Sinking of the Orca

The Sinking of the Orca is the catastrophic climax of the novel's central conflict, a final battle in which the great white shark, harpooned three times and dragging three barrels, turns on its hunters with a ferocity that destroys Quint's boat, the Orca, and kills Quint himself, leaving Martin Brody as the sole survivor. The event marks the complete reversal of the hunt: the shark, wounded and enraged, ceases to be prey and becomes the predator, sinking the vessel and dragging the man who had sworn to kill it into the depths. It is the moment when the natural world, personified by the shark, overwhelms human pride, skill, and technology, and when Brody, the reluctant policeman, is stripped of all support and forced to confront the creature alone.

The Final Harpooning and the Shark's Counterattack

After a three-hour wait during which the barrels carrying the harpoon lines wallowed on the surface, Quint judged the shark to be near death and decided to haul it in. He cut one barrel free, ran the rope through a pulley on the gin pole, and engaged the electric winch. The boat heeled hard to starboard under the weight. But the rope suddenly came too fast, fouling on the winch. Quint shouted, "The sonofabitch is coming up!" and dashed to the controls, but it was too late. The fish broke water right beside the boat with a great rushing whoosh, rising vertically. Brody gasped at the size of the body, which towered overhead and blocked out the light. The pectoral fins hovered like wings, and as the fish fell forward, they seemed to reach out to Brody. The fish landed on the stern of the boat with a shattering crash, driving the boat beneath the waves. Water poured in over the transom, and within seconds, Quint and Brody were standing in water up to their hips. The fish lay there, its jaw not three feet from Brody's chest, its black eye as big as a baseball reflecting his own image.

Quint's Death

A barrel floated into the cockpit, its rope writhing. Quint grabbed the harpoon dart at the end of the rope and, with his hand, plunged it into the soft white belly of the fish. Blood poured from the wound and bathed his hands. The boat was sinking; the stern was completely submerged, and the bow was rising. The fish rolled off the stern and slid beneath the waves, and the rope attached to the dart Quint had just stuck into it followed. Suddenly, Quint lost his footing and fell backward into the water. He cried out, "The knife!" lifting his left leg above the surface, and Brody saw the rope coiled around Quint's foot. Brody lunged for the knife embedded in the starboard gunwale, wrenched it free, and turned back, struggling to run in the deepening water. He could not move fast enough. He watched in helpless terror as Quint, reaching toward him with grasping fingers, eyes wide and pleading, was pulled slowly down into the dark water. For a moment there was silence, except for the sucking sound of the boat slipping gradually down.

Brody's Survival and the Shark's Final Descent

The water was up to Brody's shoulders, and he clung desperately to the gin pole. A seat cushion popped to the surface next to him, and he grabbed it, remembering Hendricks's remark that cushions would hold a person up "if you were an eight-year-old boy." He saw the tail and dorsal fin break the surface twenty yards away. The tail waved once left, once right, and the dorsal fin moved closer. Brody yelled, "Get away, damn you!" The fish kept coming, barely moving, closing in. The gin pole went under, and Brody let go of it. He tried to kick over to the bow of the boat, which was almost vertical now, but before he could reach it, the bow raised even higher, then quickly and soundlessly slid beneath the surface. Brody clutched the cushion, and by holding it in front of him with his forearms across it and kicking constantly, he managed to stay afloat. The fish came closer, only a few feet away, and Brody could see the conical snout. He screamed, an ejaculation of hopelessness, and closed his eyes, waiting for an agony he could not imagine. Nothing happened. He opened his eyes. The fish was nearly touching him, only a foot or two away, but it had stopped. Then, as Brody watched, the steel-gray body began to recede downward into the gloom, falling away like an apparition evanescing into darkness. Brody put his face into the water and opened his eyes. Through the stinging saltwater mist he saw the fish sink in a slow and graceful spiral, trailing behind it the body of Quint — arms out to the sides, head thrown back, mouth open in mute protest. The fish faded from view, but, kept from sinking into the deep by the bobbing barrels, it stopped somewhere beyond the reach of light, and Quint's body hung suspended, a shadow twirling slowly in the twilight. Brody watched until his lungs ached for air. He raised his head, cleared his eyes, and sighted in the distance the black point of the water tower. Then he began to kick toward shore.