The Blockbuster That Captured a Growing American Rift

In a cramped, $50-a-month room above a New Jersey furnace-supply company, Peter Benchley set to work on what he once said, half-jokingly, might be “a Ulysses for the 1970s.” A novel resulted from these efforts, one Benchley considered titling The Edge of Gloom or Infinite Evil before deciding on the less dramatic but more fitting Jaws. Its plot is exquisite in its simplicity. A shark menaces Amity, a fictional, gentrifying East Coast fishing village. Chaos ensues: People are eaten. Working-class residents battle with an upper-class outsider regarding the best way to kill the shark. The fish eventually dies in an orgy of blood. And the political sympathies of the novel are clear—it sides with the townspeople, and against the arrogant, credentialed expert who tries to solve Amity’s shark problem.