Just as Brody asks Cassidy 'You here for the summer?' there is a series of blasts on a whistle from along the beach and the two men start to run towards the sound. Later during the Fourth of July panic scene Brody will vainly try to prevent the lifeguards from raising a similar warning signal ('No whistles! No whistles!'). It's appropriate that the first note of alarm should be cued up by a word that carries specific associations for the community. Its totemic value has already been established by a number of glancing references in the script, but its full symbolic significance will be distilled in Larry Vaughn's economic equation ('Amity is a summer town. We need summer dollars.')
If summer means economic prosperity, then winter - as Quint's reference to welfare in his town hall speech makes clear - is a period of potential recession. The residents of Amity are acutely aware that 'summer's lease hath all too short a date'. Indeed, so valuable are those few income-generating months that time itself becomes a commodity on the island. 'Twenty four hours is like three weeks,' complains the shrewish motel owner when Larry Vaughn announces the temporary beach closure. When trying to negotiate further beach closures, Brody himself will use time as a bargaining chip ('If we make an effort today, we might be able to save August.'). In the hospital scene Vaughn himself will repeat the same month like a desperate mantra of survival until Brody bluntly states, 'Larry, the summer is over.'
