The White Darkness Characters

Just a Lonely Iceberg Meet Sym, our fourteen-year-old leading lady who's a painfully shy person and would "give anything to fit in" (4.34). She's introverted, though it's hard to know how much of t...

Everyone has that one wacky uncle, right? But "Uncle" Victor takes the crazy uncle schtick to a whole new level. A family friend, not a blood relation, Sym's "Uncle" Victor is a straight-up psychop...

For most of the book, Sym thinks that Sigurd Bruch is a sixteen-year-old Viking from Norway who is traveling in Antarctica with his father Manfred. In fact, "Sigurd" is not from Norway; he's from N...

Manfred Bruch is a con man who poses as a Norwegian film director. Initially, Sym doesn't realize Manfred is connected to Victor in any way. Instead she's just deeply impressed by his charm—and h...

Sym bases her imaginary friend, Titus, on a real-life hero who died during a grueling expedition in Antarctica (source). That Titus, the real one, was an Army officer who was hired to watch the pon...

Sym's dad, Larry Wates, died some time before the events in The White Darkness. Though we only see glimpses of his demise, it's clear it was not a good death. "Mum and I got quite tolerant of Dad a...

Sym's mum, Lillian Wates, has had a rough go of it, to say the least. Her husband was extremely ill before his death, and now that he's gone she's facing serious money problems. A family friend, Vi...

Though Sym and Victor's most important traveling companions are Manfred and Sigurd, there are a number of other travelers with them in Antarctica. "They were, for the most part, bronzed and polishe...

Sym is a lonely girl, but she seems to have at least two friends who aren't imaginary. The first is Maxine, who's really more of a frenemy than a pal. She's more sexually mature than Sym, much to S...