Mrs Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children Character Analysis

Dakota Mueller

Mrs Beard

English 10C, Hour 5

May 9, 2018

Extraordinarily Unknown

“ I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.” Mrs Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Jacob is the main character and protagonist in this story, who thought that the stories his grandfather told him were just fairy tales. Until the stories come true, he is sucked into this new world that changes everything that he thought he knew. This causes Jacobs personality to develop as he learns to comprehend his new world. Jacobs character is shaped by the challenges that he faces causing him to become more aware of who he is and what he is capable of doing

in his life. In the prologue of the book Jacob is describing how his life was early on and were explaining his relationship with his grandfather, his admiration of the man.

“I tried to feel lucky for the safe and unextraordinary one that I had done nothing to deserve.” (Riggs,15). What Jacob is explaining here is that he doesn’t deserve such a safe life, because Jacob doesn’t believe he can sacrifice like his grandfather had just to keep his life. This illustrates that Jacob is insecure about himself and how he has led his life until that point. The first chapter goes on to explain how Jacob’s family owns this store chain and how he wanted to get fired. He leaves his part-time job to go check on his grandfather, the reader is introduced to Ricky and their relationship is explained. “He was, I suppose, my best friend, which is a less pathetic way of saying he was my only friend.” (Riggs, 22). Jacob states how his relationship is with Ricky and goes on to say he’s his only friend. Jacob is very socially awkward. He doesn’t avoid contact with people, but he doesn’t know how to interact with people, causing him to have a relationship with Ricky that isn’t healthy, because it’s the only friend he has. The protagonist got to know the people in this world. Jacob even got to learn more about his late grandfather, “‘He could see the

monsters.’” When Emma told Jacob his grandfather could see the monsters because he was peculiar. Jacob doesn’t know what to think, this completely derails him. He doesn’t understand why his grandfather never told him. Trust is one major challenge Jacob must deal with before changing. Dr. Golan comes and reveals he is a wight Jacob realizes that he had led him to the loop, that he was the one to endanger the peculiars, Jacob said“‘I trusted him once. I won’t make that mistake again.’”(Riggs,205). Knowing that he was the one to endanger the peculiars scared him. He blames himself for leading the wight to the loop. This makes Jacob lose what self confidence he had. Jacob then has to protect the peculiars from the monster. Jacob has many difficulties that he has to face, but he changes because of them. One challenge that affects Jacob would be when the monster that the wight Dr. Golan sends to attack them, Jacob and the rest of the peculiar children are hiding in a shed. Jacob tells Emma, “‘If we make it through this, I’m staying.’”(Riggs,210) Jacob now knows that knowing of this world, of the loop and the children is a responsibility and now he has the courage to stay and help protect everyone. With that courage comes his self confidence,“Now I could defend myself.”(Riggs,212). Jacob now has self confidence something that in the beginning he didn’t have, not having a good relationships with other kids his age put him down. Jacob can move past that now that he has friends that he can trust and rely on. Jacob changes through the challenges he faces he starts out socially awkward, but through the difficulties he develops. He faces so many challenges in the new world that he has discovered, he finds out his grandfather was peculiar and that he was as welled which shocked him as he never believes he was anything but ordinary. He encountered wights and monsters that try to kill peculiars. These difficulties change Jacob to become a responsible, self confident, courageous young man. This allows Jacob to go forward to the future knowing what he is capable of.