“I’ll never put on a life jacket again.” This iconic line, delivered by the epic Robert Shaw as Quint, the captain of the Orca in Jaws (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg), comes directly after recounting his survivor’s story about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Since I first saw Jaws on TV around six or seven, this line has always intrigued me. What does it mean? Why does he say it?

But, while considering my place in light of current events, I think I finally get it. Quint is not the older character in heist films who needs coaxed out of retirement to pull off one last job. Quint still wants to actively pursue and destroy the thing that killed hundreds of his buddies and shipmates. Looking at all the actual sharks’ jaws he has in his cabin, he has been at it since the war ended thirty years before. And there is both vengeance, honor and a search for redemption in his choice to go after the shark murdering the people of his town. He has “survivor’s guilt.”

Quint is traumatized. He is the guy who made it out by sheer chance after watching hundreds of other men eaten alive by what Hooper calls perfect killing machines. And he describes their deaths in that calm, detached cadence that anyone who has ever “trauma-dumped” — or heard someone do so — will recognize.

Quint is also coded more like the movie version of the traumatized Vietnam vet in his clothes, sideburns and profanity than the WWII vet he is. Even in modern depictions of WWII, no one curses or sings truly dirty songs. They’re depicted as clean-cut with an unwaivering sense of honor, duty and patriotism. This is fiction, obviously, but Spielberg made a choice to break from that with Quint, a choice he later backtracks on in Saving Private Ryan.

Vietnam vets in film, though, they say “fuck.” A lot. They are obviously scarred human beings. Little kids — because most soliders are little kids too young even to buy alcohol in the US — who experienced unimaginable horrors. They are the characters singing the “Mickey Mouse Club” theme at the end of Full Metal Jacket. They are Walter Sobchak in The Big Lewbowski, whose gun-toting trauma erupts while bowling with his friends from high school.

Quint’s experience was so overwhelming and traumatizing that, if given the choice, next time he’d rather die outright than watch everyone else he knows picked off by sharks again. And he eventually gets his death wish. His death spurs the younger Brody to kill the shark and allows both Brody and Hooper to live.

I thought of this because, while I’ve never been in a war, I have survived extreme physical, psychological, financial and moral abuse, trauma, violence and damage over my life. I have physical injuries that will never heal. And while watching people, young and old, put themselves out there in this moment in US history, I realized that I am very much like Quint.

I have survived violence. I have several friends who did not survive. They died of overdoses, suicide and violence. And I have been and always will oppose and call out abusers, bullies and petty tyrants of any size or stripe. But my difference is that my survival wasn’t simply luck. I out-fought, out-thought and out-lasted, and I did that by stubbornly insisting that I matter. That my life matters.

I didn’t have a lot of choices. I didn’t have support. No one believed me or cared to try. And I never thought to impose myself on the few who did care because they were old, dying or otherwise engaged. I was explicitly and implicitly told not to impose myself.

So, if I have anything to say to anyone who is in a situation where they need to fight for themselves, their lives, their communities or freedom, then it’s a warning.

If you are lucky you will not die. But you will be injured. Maybe permanently, by what happens to you, what you must do or by what you see happen to people you care about. And what you have to do to survive may haunt you forever. But your life is worth the fight. Your healing is worth it. Your peace is worth it. Your ability to love is worth it. Your capability for joy is worth it. Your freedom is worth it. And so are you, even if no one ever told you that. You are.

“Anyway, we delivered The Bomb.”

Namaste, you legend. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you know love. May you know peace. May you enjoy freedom.

-J.Lakis

✌🏼❤️‍🩹🖖🏼

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If you’re considering suicide, self harm or have a mental health crisis: call or text 988 any time to talk or text with someone from the National Suicide Prevention and Crisis Hotline. Help is always available in English or Spanish. LGBTQ+ youth in crisis? Contact:  The Trevor Project.

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