East Hampton

East Hampton is a wealthy summer resort community on the south shore of Long Island, situated adjacent to Amity. The novel uses East Hampton as a constant economic and social counterpoint to Amity, a benchmark of prosperity and desirability that underscores the precariousness of Amity's own tourist-dependent existence. The town's very name evokes the world of privilege and leisure that Amity's year-round residents both serve and envy, a world that seems perpetually out of reach for many of them.

Geography and Setting

East Hampton is located on the south shore of Long Island, approximately midway between Bridgehampton and Amity. The town is a summer community with a wintertime population of 1,000 that swells to 10,000 in the summer. The novel describes the area's geography in detail, noting that the ocean floor off the coast drops precipitously from a gentle slope to more than forty-five degrees, reaching depths of a hundred feet before rising again in a shoal a mile from shore. This underwater topography is part of the broader marine environment that the great white shark inhabits.

Economic and Social Significance

East Hampton represents the pinnacle of summer resort success that Amity desperately aspires to but can never quite achieve. The town's real estate market is a constant point of comparison: when Amity's rentals are slow, the novel notes that at least a dozen of the $7,000-$10,000-a-season shore-front houses have not yet been rented, and many more in the $5,000 class are still without leases. The implication is that East Hampton, with its more established reputation and wealthier clientele, does not suffer from the same economic fragility. The novel explicitly states that the summer population of Amity is about 10,000, while East Hampton's is presumably larger and more affluent.

Role in the Shark Crisis

East Hampton serves as a potential escape valve for Amity's economic woes, but also as a threat. When Brody considers closing the beaches, he argues that people would simply drive to East Hampton to swim, and there is just as good a chance they would get killed there as in Amity. This logic is used by the selectmen to justify keeping the beaches open, as they fear that any official acknowledgment of danger would drive tourists away from Amity entirely, not just to East Hampton. The novel also shows that the shark's presence is not confined to Amity's waters; Hooper spends a day off East Hampton looking for the fish, noting that the beaches there are crowded and that the shark might appear where people are swimming. This suggests that the threat is regional, not local, and that East Hampton is not immune.

Narrative Significance

East Hampton functions as a symbol of the unattainable summer world that Ellen Brody once belonged to and now longs for. It is the place where her old friends summer, the place where she might have lived if she had married someone from her own social class. The novel uses East Hampton to highlight the social and economic divisions within Amity, and to underscore the tragedy of the town's decline. When the shark attacks devastate Amity's economy, the novel notes that people are walking out on leases and that the only good thing about the Amity economy is that Saxon's is doing so badly that it laid off Henry Kimble. East Hampton, by contrast, remains a place of privilege and stability, a reminder of what Amity has lost and may never regain.