Sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman has a difficult time growing up—he doesn’t get along with his parents, he has few friends, and he dreads what he feels is his inevitable path: working for his family’s drug store company. He constantly feels anxious, weak, and unremarkable. But when Jacob’s grandfather Abe dies and Jacob visits the magical orphanage where Abe grew up, he begins to come out of his shell. He develops friendships with the “peculiar” children there, bravely puts himself at risk to protect them from evil magical threats, and gains more self-assurance as a result. At the end of the novel, Jacob even chooses to remain with the children rather than returning to live with his parents. As Jacob outgrows his family’s expectations and his own self-doubt, the novel suggests that a key part of coming of age is finding the confidence to determine one’s own path in life.
At the beginning of the novel, Jacob’s childhood is marked by feelings of being inadequate, ordinary, and lacking in self-determination. Growing up, Jacob laments how “ordinary” and “unremarkable” his life is, particularly because he feels he has done “nothing to deserve” the ordinary life that he does have. These phrases suggest that Jacob lacks confidence in himself and his abilities; the fact that he doesn’t feel he deserves it suggests that he has felt little control over his life as well. Jacob only has one friend, Ricky, whom he befriends only because he needs Ricky’s protection from bullies at school. This not only shows that Jacob’s lack of confidence has left him with few friends, but also that he tends to be picked on—things that would reinforce feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness. Jacob is also on a predetermined path set out by his parents: working at his mom’s family’s drug store chain, which he likens to “lock[ing] [him]self in a corporate cage.” Overall, then, Jacob’s teenage years contain an impending sense of doom and entrapment, suggesting that he doesn’t just lack confidence, but also lacks a sense of hope or agency for his future.
After Jacob’s grandfather dies, Jacob struggles even more to find confidence in himself, self-doubt plaguing him now that he has lost his closest mentor. Jacob’s grandfather dies in Jacob’s arms, and shortly after, Jacob begins having nightmares about the monster that he believes killed his grandfather. In the nightmares, Jacob’s grandfather is frantically trying to get away from the monster and buy a gun from a vending machine, while all Jacob has is a pink plastic BB gun that can’t seem to fire. This dream reflects Jacob’s insecurities about being unable to protect himself, like a weak, helpless child. Even as Jacob learns more and more about his peculiar abilities, Jacob’s self-doubt recurs in a voice telling him that he’s not good enough to protect himself the way his grandfather could. The voice says things like, “You're weak” and “You're a loser.” Again, Jacob’s inner voice stifles his self-confidence, and with his grandfather gone, he feels even more unprotected and helpless about his future.
However, as Jacob forges friendships and increasingly makes decisions about his own future, the story illustrates that a crucial part of growing up lies in having the confidence to determine one’s own path. Jacob travels to Cairnholm Island, where his grandfather grew up, and meets the magical children who have been frozen in a time loop for over seventy years. He takes the initiative to get to know them and even starts a relationship with a girl named Emma—for example, by picking her up to help her reach an apple on a tree. This demonstrates how Jacob is beginning to gain confidence to make friends and foster relationships in a way he never has before. Towards the end of the book, Jacob kills the monster that plagued his nightmares. He thinks, “All the time I'd spent being afraid, I never dreamed I could actually kill one.” This is a major shift for Jacob, as he matures in realizing that he can kill the monsters of his childhood, and as a result, he gains even more confidence in himself. This idea is represented most literally when Jacob stands up to Dr. Golan, his psychiatrist, who actually turns out to be another evil being called a wight. When Jacob is able to get Dr. Golan’s gun away from him, Dr. Golan at first makes fun of Jacob. Knowing Jacob’s old nightmares, Dr. Golan taunts Jacob that he would never have the confidence to shoot him. But when Jacob sees Dr. Golan going after Emma, he is able to find it within himself to shoot and kill Dr. Golan. With this action, Jacob conquers his old insecurities; he completes his journey of growing up. Finally, rather than return to his previous, ordinary life with his parents, Jacob instead chooses to explore the unknown with his new friends, leading them as they seek out a new home. This ending underscores Jacob’s journey from anxious, self-doubting kid to self-assured young adult. His coming-of-age tale is marked by a new confidence and the ability to determine the life he wants to live.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Coming of Age and Self-Confidence ThemeTracker
Coming of Age and Self-Confidence Quotes in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
When I was six I decided that my only chance of having a life half as exciting as Grandpa Portman’s was to become an explorer. He encouraged me by spending afternoons at my side hunched over maps of the world, plotting imaginary expeditions with trails of red pushpins and telling me about the fantastic places I would discover one day. At home I made my ambitions known by parading around with a cardboard tube held to my eye, shouting, “Land ho!” and “Prepare a landing party!” until my parents shooed me outside. I think they worried that my grandfather would infect me with some incurable dreaminess from which I’d never recover—that these fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical ambitions—so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I’d been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.
I’m crouched in the corner of my grandfather’s bedroom, amber dusk-light retreating from the windows, pointing a pink plastic BB rifle at the door. An enormous glowing vending machine looms where the bed should be, filled not with candy but rows of razor-sharp tactical knives and armor-piercing pistols. My grandfather’s there in an old British army uniform, feeding the machine dollar bills, but it takes a lot to buy a gun and we’re running out of time. Finally, a .45 spins toward the glass, but before it falls it gets stuck. He swears in Yiddish, kicks the machine, then kneels down and reaches inside to try and grab it, but his arm gets caught. That’s when they come, their long black tongues slithering up the windows, looking for a way in. I point the BB gun at them and pull the trigger, but nothing happens.
For the first time in months, I fell into a deep, nightmare-free slumber. I dreamed instead about my grandfather as a boy, about his first night here, a stranger in a strange land, under a strange roof, owing his life to people who spoke a strange tongue. When I awoke, sun streaming through my window, I realized it wasn’t just my grandfather’s life that Miss Peregrine had saved, but mine, too, and my father’s. Today, with any luck, I would finally get to thank her.
I couldn’t stop myself, so I thought about all the bad things and I fed it and fed it until I was crying so hard I had to gasp for breath between sobs. I thought about how my great-grandparents had starved to death. I thought about their wasted bodies being fed to incinerators because people they didn’t know hated them. I thought about how the children who lived in this house had been burned up and blown apart because a pilot who didn’t care pushed a button. I thought about how my grandfather’s family had been taken from him, and how because of that my dad grew up feeling like he didn’t have a dad, and now I had acute stress and nightmares and was sitting alone in a falling-down house and crying hot, stupid tears all over my shirt. All because of a seventy-year-old hurt that had somehow been passed down to me like some poisonous heirloom, and monsters I couldn’t fight because they were all dead, beyond killing or punishing or any kind of reckoning. At least my grandfather had been able to join the army and go fight them. What could I do?
Falling asleep, my thoughts drifted to the peculiar children and the first question they’d asked after Miss Peregrine had introduced me: Is Jacob going to stay with us? At the time I’d thought, Of course not. But why not? If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.
I wanted to explain everything, and for him to tell me he understood and offer some tidbit of parental advice. I wanted, in that moment, for everything to go back to the way it had been before we came here; before I ever found that letter from Miss Peregrine, back when I was just a sort-of-normal messed-up rich kid in the suburbs. Instead, I sat next to my dad for awhile and talked about nothing, and I tried to remember what my life had been like in that unfathomably distant era that was four weeks ago, or imagine what it might be like four weeks from now—but I couldn’t. Eventually we ran out of nothing to talk about, and I excused myself and went upstairs to be alone.
Are you joking? You couldn’t even protect yourself in high school! You had to bribe that redneck to be your bodyguard. And you’d wet your pants if you so much as pointed a real gun at anyone.
No, I wouldn’t.
You’re weak. You’re a loser. That’s why he never told you who you really were. He knew you couldn’t handle it.
Shut up. Shut up.
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!”
I killed it, I thought. I really killed it. All the time I’d spent being afraid, I never dreamed I could actually kill one!
It made me feel powerful. Now I could defend myself. I knew I’d never be as strong as my grandfather, but I wasn’t a gutless weakling, either. I could kill them.
I tested out the words. “It’s dead. I killed it.”
I laughed. Emma hugged me, pressing her cheek against mine. “I know he would’ve been proud of you,” she said.
“Is this what you want?” Golan shouted. “Go ahead, burn me! The birds will burn, too! Shoot me and I’ll throw them over the side!”
“Not if I shoot you in the head!”
He laughed. “You couldn’t fire a gun if you wanted to. You forget, I’m intimately familiar with your poor, fragile psyche. It’d give you nightmares.”
I tried to imagine it: curling my finger around the trigger and squeezing; the recoil and the awful report. What was so hard about that? Why did my hand shake just thinking about it? How many wights had my grandfather killed? Dozens? Hundreds? If he were here instead of me, Golan would be dead already, laid out while he’d been squatting against the rail in a daze. It was an opportunity I’d already wasted; a split-second of gutless indecision that might’ve cost the ymbrynes their lives.
I decided I was done lying. “I’m fine, Dad. I was with my friends. “
It was like I’d pulled the pin on a grenade.
“YOUR FRIENDS ARE IMAGINARY!” he shouted. He came toward me, his face turning red. “I wish your mother and I had never let that crackpot therapist talk us into bringing you out here, because it has been an unmitigated disaster. You just lied to me for the last time! Now get in your room and start packing. We’re on the next ferry!” […]
I wondered for a moment if I would have to run from him. I pictured my dad holding me down, calling for help, loading me onto the ferry with my arms locked in a straightjacket.
“I’m not coming with you,” I said.
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.
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.
