The Dreamer
The subtitle of “The Berg” is “A Dream,” which makes the speaker a man describing what he witnessed in a dream. Within the actual narrative, however, is no mention of the story he is telling being a dream. His story would seem not to be a documentation of an actual event because what he is describing is a ship seeming to steer into a collision with an iceberg on purpose and the subsequent sinking of the ship. He is not describing this scene from the standpoint of being on that ship, but from some point external to the ship and the iceberg.
The Iceberg
The bulk of the poem is given to description of the iceberg; of the ship that runs into it and sinks very little is said. As for passengers or crew, for all that is known from the narrative it might as well have been a ghost ship. The iceberg is given by the narrator a personality: it is strong and powerful, but aloof and indifferent to the misery it may cause those who come into conflict with it.
