Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

The next day, Jacob sets out before his dad wakes up. When he goes to find the apple from the day before, he realizes that it’s spoiled so badly it crumbles in his hand. Confused, Jacob goes to the cairn and arrives at the house, where Miss Peregrine pulls him aside before he sees anyone. She scolds him for talking about the future with the other children, who were very excited about the technology Jacob described the previous day. It’s her job to protect them, and they can never be a part of his world. Now half of them are dreaming of cell phones and the other half want to fly on a plane.

Jacob asks why the children can’t leave, and Miss Peregrine explains that if they stay in his world too long, they’ll die very quickly. Jacob realizes that this is what happened to the apple this morning. Miss Peregrine admits that this happened to one of the girls, Charlotte. When Miss Peregrine took a trip to visit one of her fellow ymbrynes, Charlotte wandered out of the loop and a constable discovered her. She was shipped off to a child welfare agency, and in the two days before Miss Peregrine retrieved her, she aged 35 years and was never the same afterwards.

Jacob asks if they can leave the island in their time, in 1940, but Miss Peregrine explains that they could get caught up in the war or encounter normal people who would fear and threaten them. She notes that there are other dangers, but she doesn’t explain what they might be. She tells Jacob to enjoy the morning, and Jacob quickly puts the apple out of his mind while going to find Emma. Hugh informs him that she went on a supply run to the village, so Jacob waits for her under a tree.

Jacob starts to realize that just being with the children is addictive—if he stays too long, he may never want to leave. At the same time, Jacob realizes that the place isn’t “just a heaven but a kind of prison, too.” It might take a person years to notice how addictive it is, and by that point it would be too late to leave.

Jacob dozes off and wakes to find an animated clay soldier nudging his foot. A boy calls out to bring the soldier back, and Jacob returns the figure. The boy introduces himself as Enoch, and Jacob thinks that he looks like a chimney sweep because of the black circles under his eyes and his dirt-stained clothes. Jacob is impressed that the boy made the soldier, which is just one of an army the boy has created. When the first soldier disobeys Enoch, he snaps off one of its legs, causing it to squirm on the ground.

Jacob is a bit disturbed by this display, and Enoch points out that the soldier wouldn’t be alive without him. He takes another soldier and cracks it down the middle, removing a tiny heart from its body. Enoch explains that the heart is from a mouse—his peculiar talent is the ability to take life from one thing and give it to something inanimate or even dead. He wants to train up a massive army. He asks what Jacob can do, and Jacob explains that he can’t do anything special. Enoch asks if he’ll live with them, anyway, and Jacob isn’t sure.

Enoch then asks if Emma told Jacob about a game they play called “Raid the Village,” and Jacob says no. Enoch says that there’s probably a lot that Jacob doesn’t know, because if he knew he wouldn’t want to stay there. When Jacob asks what Enoch means, he smiles wickedly and explains he could get in trouble for saying anything. But he gives Jacob one more crumb: that they couldn’t stop him from going upstairs and looking in the room at the end of the hall, where his friend Victor stays.

Jacob quickly climbs the stairs and reaches the room at the end of the hall, finding a key on top of the door frame to open it. When he enters, he sees Victor lying on a bed behind a curtain, asleep—until Jacob realizes he’s actually dead. Suddenly, Bronwyn enters behind Jacob, explaining that he isn’t supposed to be there. Jacob realizes suddenly that Victor is Bronwyn’s brother; he remembers them both from his grandfather’s pictures. Enoch then appears in the doorway, suggesting he wake Victor up. Bronwyn begs him to, explaining that it’s been ages since they spoke to Victor. Enoch callously pretends to consider it, but then says Victor likes it better where he is. Jacob tells Enoch it’s cruel to toy with Bronwyn, and to trick him into coming to the room.

Jacob then asks how Victor died, but Enoch explains they can’t say. Hearing Miss Peregrine climb the stairs at that moment, Jacob makes a deal: he won’t tell Miss Peregrine that they told him about Victor so long as Enoch tells him about Raid the Village. Jacob shuts the door just as Miss Peregrine reaches the landing, and when she’s gone, Enoch explains that sometimes they smash up the village, chase people, and burn things down—to practice defending themselves. They don’t kill anybody, and if anyone gets hurt, it all goes back to normal the next day. Jacob protests that that’s terrible, and Enoch says Emma thinks so, too. But he assures Jacob that they’re not the ones who are wicked, alluding to some other danger threatening them. He then leaves the room.

Jacob tries to digest all of this information—he wonders what happened to Victor and about the danger that everyone seems to be hinting at. Jacob walks down the hall and hears Miss Peregrine once more, so he ducks into what he soon realizes is Emma’s bedroom. Jacob looks around the neat room until he finds a hatbox that says “Private Correspondence of Emma Bloom” on it, along with the words “Do not open.” Jacob can’t help himself, opening the box and finding old letters between Emma and his grandfather. They are long and sappy, and over time, they grow less frequent. Soon, they become just pictures rather than letters. In the last envelope his grandfather sent, he is holding a little girl—Jacob’s Aunt Susie at around four years old.

Jacob wonders how many letters Emma sent his grandfather after that, and he also realizes quickly that it’s one of Emma’s letters that his dad and Aunt Susie found as kids, making them think he was cheating. Suddenly, Emma comes into the room, furious to find Jacob reading her letters. Emma sorts them back into the box, saying that if he wanted to know about her and Abe, he could have just asked. Jacob says he didn’t want to pry, but as Emma points out, he already has.

Jacob asks Emma what happened between her and his grandfather, and she explains it succinctly: they loved each other, and one day he left because he didn’t want to sit the war out while his people were being killed. He promised to return, but after the war, he said he would lose his mind if he came back. He was going to America to make a home, and then he'd send for Emma—except he never did. Jacob asks if she blames his grandfather for being stuck on the island. Emma denies this, explaining that she just misses him. For a moment, Jacob can see the pain of a grown woman nursing an old—but still raw—wound.

Jacob quickly realizes that he’s just a stand-in for his grandfather; Emma is still heartbroken over Abe. Emma puts her head on Jacob’s shoulder, and Jacob realizes how strange it would be to kiss her, even though he wants to. When Emma’s face moves in towards him, Jacob asks if there’s something between her and Enoch to kill the mood. Emma protests, saying he’s just jealous and a liar.

Jacob then changes the subject to Victor, asking what happened to the boy. He knows there’s something that they’re all not telling him, and his grandfather’s dying wish was for Jacob to know what was going on. Hearing this, Emma agrees to tell him that night, after his dad and Miss Peregrine have gone to sleep. They spend the rest of the day together in the yard before Jacob makes the trip back, alone.

Back in the 21st century, Jacob finds his dad in the pub and makes up stories about his day—but he notices something is off about his dad. His dad explains that another birder showed up who seems very serious about his work, and he’s disappointed that someone else is trying to scoop his book. Jacob assures his dad that he’ll write a better book than the other guy. Internally, Jacob can see his dad falling into a familiar pattern: getting passionate about a project for months until a tiny problem arises and completely derails it, causing him to simply move onto the next one. He’s still trying to find himself and prove that he doesn’t need his wife’s money.

Jacob wonders where the other birder is staying, and his dad speculates that he’s camping to show his hardcore dedication. Jacob asks why his dad isn’t doing the same and immediately regrets making his dad feel bad. Just then, the other birder walks into the pub. He’s wearing a rain hat and dark glasses and has a scruffy beard. He orders a few raw steaks before leaving the way he came. Jacob notes how weird that is, but Jacob’s dad assumes he has a cooking stove. Jacob and his dad then have another tense exchange where Jacob asks why his dad is defending the birder—his “archnemesis”—before his dad asks Jacob to stop making fun of him and goes to the bar.

A few hours later, Jacob’s dad returns to the room very drunk and immediately falls asleep. Seizing the opportunity, Jacob sets out to see Emma. In the dark and the rain, Jacob immediately gets an eerie feeling from the empty town, and he notices the birder watching him with binoculars. Jacob feels like he’s caught, but the man doesn’t move, so Jacob continues on the path.

Passing through the cairn, Jacob finds Emma on the other side. She throws her arms around him and tells him she missed him before leading him to a “special place.” Jacob is nervous, still somewhat uncomfortable with the romance between them, but deep down he really does want to follow her. Emma leads Jacob to a rocky path, where she takes out a pair of snorkeling masks. She tells him to take off his clothes, but Jacob starts to protest that he doesn’t want to swim in the middle of the night.

Emma playfully starts to wrestle with Jacob, trying to get his clothes off and rubbing sand in his face. Jacob returns the favor, and afterwards they’re laughing and exhausted, and Emma points out that now he’s so dirty he has to go in the water to wash off. Jacob relents, diving in the cold water and finding that it’s pleasant after he gets used to it. They swim out to find a canoe, then paddle until they come upon a shipwreck of an allied warship, which is so close to the surface that they can stand on the ship’s hull. They dive down and Jacob sees a tube that reaches far under the surface for them to breathe, and Jacob takes a breath from it.

Emma leads Jacob into the ship’s door in total darkness. Jacob is amazed as they sit floating like astronauts in the silent darkness, passing the breathing tube between each other. Suddenly, small green lights appear and twinkle around them. Emma produces a ball of fire and the lights—which Jacob realizes are fish—move around it, mimicking what she does. They stay there for what feels like hours while Jacob watches in amazement, until Emma motions to Jacob to swim up. Back on the surface, Jacob says that the fish are “beautiful” and “peculiar.”

Emma smiles and puts her hand on Jacob’s knee, and then suddenly they’re kissing. Jacob can’t remember why he ever had doubts about doing so, nor can he remember why he met up with her in the first place. As she pulls away, she tells Jacob that he should stay with them. Jacob thinks about it; he knows he would get bored of the perfect days all the time—as he knows from his mother’s life. Still, he does like Emma and thinks he could stay there for just a little while. But he knows that by the time he would want to leave, it would be too late for him to do so.

Jacob explains that he can’t be Abe for her, but Emma says that Jacob belongs there. Jacob protests, saying that he and Abe aren’t peculiar; otherwise he would have noticed. Emma says that she’s not supposed to tell him this, but ordinary people can’t pass through time loops. Emma says that Abe had a peculiar talent, something almost no one else can do: he could see the monsters.