When Does "JAWS" (1974) Take Place?
"JAWS" is a horror novel written by Peter Benchley that released February 1st, 1974. So when is "JAWS" set?
It takes place in the year:
We know this because, in the fourth scene of the book, as Police Chief Martin Brody and his wife Ellen are introduced, the narrator tells us, "Ellen Brody was thirty-six" and "Ellen was twenty-one when she met Brody. She had just finished her junior year at Wellesley". The scene goes on to tell the reader about her 'voted Most' "in the yearbook for the class of 1953 at Miss Porter’s School".
1971 AD
We know this because, in the fourth scene of the book, as Police Chief Martin Brody and his wife Ellen are introduced, the narrator tells us, "Ellen Brody was thirty-six" and "Ellen was twenty-one when she met Brody. She had just finished her junior year at Wellesley". The scene goes on to tell the reader about her 'voted Most' "in the yearbook for the class of 1953 at Miss Porter’s School".
If Ellen Brody was between her junior year and a planned senior year of college at the real-world institution Wellesley College, then it was 3 years past her high school graduation when she met the future Police Chief. If she graduated from the real-world preparatory school Miss Porter’s School in 1953, it must have been 1956.
1953 + 3 = 1956.
1953 + 3 = 1956.
If she was 36 at the time of the story and 21 when she met Brody, 15 years have passed.
36 - 21 = 15.
So the main action of the novel takes place 15 years after they met, in 1971.
1956 + 15 = 1971.
It was adapted to film in 1975.
