in 1945.
Shark Week (Real-Life Irony)
Perhaps the single greatest irony associated with Jaws is the impact it had on society's attitude toward sharks. The film terrified millions of viewers to the point where they became too scared to actually step into the water when they vacationed at the beach. The irony is that all the attention that the film drew to the ravenous predator actually stimulated enough interest that today we know more about sharks than ever before, including facts that testify to the opposite of how the film presented its main character. Ironically, thanks to Jaws, sharks today are appreciated for not being merely mindlessly ravenous predators, but relatively harmless creatures who injure very few humans annually.
