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Barbara Gonzalez
English 114A: MW 12:30pm
Professor Malvin
November 23, 2015
Horror and Monsters
Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, is about a young man
named Jacob who finds himself in a great deal of mysteries followed by many adventures.
Jacobs adventures started with his grandfathers stories about WWII and the orphanage in which
he spent most of his days during the war. He told stories about monsters from WWII and stories
about the childrens special powers, such as invisible boys, super strong girls, a boy with bees
living inside him, he even showed Jacob photos of the peculiar children. Throughout Jacobs
childhood, he always believed his grandpas stores until one day he stopped, just like most
children stop believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy because they are just tall tales. All of Mr.
Portmans life, he spent it running away from these monsters of the World War II. One day
grandpa Portman began to freak out about monsters coming after him and calls Jacob at work.
Jacob was fifteen when he goes off to check on his grandfather when he finds him dying on the
floor, outside near his house. His last words to Jacob were go to the island. Find the bird in the
loop on Sept. 3, 1940 (58). Soon after he dies in Jacobs arms and moments later Jacobs comes
face to face with the monster that killed his grandfather. This monster was from the stories that
grandpa Portman would tell Jacob. The monster had tentacles on his face and seemed so unreal.
No one believed Jacob about what he saw, let alone that a monster had killed his grandfather.
After this traumatic event Jacob falls into depression and has the same horrific nightmare every

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night. Jacobs psychiatrist, Dr. Golan suggested that Jacob go visit the island and the home in
which his grandfather was raised in and try to find answers of his last dying words. At first these
so called monsters that Mr. Portman was always talking about were understood to be the Nazis
that Mr. Portman fought in World War II and that he was running away from. Riggs depicts the
super natural as a mean of explaining horrific events as a way of coping with or excusing the
tragedies. This is very important throughout the book because the audience tries to decipher back
and forth about what is real or unreal in the novel.
Riggs uses the historical events of World War II, such as expressing the Nazis as
monsters that pursue Mr. Portman as these terrifying monsters lurking for their victims. The use
of historical events allows the readers to relate to the event in the novel and relate the monster
depicted in the story. In this case the historical events used in the novel is the World War II and
the bombing as well as the pursuit of people who are different from Hitlers ideology of the
perfect human and the monsters depicted in the story would be the Nazis who inhumanly
murdered and tortured many innocent people without reasoning or feeling. Every time he
describes a monster, he tossed in some lurid new detail. They stank like putrefying trash; they
were invisible except for their shadows; a pack of squirming tentacles lurked inside their
mouths (6). This quote demonstrates the way these monsters were described by Mr. Portman in
order to help Jacob fathom some type of excuse towards the Nazis such as: they arent really
people, but they are monsters. Jacob believed his grandfather had clear traumatic memories
causing terrifying nightmares for himself and Jacob, in result of the terrible acts the Nazis did.
The only way for Mr. Portman to cope with it was by excusing them as monsters and not
humans. But these werent the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a
seven year old might be able to wrap his mind aroundthey were the monsters with human

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faces, in crisps uniforms, marching in lock step, so banal you dont recognize the for what they
are until it is too late (34). In this quote we clearly see that Riggs tries communicating Mr.
Portmans knowledge of what the truth is, but the truth itself is unbearable that he feels he must
disguise it for Jacobs understanding or imagination.
In order to make oneself more comfortable with or about a topic/issue, we as humans
create stories behind an idea to make it easier to accept or understand. Just like Riggs used in
Grandpa Portmans stories about the peculiars and the monsters that pursue them, they are
symbols of what was truly happening in our historical events. Benjamin Radford, editor of
Skeptical Inquirer Magazine stated something that goes hand in hand with the message that
Riggs gets across from his novel about the disappointing facts of World War II. Humans first
started believing in the super natural because they were trying to understand things they couldnt
explain (Radford). In this Radfords quote, he explains clearly the type of idealism expressed in
Riggs novel by Grandpa Portman. The horrible things that were done to people during World
War II were unexplainable and unimaginable for a human being to commit, therefore the only
way people could wrap their minds around it would be simply by exaggerating the truth or ignore
that they were human by just calling them monsters. The people led by Hitler were somehow
manipulated to such an extent and their actions were so inhuman that they were no longer to be
considered humans, but more like monsters. We cling to our fairy tale until the price for
believing them becomes too high (Riggs). In the novel we see that Jacob stops believing his
grandfathers stories and starts to think of them as just that, nothing but stories/fairy tales.
However, in this quote we see that believing in these stories can only last so long until the
historical facts begin to surface.

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Riggs uses a sense of horror in his novel in order to keep the people wanting more. With
some exaggerations and a few fibs, it keeps the audience entertained as well as comfortable with
the truthful horror that hides behind the illusive and generated horror. We also reestablish our
feelings of essentials normality; the horror movie is innately conservative, even reactionary
(King522). In this quote King is basically telling us that we express what we feel therefore when
we feel horror and fear we turn those feelings into characters of our own thoughts that we cannot
explain. One critic suggested that pro football has become the voyeurs version of the public
lynching (King 522). In this other quote we are given the perfect example of an everyday
normal event which is symbolically used and manipulated in order to excuse monstrous
historical events. What we as humans tend to do is, invent things out of the ordinary to make
ourselves feel better, or twist the past, present and future for excusing what we have done to
ourselves. That we see in our everyday lives, however that is not the case. Us as humans
recognize the issues we have and the decisions we have made as a human race and because we
are aware of that, we try excusing ourselves or covering for ourselves the most disappointing
mistakes in history.
In Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children, Riggs uses horror and monsters as a
mean of excusing humans of doing inhuman things. In Riggs novel the main character Jacob,
grew up listening to his Grandfather Portmans stories about monsters and the peculiar children.
His grandfather fought in World War II and was raised in an orphanage which was Miss
Peregrines home for peculiar children. In Riggs novel, the monsters which were actually the
Nazis were going after the peculiar children and Mr. Portman spent his entire life fighting them
and running away from them. Mr. Portman has a traumatic history of events that he passes onto
Jacob with his stories about the war and the monsters that were chasing after all the peculiars and

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innocent people. Mr. Portman filled Jacobs head with fairy tales and tall tales about his past life
that Jacob no longer believed his stories anymore. Just like all children stop believing in
childhood dreams; Jacob stopped believing his grandfather and his stories. It came down to a
huge twist in Jacobs life that he witnessed the death of his grandfather and came face to face
with the monster that had killed him. At this point Jacob remembered the monsters in the stories
that his grandfather used to tell, and he recognized that monster from one of his stories. With all
that had happened and from the moment of that incident it became hard to tell what was real and
unreal? Now Jacob was able to reconnect everything his grandfather had told him. Riggs uses the
death of Jacobs grandfather as a symbolic mean of the many deaths that happened in World War
II. The monster that had killed Mr. Portman symbolized the Nazis that hunted down all peculiars
or innocent people from the war. The peculiars symbolized the diversity of people who were
murdered and who were tortured during the war by the Nazis. Here Riggs uses these characters
to help the audience understand what us as humans do in order to cope with or excuse the
madness of our human race. We enjoy the feeling of horror once in a while to condition ourselves
and make ourselves believe that these horrible things are normal. We began to believe in the
supernatural in order to give ourselves a reason as to why things happen when in reality there is
no reason why people go mad or cannot think for themselves and commit unbearable crimes
against our nature.

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Works Cited
Riggs, Ransom, John J. McGurk, and Doogie Horner. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar
Children. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk, 2011. Print.
Britt, Robert Roy. "Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe." LiveScience. TechMedia
Network, 18 Aug. 2008. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.
Rosa, Alfred F., Paul A. Eschholz, and Brian Kent. Models for Writers: Short Essays for
Composition. 12th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. Print.

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Evaluation letter:
Dear Professor Malvin:
Throughout progression three I have learned a lot. I enjoyed getting more practice on
writing an annotated bibliography which not only helped as a future reference for other classes,
but also in the making of my essay. In the process of writing my essay I learned how to pick out
topics from a reading and seeing the bigger picture from it, rather than just having an adventure
with a novel. I believe I did quite well in this essay and I fee rather confident that I wont get a
bad score on it, however I am aware that I could have and I should have put more though and
effort into it. The topic of my essay was very interesting and fun, therefore I know that I could
definitely could have done better of I just tried to enjoy it instead of viewing it as just an
assignment. I found every single exercise very helpful for the writing of my essay and I
appreciate all the steps you have created for us to become better writers.