On his way to collect his raft from the beach hut, Alex Kintner passes Ellen Brody, who is sunbathing on the beach and conversing with a dark-haired woman (Mrs Taft according to the IMDB credits, but anonymous in the movie itself). Snatches of inconsequential dialogue can be heard, but it is Ellen's question ('When do I get to become an islander?') and Mrs Taft's response ('Never! You're not born here, you're not an islander.') that register.
In Benchley's novel the town of Amity is located on the western end of Long Island, a twenty-minute drive from Sag Harbor. Long Island somewhat belies its geographical status by lying flush against the mainland and being connected to it by both bridges and tunnels. When you look at it from the water or even from space, its large mass of almost one and a half thousand square miles looks more like a peninsula. In the movie Amity becomes an island unto itself, more akin to Martha's Vineyard, which was where the film was shot and which looks like an island from wherever you view it. In fact, although nominally set in a recognisable east coast location, Amity is about as real as the village of Brigadoon or that other famous Scottish village from Local Hero.
In the novel Brody is a local, but finds himself increasingly isolated from his community - a story element that was emphasised by the publisher's hype (... one man against a giant killer shark and a town that won't face the truth!). In the film, Brody is an off-islander, figuratively and - at the movie's climax - literally out of his depth, but he finds unlikely companionship in his quest to kill the shark. At the very end of the movie he is reunited with Hooper and the two men share a brief moment of poignancy as they acknowledge Quint's sacrifice with a realisation that no man is an island.
