Literary Devices in The White Darkness
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Though we pass through a number of cities in the first pages of the book (including London, Paris, and Buenos Aires), our final destination is Antarctica, also known as The Ice. Uncle Victor drags...
Narrator Point of View
Welcome to Antarctica. Today our guide will be Sym, a fourteen-year-old girl who's traveling with her Uncle Victor. When it comes to the terrain, she's a dependable guide; Sym has long been obsesse...
Genre
It almost goes without saying that a book about exploring Antarctica belongs to the adventure genre. The story moves at a quick pace, with the extreme climate (and the baddies) providing a constant...
Tone
Adventure novels are sort of like Tom Cruise action movies: They often sacrifice depth in order to emphasize a fast-paced plot. Not so with The White Darkness, which pulls off a neat trick in succe...
Writing Style
In The White Darkness, author Geraldine McCaughrean juggles a lot of concepts that overlap in interesting ways. She ties Sym's emotional development to the external landscape of Antarctica, finding...
What's Up With the Title?
The phrase "white darkness" describes a paradoxical phenomenon central to the Antarctic landscape. In polar summer, when Sym visits, the sun never sets. That means it's always light, even at nightt...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven John Milton, Paradise LostGeraldine McCaughrean knows nothing kicks off a book quite like quoting Satan. (Well, t...
What's Up With the Ending?
Packed with murder and melancholy, The White Darkness is a bleak sort of book. Still, it manages to end on a hopeful note. Yay.Sym, recently rescued from her plight in Antarctica, is homeward bound...
Tough-o-Meter
The White Darkness has a fairly straightforward plot that's not difficult to follow. Thank goodness for that, because the novel's ideas and trappings are extremely complex. By "trappings" we're tal...
Plot Analysis
Cold OpenThe book begins with every girl's dream: Sym is ripped from her Paris vacation and plopped down into Antarctica. (Hmm, wait a sec—maybe that's just Sym's dream.) Because The White Darkne...
Trivia
Author Geraldine McCaughrean based her character, Titus, on the actor who played historical character in a TV series called The Last Place on Earth—the same show that Sym watches in the story.(So...
Steaminess Rating
At fourteen, Sym is a virgin and not too interested in changing that. Teased by her friends for being frigid, Sym spends the better part of the book worrying that something's wrong with her. She ex...
Allusions
Literary and Philosophical References
The Life of Napoleon by Sir Walter Scott (1.102)Phaeton (3.10)Beowulf (5.21)Theseus (7.1)Hansel and Gretel (11.45)Charlotte and Emily Brontë (11.104)"The Lady...