Throughout the book, characters often lie or withhold the whole truth from one another: Jacob’s grandfather doesn’t tell Jacob that they both possess magical abilities, Jacob often lies to his dad about his whereabouts when he’s on Cairnholm Island, and Miss Peregrine and the children often hide the truth about the dangers threatening them at the magical children’s home. Even when lies are meant to protect people, they often have severe consequences like breaking trust or putting people in danger anyway. To make matters worse, the book’s antagonists—evil beings called hollowgast and wights—often deceive and manipulate others to fulfill their plans to kill all peculiar people. More subtly, a habit of lying, or simply withholding the full truth, can make it harder for others to accept reality in the long run, like when Jacob doesn’t believe his grandfather’s stories about Miss Peregrine’s. It is only when full truths come to light that characters are able to find peace with and build trust in each other. In this way, the book suggests that sometimes lying seems necessary to avoid conflict or protect others, but that ultimately there is greater value and virtue in telling the truth directly.
Even though some characters have good reasons for lying or want to protect others, ultimately the book illustrates how damaging those lies can be. When Jacob and his dad travel to Cairnholm island, Jacob constantly lies about where he’s going and who he’s with—to the point where it becomes “depressingly easy.” He does this because he doesn’t want his dad to worry about his being alone there, but it comes at the cost of his dad trusting him. Later in the book, when Jacob is deciding whether to stay with the peculiar children or go back to Florida with his parents, he wants to explain everything to his dad, but he feels like he can’t. Talking to his dad is “out of the question” because he worries that his dad will only think that he’s lying or saying something crazy. In this way, the book demonstrates that lying—even for good reason—is very damaging to relationships in the long run. Meanwhile, Miss Peregrine lies to Jacob and withholds information about the dangers on Cairnholm Island because she worries that telling him the full truth about what the children face might scare Jacob away. However, because he doesn’t know the kind of threats he faces, he only narrowly escapes the hollows and wights by sheer luck. Even though her lies are meant to protect Jacob, they actually have the opposite effect by placing him in greater danger.
The book also emphasizes that a habit of telling lies or partial truths can be harmful because it makes people less willing or able to accept the whole truth later on. As he grows up, Jacob doubts his grandfather’s stories about the magical children’s home and the monsters that his grandfather says are after him. However, when Jacob is 15 years old and his grandfather starts panicking about the monsters coming to find him again, Jacob and his dad don’t believe Abe and instead simply think that he is mentally declining in his old age. Because Abe never told Jacob the full story about their status as peculiars, Jacob dismisses Abe’s fears, leaving Abe even more vulnerable to the hollowgast. Later, after Abe is killed by the monster, Jacob thinks over and over, “If only I’d believed him,” illustrating how perceived lies ended up having tangible—even dire—consequences for Abe. Jacob also struggles to tell his dad the truth because he knows he’s undermined his own credibility so frequently. When he finally decides to tell the truth about what he’s been up to on Cairnholm—explaining that he made friends on the other side of the island—Jacob’s dad grows furious with him and yells at him, thinking that Jacob is still lying about what he’s been doing. This illustrates another problematic aspect of lying—habitual lying makes the truth seem less believable, leading to more conflict.
In the end, the book illustrates how characters are only able to make peace with or support each other when the full truth is revealed, demonstrating the value in being honest. Knowing the full truth about Miss Peregrine’s home, the hollowgast, the wights, and Jacob’s own peculiar identity is incredibly valuable to Jacob. It allows him to recognize that he isn’t going crazy in seeing monsters; moreover, it makes him more willing and able to protect the other children from the hollowgast. Being completely open and honest about the threats a person faces, then, is much more beneficial to everyone than lying in order to protect them. Similarly, when Jacob finally accepts his grandfather’s stories about Miss Peregrine’s and discovers the truth of his grandfather’s history, he is able to make peace with his grandfather’s partial truths. He is “moved by this new idea of [his] grandfather, not as a paranoiac gun nut or a secretive philanderer or a man who wasn't there for his family, but as a wandering knight who risked his life for others.” Only in understanding the full truth—even after his grandfather’s death—is Jacob able to fully appreciate his grandfather’s sacrifices and heroism, underscoring the truth’s value. Jacob finds a degree of closure by telling his dad the truth as well. At the end of the book, Jacob comes fully clean to his dad about Miss Peregrine’s home; Emma, Olive, and Millard even show up to prove that Jacob wasn’t lying about making friends. While Jacob’s dad thinks he might be dreaming, he and Jacob are able to reconcile to an extent—something that only the full truth could bring about.
Finally, some of the characters who lie most frequently include the wights, like Jacob’s psychiatrist, Dr. Golan. Dr. Golan has taken on many different personas over the course of Jacob’s life; this deception enables him to kill Abe and to track down the other peculiar children through Jacob. Because deception is a major tool for the wights, the book reiterates that lying is villainous and manipulative—it serves evil causes, not virtuous ones.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Truth vs. Deception ThemeTracker
Truth vs. Deception 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 guess he’d seen it coming—I had to grow out of them eventually—but he dropped the whole thing so quickly it left me feeling like I’d been lied to. I couldn’t understand why he’d made up all that stuff, tricked me into believing that extraordinary things were possible when they weren’t. It wasn’t until a few years later that my dad explained it to me: Grandpa had told him some of the same stories when he was a kid, and they weren’t lies, exactly, but exaggerated versions of the truth—because the story of Grandpa Portman’s childhood wasn’t a fairy tale at all. It was a horror story.
It was true, of course, what my dad had said: I did worship my grandfather. There were things about him that I needed to be true, and his being an adulterer was not one of them. When I was a kid, Grandpa Portman’s fantastic stories meant it was possible to live a magical life. Even after I stopped believing them, there was still something magical about my grandfather. To have endured all the horrors he did, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that the honorable and good and brave person I knew him to be—that was magical. So I couldn’t believe he was a liar and a cheater and a bad father. Because if Grandpa Portman wasn’t honorable and good, I wasn’t sure anyone could be.
I was moved by this new idea of my grandfather, not as a paranoiac gun nut or a secretive philanderer or a man who wasn’t there for his family, but as a wandering knight who risked his life for others, living out of cars and cheap motels, stalking lethal shadows, coming home shy a few bullets and marked with bruises he could never quite explain and nightmares he couldn’t talk about. For his many sacrifices, he received only scorn and suspicion from those he loved.
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.
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.
