Leviathan

Leviathan is the biblical sea monster that becomes a recurring symbolic name for the great white shark in Peter Benchley's Jaws, invoked by two very different voices in the community to frame the shark not as a mere animal but as a force of divine judgment and unfathomable nature.

Biblical Origin and First Invocation

The name first appears in the novel when Minnie Eldridge, the postmistress of Amity, confronts Ellen Brody at the post office. After Ellen says the authorities will try to catch the shark, Minnie quotes the Book of Job: "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?" She then declares, "No mortal man's going to catch that fish," and adds, "We're not meant to catch it, that's why. We're being readied." When Ellen asks for what, Minnie replies, "We'll know when the time comes." This invocation frames the shark as an instrument of a divine plan, a punishment or preparation that human effort cannot thwart.

Recurrence as a Symbol of Futility

The name resurfaces later when Harry Meadows, the editor of the Amity Leader, uses it in a more secular but equally ominous context. After the second day of the hunt for the shark, Meadows tells Brody and Hooper that there is a good chance the leviathan has left. Brody responds with a weary "A chance," and Hooper agrees, "I hope so." Here, the term carries the weight of the town's desperate hope and the experts' uncertainty. The biblical monster has become a shorthand for an unpredictable, overwhelming threat that defies human control.

The Shark as a Physical Leviathan

The novel's descriptions of the shark itself repeatedly evoke the qualities of a leviathan: an ancient, unstoppable force of nature. The great fish moves "silently through the night water," propelled by instinct, its senses transmitting "nothing extraordinary to the small, primitive brain." It is described as a creature that "survived only by moving," lacking a flotation bladder, and its attack on Christine Watkins is rendered as a series of mechanical, inevitable actions. Later, when Hooper dives in the shark cage, the shark rises "from the darkling blue --slowly, smoothly," an "angel of death gliding toward an appointment foreordained." The final confrontation on the Orca culminates in the shark's body "towering overhead," blocking out the light, its pectoral fins "hovering like wings" as it falls onto the boat. These descriptions transform the biological reality of a great white into something mythic, a leviathan that embodies the sublime terror of the ocean.

Thematic Significance: Divine Retribution and Human Hubris

The leviathan symbol serves to elevate the conflict from a simple man-versus-nature struggle to a meditation on guilt, punishment, and the limits of human power. Minnie Eldridge's interpretation of the shark as divine retribution for the town's sins resonates with Brody's own guilt over the deaths he failed to prevent. The shark becomes a force that cannot be reasoned with, bargained with, or defeated by conventional means. It is a "dumb garbage bucket" to Quint, but also a "beauty" that makes Hooper "believe in a god." The leviathan thus embodies the novel's central tension: the human need to impose order and meaning on a chaotic, indifferent natural world, and the ultimate failure of that effort. The shark's final, inexplicable retreat from Brody in the water, and its sinking with Quint's body "trailing behind it," leaves the leviathan's mystery intact, a reminder of the vast, unknowable forces that lie beyond human comprehension.