#i also have a hc that brody likes moby dick as well mostly so that he and quint have another thing in common to talk about

[secondhandskoot]

personally i'm obsessed with your headcanon that quint is a superfan of moby dick and i'd love to know more about why you think he connects to the story so much

It mostly started as kind of a joke when I read about a scrapped scene in Jaws (which never came to be filmed) of Quint watching Moby Dick in a theatre and laughing maniacally at Captain Ahab's speech. I thought it was a funny concept so I decided to incorporate it into my own personal Jaws lore. And then I actually took the time to read Moby Dick and went, "Huh. Neat."

If you think about it, Jaws is fairly reminiscent of Moby Dick. Not so much so that I would consider it a retelling, but just enough that it's obvious that Peter Benchley (and probably Steven Spielberg too to some extent) took inspiration from it. Quint himself is similar to Captain Ahab, and the ending of Jaws (particularly the novel) has a lot of similarities to the ending of Moby Dick.

All that being said, it just makes sense to me that Quint would relate to Moby Dick to some extent. Quint himself is a seafaring individual -- one that most likely came from a family of even more seafarers and was introduced to the book at a relatively young age (either through a family member or someone he knew growing up). It was definitely something that grew on him over time though, rather than immediately after his first reading of it. The more life fucked him up, the more Quint came to appreciate Moby Dick and understand it. I also have this moderately fucked up headcanon that Captain Ahab was initially Quint's least favorite character when he was young -- so much so that he was moderately terrified of him -- only for Quint to later end up becoming Captain Ahab in a way.