Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

by

Ransom Riggs

Mortality and Meaning Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Coming of Age and Self-Confidence Theme Icon
Magic, Belonging, and Protection Theme Icon
Family Theme Icon
Mortality and Meaning Theme Icon
Truth vs. Deception Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mortality and Meaning Theme Icon

Mortality takes on a unique quality in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, as the peculiar children in the titular home are trapped in a “time loop,” meaning they experience the same day over and over again and never age. While at first Jacob sees how the place is a kind of paradise, with the children perpetually playing and relaxing, Jacob gradually realizes how maddening this kind of life would be. His grandfather Abe understood this, which is why he chose to leave the time loop and live out a full life, having a family and ultimately dying. Additionally, the antagonists of the novel—the evil hollowgast and wights—search for a way to stop their aging even outside of time loops, but as a result they became soulless, rotting creatures who feed on peculiars. In highlighting the boredom and degradation in immortality, the book suggests that only by living out one’s full life—even knowing it will end—can a person truly find meaning and value in it.

Initially, Jacob recognizes the advantages of never aging, showing how immortality can seem attractive. The children inhabit one perfect day over and over again, playing, putting on magic shows, and enjoying the sun, the beach, and each other. Jacob sees the beauty in this “strange little heaven,” recognizing how happy it makes him, particularly because he and the others have no responsibilities. This establishes how the time loops can be incredibly appealing to inhabit. Moreover, remaining in the time loop comes with a degree of protection for all of the children, because they are invisible in time: only peculiars and wights can pass through the entrance to the time loops, and the entrance is hard to find. In this way, immortality also shields them from conflict with the “common folk” and hides them from the evil beings trying to kill them, giving them another reason why living in the time loop is enticing. They not only get to enjoy a perpetual, idyllic childhood, but they’re also sheltered from life’s difficulties and dangers.

Despite the time loop’s advantages, the book challenges the idea that such a life is truly perfect by showing how boring and restrictive it would be to live the same day over and over and never age. When Jacob considers whether to remain with the children, he worries about the fact that as soon as the children leave the time loop for too long, they will age extremely rapidly, until they become the age that they’re supposed to be (most would be between 80 and 100). He thinks, “Yes, it was beautiful and life was good, but if every day were exactly alike and if the kids really couldn't leave […] then this place wasn't just a heaven but a kind of prison, too.” In this way, Jacob recognizes how confining it would feel to live in the time loop, even though outwardly the time loop might give the appearance of freedom. The children keenly feel the ramifications of this confinement, too. Prior to Jacob’s arrival, one of the children, Victor, said he was “going mad” on the island and decided to leave, until a hollowgast found and killed him. Abe, too, did not want to stay, and instead chose to live in Florida, even though it meant that he eventually did die. In this way, the book suggests that even faced with the very real threat of death, peculiars struggle to live at Miss Peregrine’s because of the oppressive boredom and limitation of not getting to live a full life. Later, when wights threaten to invade the island, Miss Peregrine insists that the children cannot even leave the house, and Jacob notes that the kids begin to “go a little nuts,” with some becoming very mischievous and others moping constantly. Frustrated, Emma and several other children decide to set out to confront the wights and hollows; Emma says that “living like this might just be worse than dying.” In this way, the book emphasizes that a life of confinement isn’t really a meaningful life at all, even if it means avoiding death.

The hollowgast and wights represent another commentary on the problems with immortality, as their quest to never die leads them to a horrific version of life. The hollowgast were once peculiar, but they conducted an experiment with time loops in order to gain true immortality. Their experiment failed: while they did succeed in getting to live for thousands of years, it caused them to transform into hollowgast—invisible, rotting, tentacled shadow creatures whose only desire is to feast on the flesh of other peculiars. Miss Peregrine explains that the hollowgast’s desire to transform themselves into gods went against the very laws of nature and shouldn’t have been attempted. In this way, the book suggests that attempting to avoid death completely is morally wrong. When the hollows do eat enough peculiars, they become wights, who appear human. But wights also have no memories and find no real meaning in life other than to act as scouts to procure peculiars for other hollows. In describing the hollows and wights as “devils” who are “damned” to a soulless life, the book highlights how immortality comes with a life devoid of meaning.

In its conclusion, the book reinforces the idea that life can have meaning only when it accepts death. With Miss Peregrine trapped in her bird form, the time loop cannot reset, and the children are forced to leave the island. But even though they have lost some of their protection, they have also gained a degree of freedom and meaning. Jacob describes how “Some of them claimed they could feel the difference; the air in their lungs was fuller, the race of blood through their veins faster. They felt more vital, more real.” Only through aging and knowing that they won’t live indefinitely—that real change, adventure, and even danger are unavoidable—does life become “more real” and more meaningful to the children.

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Mortality and Meaning Quotes in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Below you will find the important quotes in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children related to the theme of Mortality and Meaning.
Chapter 6 Quotes

Then it was my turn. I was sixteen, I told them. I saw a few kids’ eyes widen. Olive laughed in surprise. It was strange to them that I should be so young, but what was strange to me was how young they seemed. I knew plenty of eighty-year-olds in Florida, and these kids acted nothing like them. It was as if the constance of their lives here, the unvarying days—this perpetual deathless summer—had arrested their emotions as well as their bodies, sealing them in their youth like Peter Pan and his Lost Boys.

Related Characters: Jacob Portman (speaker), Olive
Related Symbols: The Home
Page Number: 170
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Yes, it was beautiful and life was good, but if every day were exactly alike and if the kids really couldn’t leave, as Miss Peregrine had said, then this place wasn’t just a heaven but a kind of prison, too. It was just so hypnotizingly pleasant that it might take a person years to notice, and by then it would be too late; leaving would be too dangerous.

Related Characters: Jacob Portman (speaker), Abe Portman/Jacob’s Grandfather, Miss Alma Peregrine, Victor
Related Symbols: The Home
Page Number: 213
Explanation and Analysis:

I considered the idea. The sun, the feasts, the friends… and the sameness, the perfect identical days. You can get sick of anything if you have too much of it, like all the petty luxuries my mother bought and quickly grew bored with.

But Emma. There was Emma. Maybe it wasn’t so strange, what we could have. Maybe I could stay for a while and love her and then go home. But no. By the time I wanted to leave, it would be too late. She was a siren. I had to be strong.

“It’s him you want, not me. I can’t be him for you.”

She looked away, stung. “That isn’t why you should stay. You belong here, Jacob.”

Related Characters: Jacob Portman (speaker), Emma Bloom/The Girl (speaker), Abe Portman/Jacob’s Grandfather, Jacob’s Dad, Jacob’s Mom
Related Symbols: The Home
Page Number: 244
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

She turned serious. “They don’t know where to find us. That and they can’t enter loops. So we’re safe on the island—but we can’t leave.”

“But Victor did.”

She nodded sadly. “He said he was going mad here. Said he couldn’t stand it any longer. Poor Bronwyn. My Abe left, too, but at least he wasn’t murdered by hollows.”

I forced myself to look at her. “I’m really sorry to have to tell you this…”

“What? Oh no.”

“They convinced me it was wild animals. But if what you’re saying is true, my grandfather was murdered by them, too. The first and only time I saw one was the night he died.”

Related Characters: Jacob Portman (speaker), Emma Bloom/The Girl (speaker), Abe Portman/Jacob’s Grandfather, Bronwyn, Victor
Related Symbols: The Home
Page Number: 247-248
Explanation and Analysis:

Some years ago, around the turn of the last century, a splinter faction emerged among our people—a coterie of disaffected peculiars with dangerous ideas. They believed they had discovered a method by which the function of time loops could be perverted to confer upon the user a kind of immortality; not merely the suspension of aging, but the reversal of it. They spoke of eternal youth enjoyed outside the confines of loops, of jumping back and forth from future to past with impunity, suffering none of the ill effects that have always prevented such recklessness—in other words, of mastering time without being mastered by death.

Related Characters: Miss Alma Peregrine (speaker), Jacob Portman
Related Symbols: The Home
Page Number: 258-259
Explanation and Analysis:

Others might call the state of being they subsequently assumed a kind of living damnation. Weeks later there began a series of attacks upon peculiars by awful creatures who, apart from their shadows, could not be seen except by peculiars like yourself—our very first clashes with the hollowgast. It was some time before we realized that these tentacle-mawed abominations were in fact our wayward brothers, crawled from the smoking crater left behind by their experiment. Rather than becoming gods, they had transformed themselves into devils.

Related Characters: Miss Alma Peregrine (speaker), Jacob Portman, Dr. Golan/The Birder, Enoch
Page Number: 259-260
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Emma stood up and shut the door. “She won’t kill us,” she said, “those things will. And if they don’t, living like this might just be worse than dying. The Bird’s got us cooped up so tight we can hardly breathe, and all because she doesn’t have the spleen to face whatever’s out there!”

Related Characters: Emma Bloom/The Girl (speaker), Jacob Portman, Miss Alma Peregrine, Miss Avocet
Related Symbols: The Home
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

We were quiet but excited. The children hadn’t slept, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at them. It was September fourth, and for the first time in a very long time, the days were moving again. Some of them claimed they could feel the difference; the air in their lungs was fuller, the race of blood through their veins faster. They felt more vital, more real.

Related Characters: Jacob Portman (speaker), Miss Alma Peregrine
Related Symbols: The Home
Page Number: 351
Explanation and Analysis:

In the next boat, I saw Bronwyn wave and raise Miss Peregrine’s camera to her eye. I smiled back. We’d brought none of the old photo albums with us; maybe this would be the first picture in a brand new one. It was strange to think that one day I might have my own stack of yellowed photos to show skeptical grandchildren—and my own fantastic stories to share.

Then Bronwyn lowered the camera and raised her arm, pointing at something beyond us. In the distance, black against the rising sun, a silent procession of battleships punctuated the horizon.

We rowed faster.

Related Characters: Jacob Portman (speaker), Miss Alma Peregrine, Bronwyn, Miss Avocet
Related Symbols: Pictures, The Home
Page Number: 352
Explanation and Analysis: