Moby Dick influenced Jaws

Quint is Ahab, and the film knows it: a captain who has made the hunt personal, a crew of three on a boat too small, a refusal to turn back, and a death inside the animal's mouth. Robert Shaw played Quint reading Melville in an early draft, and Spielberg has talked about the Melville frame while explaining what he cut. The Indianapolis speech is the film's own version of Ahab's history with the whale, a wound that explains the obsession.