Quint (Jaws character)
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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.

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, leaping onto its transom. While Brody manages to slide back to a lower compartment of the boat, Quint hangs onto a table. An air tank rolls over onto his hand and Quint screams as Brody unsuccessfully tries to hold him and he slides into the shark's mouth and is devoured alive while stabbing the shark with a machete. He is bitten in half while blood squirts out of his mouth.

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. Appearing as Ben Gardener in the movie, Craig Kingsbury is in the scene on the water with the out of town bounty hunters delivering the line "They'll wish their fathers never met their mothers!"

In popular culture

• In The Simpsons episode "Radio Bart", the man with the fishhook and chocolate bar is the character Quint. In the episode Homer Goes To College Bart parodies Quint by running his fingernails down the blackboard to gain attention, much like Quint did to interrupt the community meeting discussing how they would catch the shark. 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 a monstrous fish which eats him alive.
• In the "Spongebob Squarepants" episode "Sandy, SpongeBob, and the Worm", the characters hold a town meeting at The Krusty Krab to discuss how to save Bikini Bottom from the Alaskan Bull Worm. As the citizens discuss the crisis, an old man in a yellow fisherman's outfit scrapes his hand (a pirate hook) against the window of the restaurant, in homage to Quint, before proceeding to ask where the bathroom is.
• 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.
• The character of Mobius Quint in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go is named after this character.

External links

• Quint's U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue
• Jaws fansite