Quint is a fictional character appearing in the 1974 novel Jaws by Peter Benchley, and in the 1975 film Jaws, which was directed by Steven Spielberg. In both the novel and the film, he is portrayed as a shark fisherman. In the novel, he appears as a bald, weathered, burly man who never wears sunglasses. In the film he was portrayed by actor Robert Shaw.
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Film
Quint is hired to kill the monster great white shark that terrorizes the fictional New England town of Amity Island. He boards his fishing boat, the Orca, with Matt Hooper, an ichthyologist, and Martin Brody, the local chief of police. Eventually the shark sinks the Orca, and Quint screams as he slides into the shark's mouth and is devoured alive while stabbing the shark with a machete.
Novel
Quint's death is portrayed differently in the original novel. Harpooning the shark to death, Quint gets tangled by the lines, and is drowned when he is dragged down by the sinking shark corpse. His end parallels that of another obsessed harpooning ship captain, Captain Ahab from Moby Dick.
The Indianapolis
Quint relates the story of his experience aboard the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis during World War II, a real-life vessel which was sunk by a Japanese submarine after delivering the final components of the "Little Boy" bomb to Tinian. The survivors floated for days in the wreckage and watched hundreds of their shipmates die from wounds, burns, dehydration and shark attacks.
Inspiration
The character is popularly attributed to real-life Long Island shark fisherman Frank Mundus, though the book's author denies this. Craig Kingsbury, an islander on Martha's Vineyard, helped Spielberg and Shaw flesh out the character for the film.
In popular culture
- In The Simpsons episode "Radio Bart", the man with the fishhook and chocolate bar is the character Quint. Also in the thirteenth Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror comic segment spoofing Jaws, Captain McCallister is much like Quint and faces a similar fate when he slides into the monstrous fish which eats him alive.
- Quint in Jaws (1975) was ranked #28 on Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
- In the film The Master of Disguise, the main character disguises himself as Quint in a scene in an attempt to evade pursuers.
- The character of T.S Quint in Mallrats is named after the character.
