Quint's Use Of Suspense In The Film Jaws

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Jaws is a great move to analyze suspense from because it has very distinct and easily identifiable elements of suspense. A few of the elements within the movie that causes this suspense is the setting, characters and sound. Jaws, the movie and the shark, force its characters to disregard their ego and fears to band together and kill Jaws, even though they did not initially like each other. This theme is applicable to people of all walks of life, for example if I am having trouble with math then I would need to let go of my ego and ask for help in order to move forward and excel.
The setting is actually much more important than I had initially thought. Amity is a beach town in the New England area. Because it is a beach town, it gets most …show more content…

One of the biggest example of this is the characterization of Quint, the old fisherman. While Brody and Hooper get to know him on his boat, the audience learns more about him too. During the scene where the three men are getting drunk on the boat and showing each other their scars, Quint begins to tell the story of his near death excursion with sharks. He explains that he was aboard the USS Indianapolis when it sunk. While him and the rest of the crew were swimming for shore many other men were picked off one by one at the hands of sharks. Since then he has a sort of death wish, he shows this by saying that after that terrible event that he would never wear a life jacket ever again. The most identifiable suspense inducing element of Jaws is the sound. Every time that Jaws is getting ready to attack the Jaws theme plays. The use of this song causes the viewer to wait for Jaws to appear in anticipation. This happens consistently throughout the movie except once. Brody is throwing chum off the back of Quint’s boat to attract the shark and suddenly, without warning, Jaws’s head comes out of the water. This completely throw everyone off guard. The Jaws theme is one of the most iconic sounds from a movie, and therefore must be discussed when talking about this

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