Character Clues

Character Analysis

Speech and Dialogue

Speech and dialogue are hugely important in The White Darkness. Sym, who has trouble expressing herself in conversation with others, has richly imagined conversations… with herself (through her imaginary friend, Titus). Where Sym is shy and awkward, Titus is wry and candid. He's everything Sym is not—except for the fact that they're the same person. Weird, right?

McCaughrean also uses speech patterns as clues to characters' personalities. Victor's manner of speaking always sounds over-excited and off-kilter ("Think on, lass. New beginnings. Let's start the way we mean to go on!" (4.26) is a prime example), which makes sense since he's generally over-excited and off-kilter, too.

Manfred and Sigurd fake their Norwegian accents, and Sym notices when they slip—or at least Titus does, pointing out a "certain incontinuity of dialect" (12.66). Later, Sym observes that she's "never once heard Sigurd and Manfred talk to each other in anything other than English" (13.33). These clues are red flags that Sym willfully ignores, but they're also clues to careful readers about the true nature of the characters Sym's dealing with.

Sex and Love

The author conveys a lot of important information through characters' attitudes toward sex and love. For example, Sigurd, a con man, makes advances on Sym as a means to an end. It's a drawn out deception, too, making it clear he's willing to take his time to succeed in his deception.

Over the course of the book, Sym's attitude toward the opposite sex changes, which shows us that she has matured. At the beginning of the story, she finds sex both fascinating and repulsive, so she creates Titus, an imaginary boyfriend, as a safe outlet for those feelings: "I was happy to stick to imagining" (1.15), she explains. By the end of the book, though, Sym sees romantic possibility in the real world, in Mike, with whom she flirts in the final scene. Is she ready to date? Not quite; but she's ready to think about real, live people which is a definite shift.

Actions

In The White Darkness, appearances can be deceiving—Victor presents himself as a generous family friend when he's actually a manipulative murderer, for instance—but actions never lie. Manfred and Sigurd Bruch, con men who are posing as father and son, often break character. Sym notices… or at least Titus does: "May I make bold to observe: Sigurd the Golden One calls his father Mr. Bruch?" (11.109),he asks Sym, to which she replies, "You think I didn't notice?" (11.110) Sym sees the signs of their treachery; she just doesn't want to.