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The Gams in Moby-Dick
Herman Melville, in his celebrated novel Moby-Dick, presents the tale of the driven, insanely persistent Captain Ahab as he leads his crew, the men of the
Pequod , in revenge against the white whale named in the title. A hesitant, pragmatic first mate, a jovial, unconcerned second mate, a secretive group of
Parsees led by a soothsayer, a crazed boy spouting discomforting truths, a crew mixed in age, origin, and length of exposure to civilization, and a young, philosophical narrator named Ishmael sail with Ahab. Cut off from the rest of society, Ahab attempts to create justice for his personal loss of a leg to the White
Whale on a previous expedition, and fights against the injustice he sees in the uncontrollable forces that surround him. According to poet and critic W. H. Auden, in his essay “The Romantic Use of Symbols,” Melville makes use of a series of gams, social interactions or simple exchanges of information between whaling ships at sea, in order to more clearly present man’s situation as he faces an existence whose meaning he cannot fully grasp (10). Nine such encounters, literal and symbolic meetings, which increase in frequency toward the novel’s climax, can be found as the outward-bound Pequod – a Nantucket whaler – hunts in the Pacific
Ocean. The various approaches to life in a world where the truth is outside human grasp, shown in different attitudes toward the White Whale, and especially used as in contrast or complement to Captain Ahab’s wild arrogance, are expressed in the whaleboats that come into contact with the Pequod .
In the first of these gams, found in chapter 52 of Moby-Dick, “The
Albatross,” the one-sided dialogue between the
Pequod and the Goney , whose

Fred Astaire 2 captain cannot answer monomaniacal Ahab’s query, represents the inability of some men to share their insight into life’s mysteries. The
Goney , a worn and weary
Nantucket-bound whaler ironically named for the albatross, a symbol of good luck, passes close by, yet neither its sailors seated high in the air nor its captain, who strangely drops his trumpet, successfully greet or respond to Ahab’s “Have ye seen the White Whale?” (Melville, 203). As nature intercepts any chance of communication between the ships – the wild wind catches the home-bound captain’s voice and prevents a formal gam, in which instance the captains would board a single ship and the first mates the other –a second ominous sign – fish swim away from the Pequod
’s wake – dissuades any lengthy interactions. Human communication is easily swept away by an enormous and impenetrable outside force, preventing any information from reaching Ahab regarding recent sightings of
Moby-Dick, emphasized in this encounter as a symbol of the power beyond man’s control and understanding.
The second of the nine gams, in chapter 54 of Melville’s Moby-Dick, follows soon after the first, and involves a ship, the Town-Ho, whose crew has encountered and battled the White Whale yet, in a reflection of human suspicion and failure to coorperate, does not warn Ahab. The homeward-bound Town-Ho reveals a terrifying story of mutiny and whale-inflicted death that the top four men on the Pequod never hear: the tale reaches the others only because the savage harpooner Tashtego retells the story, breaking an oath, in his sleep. This intense secrecy on the Town-Ho
’s part represents a second approach to encounters with the great forces which dominate men’s lives; a suspicious, self-imposed silence reigns,

Fred Astaire 3 preventing other men from learning through the Town-Ho
’s experience, which
Ishmael depicts as a fear-inspiring instance of the White Whale acting as a Supreme
Justice on the sea. Where the Goney
’s silence was circumstantially brought about by weather conditions, the Town-Ho
’s focus, as represented in her name, of getting home safely and without further spiritual battle, is a man-made obstacle to honest, straightforward conversation between the ships’ captains. Melville writes the tale as a secretive retelling of a retelling, Ishmael scribbling the account as he told it in
Lima a few years later, making the information all the more haunting. The vivid parallels between the power struggles, bold challenges against natural forces including Moby-Dick, and the devastating results of vengeful action (Steelkilt’s calculated nearness to Radney mimics Ahab’s drive to punish the White Whale) present on both whaling ships never reach the monomaniacal, outward-bound
Ahab, whose similar misfortune awaits.
The Jeroboam , encountered in chapter 71, named for a Biblical king who assigned golden calves to be worshipped instead of the Lord, embodies those people who mistakenly attribute the unknowable forces of the world to earthly objects or claim godly power as earthly. The captain of the Jeroboam , who tells
Ahab of his first mate’s death upon attacking Moby-Dick, is accompanied by
Gabriel, an insane sailor who believes himself to be the forenamed archangel and
“pronounc[es] the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated” (266). Gabriel’s interpretation of Moby-Dick’s power, and his worship of the whale instead of God, provides the reasoning for Melville’s choice in naming the Jeroboam . Melville also reminds the reader that like Ahab, the first mate of the

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Jeroboam sought out Moby-Dick with his harpoon and confidence held high, and this spiritual defiance lead to officer Macey’s death. One evil Biblical king warns another of the consequences of taking God’s affairs into human hands: Melville reveals the eventual punishment that befalls any man who attempts to rise too far above his human limitations, be he monomaniacal, insane, or otherwise. This encounter ends ominously enough, as Gabriel, refusing to take a letter intended for the deceased first mate of the Jeroboam
, predicts that Ahab shall “soon [be] going that way” to the bottom of the sea and beyond (269).
Some time later, in chapter 81 of Moby-Dick, the Pequod encounters the inexperienced, German Jungfrau , a whaler that has never caught a whale, whose ignorant crew goes forth chasing a fin-back, a type of whale that cannot be caught, for Melville, perhaps this is a revelation of the idea that some people look in the wrong places to find the truth. Ahab, desperate to the point of asking a whaler that cannot even provide oil to light its lamps for information regarding the whereabouts of the White Whale, displays his increasing monomania and departure from society, making no distinction between possible sources of information. How could the appropriately named Jungfrau , the Virgin , provide any insight into the deep powerful force occupying Ahab’s mind? Though Ahab’s intellectual powers are more than sufficient to recognize at first glance the German boat’s inexperience, he proceeds almost unthinkingly and interrogates the German captain. The ships part suddenly with a sighting, leaving on a whale chase that is more successful for the
Pequod than the Jungfrau , and Ahab abandons the German sailors as they valiantly chase the fin-back, not recognizing the futility of such an attempt. Melville’s dark

Fred Astaire 5 irony, seen in Ahab’s detection of the futility of the
Jungfrau
’s task without acknowledging the impossibility of his own enterprise, provides a reminder that the men are not as different as Ahab would like to believe.
A second inexperienced boat, the malodorous, unhappy, slow, humorously named French Bouton de Rose , is sniffed before it is seen by the Pequod in chapter
92, and represents those who are distracted in the quest to understand man’s condition in an uncontrollable world. The Rose Bud, despite the fact that two dead, sick whales are tied to her sides, suffers in silence, not making an effort to improve its whaling abilities or learn how to approach the wide ocean’s mysteries. As Stubb discovers, upon boarding the ship and tricking the captain into letting the Pequod obtain valuable ambergris from one of the whales’ bowels, “they worked rather slow and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good humor” (339).
Beyond the anti-French sentiment expressed by Melville’s characterization, the methods of the Rose Bud
’s crew are a reminder for any person who sulkily misallocates his time and effort. Happy-go-lucky Stubb easily takes advantage of their ignorance, encouraging the first mate to convince the French captain to free the whales, all the while maintaining the image of a genuinely helpful neighbor.
The Rose Bud , not surprisingly, has never heard of the White Whale, whose awesome power is out of the French ship’s reach because the Rose Bud is unequipped to contemplate such a whale, burdened as it is trying to profit fully from its past successes. Once the misguided Rose-Bud abandons the valuable sick whale to Stubb, he and his crew greedily dig into the bowels to find the ambergris, an “unctuous and savory” material used in perfume, despite the warnings of the

Fred Astaire 6 screeching birds and Ahab’s impatient desire to continue the hunt for Moby-Dick
(350).
In contrast, the Samuel Enderby , a British ship met in a sixth gam in chapter
100 of Melville’s Moby Dick, has encountered the White whale, yet attributes no special power to that creature of the deep, representative of men who do not recognize that there could be truth outside human grasp. Like Ahab, the ship’s captain has donated a limb to Moby-Dick’s mass, but unlike the Pequod
’s leader, the Englishman would just as soon keep away from the White Whale, arguing,
“ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? […] he’s best left alone” (368). The one-armed captain, head of a ship named for a wealthy
British merchant, calmly and thoroughly recounts his experience to the one-legged monomaniac, who can barely keep still with excitement, but the Englishman does not approach the experience as the spiritual battle that Ahab sees in his own relationship with the whale. When Ahab interjects his excited comments, reveling in the interaction and highlighting his own effect on the whale – claiming credit for the harpoons and scars decorating that wild beast – the Samuel Enderby
’s captain merely continues “good-humoredly” (365). In fact, the Englishman did not recognize that he had lost his arm to the famed Moby-Dick for some time after the attack, but upon being made aware of the identity of his opponent, the Samuel
Enderby
’s captain, looking forward to a safe and profitable return home, forfeited two chances to repeat his attempt at capturing oil from the White Whale. To the
Englishman’s logical and reasoning mind, Moby-Dick is nothing more than an unusually profitable catch, should you fasten him, while to Ahab, as demonstrated

Fred Astaire 7 by his constant interruptions and boiling blood, Moby-Dick has become much more important as the object of his revenge and as the mask of nature’s unfair hand.
Some 15 chapters later, the Pequod comes upon a Nantucket ship, the successful homeward-bound Bachelor , whose happy captain has heard of Moby-
Dick but would not swear by that legend, representative of those who refuse to believe in any great mysterious forces surrounding human existence. The fullyloaded Bachelor , having enjoyed a terrifically profitable season at sea, having lost
“not enough [men] to speak of – two islanders,” does not understand the pain of human existence, and has no reason to feel any frustration toward the forces that have blessed its path thus far (408). Melville’s clever nomenclature, evident in the symbolic names of each ship met by the Pequod , is similarly present in the representation of a bachelor as a carefree and confident boat that holds no responsibility to others, like an unmarried man who cares not about bringing home money or love to a wife and family. Following their conversation, the Bachelor goes “cheerily before the breeze, the other [ship] stubbornly fought against it,” as
Ahab leads the Pequod into battle against the obstacles that prevent man from taking control of his circumstances, while the Bachelor simply accepts and enjoys the good it receives, without considering what might happen should it encounter evil or opposition (408). As Ahab watches the untroubled Bachelor depart, he looks to a vial of sand, thinking of home, and the reader is reminded of the contrast between sea-going and land-locked men: those who never dare to expand their horizons or face the terror of the ocean keep the shallow happiness embodied in the

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Bachelor, but those who go after the frightening forces can never return to that bliss.
In conjunction with Melville’s symbolic naming, the
Rachel – a ship that desperately approaches the Pequod in chapter 128 of Moby-Dick – is a Nantucket whaler searching for its captain’s young son and crying just as the Biblical Rachel, the mother of the Jewish race, lamented the exile of her sons Joseph and Benjamin.
Ahab, excited by the captain’s assertion that the
Rachel had seen the White Whale the previous day, is eager for the gam, and soon learns of the captain’s tragic loss, the whaleboat his son had served having been lost as it fastened Moby-Dick, forcing the innocent Rachel to contemplate the brutal, uncaring forces that can so quickly turn lives upside-down. The devastated captain, known to Ahab, requests the Pequod
’s assistance in searching for the boy, but Ahab, focused only on his battle plans, convinced he can challenge God, and increasingly estranged from societal concerns, denies his friend any aid. “God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go,” Ahab hurriedly tells the Rachel ’s commander before abandoning the woeful ship (436). The Pequod
’s captain, arrogant to the point of favoring self-forgiveness over divine pardon, chooses to fight a symbol of divine power rather than give up forty-eight hours to a humane search he believes to be futile, leaving the Rachel ’s captain “without comfort … weeping for her children because they were not” (436).
The Pequod soon encounters the “miserably misnamed” Delight , a dismal, damaged Nantucket whaler burying men at sea, a representative of those people who seek out the truth about the mortal condition, but whose discovery leads to

Fred Astaire 9 sadness rather than strength (441). The Pequod again meets a ship that battled the
White Whale only a day prior to a gam, and again is presented with warning signs that Ahab refuses to heed: the wrecked whaleboat in plain sight on the Delight
’s deck, the silent crew sewing a body bag around a peer, and the very symbol of death resting quietly on his own ship. Despite the Delight
’s attempt to sway the
Pequod from its sole desire, Ahab turns away quickly, but hears the defeated captain remind the outward-bound ship that the Pequod
, limited by its crew’s humanity, cannot escape the natural forces at work on the sea, saying, “In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial, ye but turn us your taffrail to show us your coffin!” (442).
Melville comments morosely on man’s powerlessness as he presents two brave
Nantucket ships and their unsuccessful attempts to control Moby-Dick and convert the pure creature into lamp oil, an impossible task for such a lowly being as man.
Ahab’s only hope after the numerous warnings presented by the gams rests in
Fedallah – the fortune teller employed by the captain who cannot resist the urge to know the future – the harpoon devilishly prepared for the chase, and Ahab’s godlike confidence in his personal ability.
The Pequod , alone and separated from society during the three-day-long chase for Moby-Dick, fails to kill the White Whale, a task which the Rachel , the
Jeroboam , the Samuel Enderby , the Delight , the Town-Ho , and possibly the Goney have attempted, though with differing degrees of will and understanding. Try as he may, man cannot defeat God’s overpowering plan, and only by chance can he survive at all in this world. Ishmael, by chance the sole survivor out of the
Pequod ’s crew, is saved by a coffin and “the devious-cruising Rachel ,” as Melville

Fred Astaire 10 reveals in an epilogue with a heading from the Book of Job (470). The very ship that Ahab refused to help in a practical manner (his aim to rid the earth of suffering encompassed the ship’s captain, but in a less immediate fashion) comes to the rescue and ensures that a record of the hero’s final days should be kept as both a warning and an inspiration to those who question God’s ways. That record, including the structural, Biblical, symbolic gams, provides a testament to a single battle in man’s uneven struggle, as Ahab alone dares to defiantly face what he sees as evil in the world.

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Works Cited
Auden, W. H. “The Romantic Use of Symbols.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moby-Dick
.” Ed. Michael T. Gilmore. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice
Hall, Inc., 1977. 9-12.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York, New York: W. W. Norton and Company,
1967.
Works Consulted
Barnett, Louise K. “Speech in
Moby-Dick
.” Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick . Ed. Harold
Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 107-118.
Bezanson, Walter E. “Moby-Dick: Work of Art.” Moby-Dick. Eds. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1967. 651-671.
Braswell, William. "The Main Theme of Moby-Dick." Emerson Society Quarterly 28.3
(1962): 15-17.
Sewall, Richard B. “
Moby-Dick as Tragedy.” Moby-Dick. Eds. Harrison Hayford and
Hershel Parker. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1967. 692-702.