Attack on Christine Watkins

The Attack on Christine Watkins is the inaugural act of violence in Peter Benchley's Jaws, a nocturnal killing that introduces the great white shark as an implacable, almost elemental force and triggers the moral and political unraveling of the resort community of Amity. The attack occurs on the night of June 15, when a young woman named Christine Watkins, drunk and eager for a swim after sex on the cold sand, wades into the moonless Atlantic off Old Mill Road. Her companion, Tom Cassidy, passes out on the beach, leaving her alone in the water. The shark, a great white of immense size, is drawn not by sight or smell but by the vibrations her clumsy, head-above-water stroke sends through the water. The novel opens with the shark's own sensory experience, establishing it not as a mere monster but as a biological machine driven by millions of years of instinct, a creature that must move constantly or die of anoxia. The attack itself is swift and brutal. The shark first takes her leg, severing it at the hip, then returns to crush her torso in its jaws. The woman's body is torn apart, and the shark feeds on the remains, its brain still registering the signals of nearby prey. The corpse is never recovered whole; only a truncated torso, a head, and part of an arm are found the next morning, snarled in seaweed. The discovery is made by Patrolman Len Hendricks, who vomits at the sight, and Chief Martin Brody, who also becomes sick. The coroner, Carl Santos, confirms the cause of death as shark attack, noting that the damage could only have been done by a very large shark. The attack is immediately suppressed by the town's power structure. Editor Harry Meadows, under pressure from advertisers and the mayor, Larry Vaughan, who is secretly in debt to a Mafia figure, agrees to keep the story out of the Amity Leader. Brody, who wanted to close the beaches and warn the public, is persuaded to go along, a decision that will haunt him after two more people are killed. The suppression of the Watkins attack is the novel's original sin, the choice that transforms a freak accident into a recurring catastrophe. The attack also introduces the central thematic tension of the novel: the conflict between public safety and economic survival. Amity is a town that depends entirely on its summer tourist season, and the prospect of a shark scare threatens to ruin the town's economy. The decision to hide the truth is made in the name of protecting the town, but it is a decision that will lead to more deaths and, ultimately, to the town's near-destruction. The attack on Christine Watkins is thus not merely a plot device but the catalyst for the novel's exploration of guilt, responsibility, and the limits of human control over nature.