Section 3 Summary
Out on the beaches, people hammer in signs closing the beaches by order of the Amity PD. In the next shot, Brody reads a book about a shark’s ability to sense irregular pulses in the water caused by a fish thrashing about. Ellen comes to his side, making him jump, which makes her jump in turn. He stresses about what people do and don’t know about sharks, and she takes the book from him and hands him a drink, saying he won’t be able to sleep. She tells him that their son Michael is out sitting in his new boat and Brody jumps up and yells for him to come in. Ellen points out that he won’t go in the water, only the boat. But then she looks in the book Brody had been reading and sees a picture of shark chewing through the bottom of a small boat, and screams for Michael to get out of the boat, too.
It’s nighttime on the water, and two fishermen are out rowing a small boat. One says that the chief won’t see them because he lives on the other side of town. They shore up at a small dock and prep a turkey carcass on the end of a large hook, saying that Mrs. Kintner’s $3,000 reward will buy a lot more of them. They attach it to a floating tire and toss it into the water.
Brody flips through page after page of books on sharks, looking at pictures of people who’ve caught them, scientists standing in the huge jaw bone of one, shark spotters on the beach, people being treated for gruesome bites.
The fishermen’s tire bobs in the water and is yanked suddenly from underneath. The now familiar music signaling the shark’s presence returns. The tire is dragged far out from the dock until the chain is pulled taut and yanks part of the dock and the fishermen clean into the water. One of them is dragged out on the raft-like remains, but frees himself and swims back. The piece of dock (pulled from below by the shark) turns in the water and begins to chase the man as he vigorously swims back to his partner waiting on what’s left of the standing dock. He reaches it and his partner pulls him from the water in the nick of time. The broken-off piece of dock floats up on the beach and the music dies away, indicating that the shark has gone.
The next day, Harbor Master Frank Silva watches as a slew of fishermen come to the docks, along with Hendricks and Brody, the former of whom recounts what happened with the fishermen to the latter. They figure Mrs. Kintner’s ad in the paper must’ve reached pretty far. Marine biologist Matt Hooper comes ashore and attempts to get Brody’s attention as Brody yells safety instructions to multiple different boaters in the water. Brody asks Hooper to stop one group of sailors from overloading their boat with eight men. He tries to do so, but the men wave him off. On the phone in the Harbor Master’s office, trying to acquire road block signs, Brody calls in Hendricks and asks him to talk some sense into the various sailors since they’re all islanders like him. Hendricks counters that these sailors are from all over, based on their license plates. Hooper comes in and reports his failure to get the eight men out of the boat, and Brody sends Hendricks to talk to them instead. Hooper introduces himself as being from the oceanographic institute and asks to see Chrissie Watkins’ remains. Brody says to bear with him.
A slew of boats, each packed with multiple men, take to the waters, driving too close together, throwing a mess of bloody bait into the water, even firecrackers that explode near the surface, and generally wrecking havoc. The scene switches to an examiner’s office, where a man places Chrissie’s remains onto a table for Hooper to examine while Brody looks on. Hooper appears sickened by the remains but talks vigorously into a small headset for posterity, observing the various lacerations on the body. He grows increasingly distraught and angry as he observes the remains, snapping at Brody not to smoke in the room, and declares that Chrissie’s death was no boating accident, but the result of an attack by a very large shark.
The next shot shows the bloodied mouth of a dead shark being opened by a group of fishermen out on the docks. A reporter begins shouting about how to organize the sailors for a picture with the shark. Brody shakes the hands of the sailors, appearing delighted that they caught the wanted predator, as Hooper observes the shark sternly. Captain Quint is shown observing the commotion from atop his boat in the harbor, appearing amused. Hooper measures the dimensions of the shark’s mouth as the reporter directs everyone into position. Brody sees the mayor approaching and shares the big news while a few sailors gather around the shark and wonder aloud what kind it is. Hooper tells them it’s a tiger shark. Brody brings the mayor over to meet Hooper, who’s going on about the shark possibly not being right one. He pulls Brody aside and says, with the mayor listening closely, that while it’s possible this is the shark that killed Chrissie and Alex, the bite radius is inconsistent with Chrissie’s wounds, and that opening the shark up to see if Alex’s remains are still inside is the only way to know for sure. Brody’s good mood evaporates. The mayor protests them opening the shark up on the dock in case Alex’s remains are indeed inside.
They’re interrupted by the sudden arrival of Alex’s mother, dressed all in black with a veil over her face. She approaches Chief Brody, lifts her veil, and hits him square in the face, saying she just learned that he knew of a shark attack victim a week before her son’s death and let people go swimming anyway. She blames him for her son’s death. As she leaves, the mayor tries to tell Brody that she’s wrong, but he argues that she’s actually right. The dock clears of saddened sailors. Hooper appears stunned.
At their home, Ellen clears the dinner table in front of a silent Brody. Brody takes a drink from his glass, and his younger son Sean beside him does the same. He folds his hand, and Sean follows suit. He strokes his face, and so does Sean. Brody notices this mimicry and makes a funny face, which Sean emulates. He leans in and asks him for a kiss, and then sends him on his way. Ellen, who has been watching this, goes to the door at the sound of a knock. Hooper comes in bearing two bottles of wine and sits with Martin and Ellen at their table. He asks how Brody’s day was and they both laugh. Hooper begins eating some of the food on the table, appearing famished. Ellen asks about his love of sharks, and Hooper says that when he was 12 he hooked a large shark while fishing off the coast of Cape Cod and it tore his boat apart, and he’s been studying them ever since. In the same breath that he uses to tell the story, he tells Brody that he plans to go to the Institute to tell them that Amity still has a shark problem on its hands. Brody seems to have been expecting this news, but Ellen is shocked. Brody pours an enormous glass of wine as Hooper explains that the tiger shark captured was not the one that killed Chrissie and Alex. He says that he’s leaving to spend 18 months on a research ship called the Aurora. Ellen says that Brody is afraid of boats and water, possibly stemming from a childhood fear, the clinical name for which, Brody says, is “drowning.” Brody asks Hooper if it’s true that most shark attacks happen in 3 feet of water about 10 feet from the beach; Hooper says yes. He asks if shark attacks used to go unreported before people swam for recreation, which Hooper again confirms. They discuss how the rogue shark terrorizing Amity is displaying “territoriality,” that it feels possessive of the island’s waters and will continue to hunt there until there’s no further sustenance. Brody proposes they have one more drink and then cut the tiger shark open. Ellen asks if he can do that, and he says that as the chief of police, he can do anything.
Section 3 Analysis
Brody’s research via the shark books give us some crucial information about the history and horrors of shark attacks; we learn that sharks detect irregular pulses in the water to alert them to struggling prey, which explains the film’s POV shots we’ve seen when the shark approaches its victims from below; we learn that some shark mouths can be alarmingly large, suggesting the predator terrorizing Amity is huge and foreboding; we learn that shark bites are gruesome to treat (though perhaps we already knew that from Chrissie and Alex’s deaths).
Brody’s jump when Ellen comes up behind him speaks to how on edge he is even at the thought of sharks, despite being on dry land in his own home. Ellen is a voice of comfort for him, but the fear of something happening to her son sparks enough fear in her to scream for Michael to come out of his boat. The illustration of the shark in the book eating through the bottom of the boat is also a great moment of foreshadowing, as that’s what the great white ultimately does to Quint’s boat.
The attack on the two fishermen attempting to lure the shark with the turkey carcass is another excellent example of Spielberg implying the shark’s presence without actually showing it. This time, he uses the broken piece of dock that the shark pulls from the shore to physically indicate it as it chases the panicked fisherman through the water. Accompanying this moment is the iconic music once again, which by now the audience knows unmistakably means that the shark is present. When the music dies and the piece of dock washes up on the shore, we know that the shark is gone, without having once seen it.
Hooper’s character traits are established quickly upon his introduction: he’s perhaps not as gruff and rough around the edges as some of the Amity fishermen, but his white-collar city-boy background doesn’t stop him from being an expert at what he does, even to the point of being a bit sassy about it. He wears his emotions on his sleeve more readily than Brody or Quint might; for example, upon observing the obvious shark bites in Chrissie Watkins’ remains, he grows first ostensibly disgusted, and then furious at the notion that officials tried to pass her death off as a boating accident, obscuring the real danger and putting more lives at risk. His ready displays of his emotions, particularly anger, come back continuously throughout the film.
Mrs. Kintner’s confrontation of Brody is perhaps the most emotionally raw scene in the film. A broken woman, she blames Brody for her son’s death for the same reason that made Hooper so angry: they knew of a shark in the water, and yet they failed stop people from going in. Her conversation with him is an absolute assault on the scene’s previous happy mood, in which the salty sailors took to the waters with glee in search of the shark, and then celebrated enthusiastically what they believed to be the capture of the right one. This shift is exemplified when she leaves and the sailors all disperse quietly with somber expressions.
Additionally, the mayor’s attempt to comfort Brody by saying that she’s wrong is important for two reasons: first, it maintains his denial about the reality of the situation, but secondly, it’s ironic considering one could argue that he’s right: the fault is not Brody’s, but his own: he overruled Brody’s initial plan to close the beaches, which if had they done would likely have kept Alex Kintner alive.
