Chapter 53 - The Gam Practice Quiz — Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
by Herman Melville — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: Chapter 53 - The Gam
What is a gam?
A social meeting of two or more whaling ships on a cruising ground, where crews exchange visits, with the two captains on one ship and the two chief mates on the other.
Why does Ahab refuse to board the whaler they hailed?
Ahab will not socialize with any captain who cannot provide information about the White Whale. He cares only about gathering intelligence on Moby Dick.
What analogy does Ishmael draw to explain why whalers are sociable?
He compares them to strangers meeting in desolate places on land, like the Pine Barrens of New York or Salisbury Plain in England, where even reserved travelers would stop to exchange news.
What practical items do whaling ships exchange during a gam?
Letters from home, newspapers (sometimes a year or two more recent), and whaling intelligence about whale movements on the cruising grounds.
How do merchant ships behave when they meet at sea?
They often pass without a word of recognition, "mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway."
How do men-of-war behave when they meet at sea?
They go through "such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns" that there seems to be no genuine warmth or brotherly love.
How do slave ships behave when they meet at sea?
They are in "such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible."
What do pirates ask each other when they meet?
"How many skulls?" — the same way whalers hail with "How many barrels?" After answering, pirates steer apart because they are "infernal villains on both sides."
How does Melville describe the character of the whaler?
As "godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy."
Why can the word "gam" not be found in dictionaries?
Neither Dr. Johnson nor Noah Webster included it, despite the word being in constant use among some fifteen thousand American whalemen for many years.
What attitude do English whalers sometimes show toward American whalers?
They affect "a kind of metropolitan superiority," regarding the Nantucketer as "a sort of sea-peasant."
How does Melville deflate English whalers' sense of superiority?
He notes that "the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years."
Why must a whaling captain stand in the boat during a gam?
The whaleboat has no stern seat and no tiller. Unlike other ships' boats, there is nowhere for the captain to sit.
What is the captain wedged between while standing in the whaleboat?
The immense projecting steering oar hitting him in the small of his back, and the after-oar rapping his knees in front.
Why does the standing captain keep his hands in his trouser pockets?
As a token of his "entire, buoyant self-command" and dignity — though Melville jokes that since his hands are generally very large and heavy, "he carries them there for ballast."
What desperate measure have some captains resorted to in a sudden squall?
Seizing hold of the nearest oarsman's hair "and hold on there like grim death."
Who serves as steersman of the captain's boat during a gam?
The boat steerer (harpooneer), since a complete boat's crew must leave the ship and the harpooneer is among them.
What is the ostensible reason Ahab gives for not boarding the other whaler?
The wind and sea betokened storms, making it dangerous to transfer between ships.
What does Ishmael say all other seamen feel toward whalers?
A scornful feeling — they grin at the gam and make derisive comments about "spouters" and "blubber-boilers."
What structural purpose does Chapter 53 serve in Moby-Dick?
It is a cetological/expository chapter that defines the gam tradition before a series of gam encounters with other ships that advance the plot in subsequent chapters.