The Titanic is a massive ocean liner personified as a young woman or bride decked out in jewels, mirrors, and gilded gear. Originally fashioned by human engineers as a symbol of progress and luxury, she is envisioned as a creature of cleaving wing possessing stature, grace, and hue. The poem portrays her as a fashionable, vulnerable figure subjected to an inescapable destiny far beyond the control of her arrogant human creators.

The Iceberg, also referred to as a Shape of Ice, is personified as the sinister, male-coded mate prepared specifically for the ship. While the Titanic grows in beauty and grace, the iceberg simultaneously forms in secret. It serves as a natural instrument of retribution, designed by cosmic forces to check human hubris.

The Immanent Will, also called the Spinner of the Years, is an otherworldly, supreme force that stirs and urges everything in existence. Functioning much like Clotho or Fate from Greek mythology, this entity acts as the true architect of the disaster. Unimpressed by human vanity, the Will orchestrates the meeting between the ship and the ice to temper Gilded Age arrogance.

These primordial creatures of the deep dwell in the absolute darkness of the Atlantic. They function as a natural audience to the ruined ship, swimming among the waterlogged gear and questioning the presence of human vaingloriousness in their pre-civilization environment.