Harold Tunmore: A Character Analysis

Overview

Harold Tunmore is the first‑person narrator and central protagonist of Nicholas Binge’s Ascension. A biologist specialising in bird migrations, he is recruited by a shadowy organisation after a colleague’s suicide reveals the existence of an impossible mountain. The novel unfolds through letters Harold writes to his niece Harriet, recording his journey as he leads a scientific expedition up the mountain – a place that distorts time, reality, and the human mind. Beneath his scientific detachment lies a father consumed by guilt over the drowning death of his adopted son Santi, a loss that fractured his marriage and haunts every decision he makes.

Plot Role

Harold serves as the reader’s eyes on the mountain. His professional curiosity and need for answers drive the expedition forward, but his emotional baggage makes him a reluctant leader. He is the one who pieces together the mountain’s nature – proposing the “tesseract” theory of a four‑dimensional hypermountain with two‑dimensional time – and who ultimately survives to tell the story. His role is both detective and victim: he seeks truth but is repeatedly undone by his own repressed emotions, especially his anger.

Motivations and Character Traits

Harold’s primary motivation is guilt. His son Santi drowned while Harold was not present, and he blames himself for failing to protect him. This guilt manifests in a cold, analytical persona that he uses to keep painful memories at bay. He confesses early that “God and I are not on the best of terms,” and that he has buried his love for his wife Naoko deep inside.

He is intellectually arrogant – he uses microexpression analysis to prove John McAllister predicted the future, and he insists on rational explanations until the mountain forces him to accept the irrational. Yet he is also emotionally vulnerable. When Thomas Fung, a geologist and friend, confronts him about pride, Harold feels “a deep well of pain” reopened. His repressed anger eventually explodes when he shakes the dying Thomas, an act that directly causes Thomas’s death and leaves Harold “staring in horror at what I had done.”

Curiosity is another driving trait. Even before the mountain, Harold’s work on bird migrations points to a searching mind. On the mountain, he cannot stop asking questions, even when the answers terrify him.

Chronological Arc

Harold’s arc moves from detached observer to emotionally engaged participant to broken survivor.

• Before the Mountain: He is a widower in spirit – estranged from Naoko, living alone, consumed by work. He avoids his brother Ben and niece Hattie, preferring isolation.
• Recruitment and Base Camp: He arrives as a scientist, using logic to decode the mystery. He sees his wife Naoko for the first time in years and is unable to face her.
• The Climb: He experiences hallucinations, time anomalies, and the death of friends. He begins to confront his guilt, first by attempting reconciliation with Naoko, then by unleashing his anger on Thomas – with fatal results.
• Crisis and Revelation: After Thomas’s death, Harold admits that the mountain has made him angry and that he “liked it.” He then reconnects with Naoko, choosing love over repression. In the cave, he uses his love for her to resist the mountain’s psychic influence.
• Final Stage: Naoko is killed, and Harold is the only one besides Bettan to reach the summit. He witnesses Bettan’s transformation and suicide, then falls through the tesseract back to England. He is institutionalised, unable to communicate, and writes his final undated letter – a reflection on Sisyphus and the meaning of life.

Relationships

Naoko Tanaka

Harold’s estranged wife, the only other survivor of the first expedition. Their marriage was destroyed by Santi’s death. Harold abandoned her when she needed him most, and she accuses him of “running” from his feelings. On the mountain, they slowly reconcile, sharing moments of tenderness. Naoko’s death in Harold’s arms is the emotional climax of his arc. She tells him to forgive himself, a lesson he struggles to learn.

Thomas Fung

A geologist and one of Harold’s few true friends on the team. Thomas is religious but intellectually open, and he serves as Harold’s foil: where Harold is cynical and closed, Thomas is faithful and inquisitive. Their philosophical debates about free will, determinism, and pride expose Harold’s inner turmoil. Thomas’s death – caused by Harold’s shaking him – is the turning point that forces Harold to confront his own darkness.

Santi (deceased)

Harold’s adopted son, a selective mute from Chile. Harold’s memories of taking Santi to art galleries and watching him carve netsuke are his most precious. Santi’s drowning is the wound that drives everything. Harold’s final thought as he falls through the tesseract is of Santi’s smile – he begs to be taken back to that moment.

Sir Roger Bettan

The mountaineer leading the physical climb. Harold despises Bettan’s arrogance, but Thomas points out that Harold sees too much of himself in Bettan. Bettan ultimately volunteers to become the new human species, Homo altior, then shoots himself – an act that Harold finds both horrifying and strangely admirable.

Neil

The alien anthropologist who reveals the mountain is a test for human evolution. Harold is suspicious of Neil from the start. Neil’s manipulation of the team – especially his influence over Naoko – highlights Harold’s paranoia and vulnerability. Neil’s revelation that humanity is an experiment deepens Harold’s existential crisis.

The Warden

The mysterious recruiter. Harold respects his directness but distrusts his secrets. The Warden’s death in the final cave leaves Harold without a guide or adversary.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Themes and Symbol Connections

Harold embodies Ascension’s central theme of absurdism. The epigraph from Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus frames the novel: the struggle toward the heights is enough to fulfill a person. Harold’s final, undated letter echoes this, asking “Is this what Sisyphus feels … ?” and concluding that “the destination is not important, only that you keep moving.” The mountain itself is a Sisyphus-like burden that Harold must climb.

Time, memory, and guilt are inseparable for Harold. The mountain distorts time, allowing him to revisit memories of Santi and Naoko – but it also accelerates his confrontation with guilt. The tesseract scene where he sees his entire life at once mirrors his inability to escape the past.

Alien evolution and the fate of humanity directly involve Harold. He is the scientist who theorises the mountain’s nature, but he also becomes a test subject. His refusal to accept the “seed” of Homo altior (Bettan takes it instead) signals his rejection of transcendence and his choice to remain human – broken but authentic.

Trust, paranoia, and deception run through all of Harold’s relationships. He suspects everyone – the Warden, Palmer, Neil, even Thomas. This paranoia is partly justified (Neil is an alien; the military wants to weaponise the mountain), but it also stems from Harold’s own guilt, which makes him expect betrayal.

Sacrifice and redemption are Harold’s unresolved themes. Naoko’s death is a sacrifice that saves no one, yet it redeems their love. Harold cannot sacrifice himself – he survives by accident. Redemption is absent in a conventional sense; instead, he finds meaning in the ongoing struggle, like Sisyphus.

Five Questions and Answers

1. Why does Harold feel responsible for his son’s death? Harold was not with Santi when the boy drowned. He blames himself for pushing Santi to face his fears (an incident Harold recalls on the mountain) and for being absent as a father. The guilt becomes the emotional bedrock of his character.

2. What does the mountain represent to Harold? It represents both a scientific puzzle and a test of his soul. He calls it a “tesseract” – a four-dimensional object that bends time. Metaphorically, it is his personal hell where he must confront his guilt, his anger, and his love. The summit offers meaning, but not the kind he expects.

3. How does Harold change after Thomas’s death? He shifts from avoidance to raw feeling. He admits he liked being angry and that he killed Thomas. This self-awareness allows him to later embrace his love for Naoko rather than repress it. The guilt from this death, however, never leaves him.

4. Why does Harold write letters to his niece Hattie? Hattie is the only family member he feels safe confiding in. His brother Ben is distant, and his sister Poppy is mentioned only briefly. The letters are a confession and a way to preserve his story. They also echo the novel’s epistolary structure, creating intimacy.

5. Does Harold find redemption at the end? Not in a traditional sense. He survives but is institutionalised, alienated, and unable to communicate. His final reflection on Sisyphus suggests he finds meaning in the act of climbing – the struggle itself – rather than in reaching a goal. Redemption, for Harold, is the choice to keep moving.