74 pages • 2 hours read
Ransom RiggsMiss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 10-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Jacob realizes he has a tough decision to make in the next couple days: “Stay or go—neither option seemed good. How could I possibly stay here and leave behind everything I’d known? But after all I’d learned, how could I go home?” He begins to think the reason his grandfather did not return to the children’s home after the war was that he didn’t want to be a watchdog, and Jacob feels the same way. Jacob questions his ability when he thinks about how his grandfather was a warrior and how he is not.
Martin, the museum curator, goes missing in Cairnholm, and his body is found in the ocean. Jacob learns from his father that the new man in town wears sunglasses at night, and Jacob sees this as a clue that the man is a wight. He goes to Miss Peregrine to warn her and she tells the children that no one can leave the house, not even Jacob. Jacob tells Emma that he is going to leave to protect his father, and she declares that she will come with him.
Enoch suggests they go to Martin’s body and find out how he died. On the way, Enoch gives each of them (Emma, Jacob, and Bronwyn) a heart to carry. Enoch wakes Martin up, and Martin tells Jacob that “my old man” killed him. Before they can understand, the ornithologist comes in, and Martin says that it was him that came to his door to kill him. The wight reveals he has been many different figures in Jacob’s life, most importantly, Dr. Golan. Dr. Golan offers Jacob a third option: to join him and Malthus and explore the world.
Malthus is the creature that killed his grandfather, and Dr. Golan leaves them with the creature, which has cornered them. Bronwyn throws herself at the creature to allow the others a chance to escape. Once she escapes too, she pushes the house over on top of the creature. As they run to the cairn, they split up to give themselves better chances of escaping. Emma goes with Jacob, and they hide in a house full of sheep. The monster comes to the house and Jacob baits the creature to chase him, leaving Emma behind. He kills the creature at the cairn with a pair of shears, and Emma saves him from sinking into the bog.
Jacob insists that they must find Dr. Golan and take his gun away. When they enter the loop, they learn that Dr. Golan came through and took Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet away after locking the children in the basement. Millard was not locked in the basement and was able to follow Dr. Golan, who knew where Emma’s boat was and tried to take it. The waves, however, were too much, and he ended up on the shipwreck.
Together, Millard, Emma, Jacob, and Bronwyn go into the water and swim to the wreck. In the process, Millard is shot. Bronwyn takes the cargo bay door off the shipwreck and uses it as a shield to get them to the lighthouse where Dr. Golan is. She leads them there then charges Dr. Golan and throws the door at him. While Emma and Jacob go after Dr. Golan, Bronwyn attends to Millard’s wounds. Together, Emma and Jacob shake the lighthouse stairs, which causes Dr. Golan to drop his gun.
Atop the lighthouse, they find Dr. Golan injured. He tries to run away, but Emma uses her fire on him. Dr. Golan admits he is capturing the ymbrynes to redo the experiment that originally failed in Siberia. He throws Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet, who are disguised as birds, over the railings into the ocean. Jacob shoots Golan in the throat, and he and Emma run down to get the birds. A U-boat emerges along with another man, who takes one of the birds. They find Miss Peregrine left in the water. The loop needs to be reset, but even back on land, Miss Peregrine does not change back to human form.
Chapter 11 Summary
As they walk back to the house, there are craters all over the island and the loop still is not reset. The house has been destroyed, just as it was outside the loop. “It was easy now to picture what this place would one day become: that sad and desecrated wreck I had first discovered weeks ago. The nightmare house.”
The children decide they must find out where the hollowgast are taking the ymbryne and Horace speaks up, saying he knows where they are going. He draws a picture that looks like a prison, and the children argue about whether they should look for the place Horace drew, look for another ymbryne to help Miss Peregrine, or to go off into the world.
Emma finds a book with all the loops in the world listed in it and when those loops existed. She tells Jacob they will need to leapfrog to get to the loops listed in the book and that it is a dangerous process. She tells him that if he comes with them, the loop will close and he may not be able to return to his time ever again. He decides he will come: “There is nothing for me there….Even if I could go back, I’m not sure I’d want to.”
He tells Emma there is one last thing he must do before he leaves with them, and he returns to the town. Jacob attempts to write a letter to his father, mentioning all the events that have occurred and why he must leave, but he realizes his father wouldn’t believe it. Before he can write another letter, his father comes in and asks him where he was last night. Jacob tells him that he was with his friends and his father gets mad and screams: “YOUR FRIENDS ARE IMAGINARY.” His father asserts that they will be leaving on the next ferry, and Jacob tells him that he will not go.
A knock at the door interrupts them. At the door, Emma and Olive tell Jacob’s father that they’ve come to know Jacob very well and wanted to introduce themselves. His father is overwhelmed and disoriented. Millard is there too and helps Jacob’s father into a chair. Jacob tells his father that he is going on a trip for a while and his father replies: “Just like your grandfather.” His father falls asleep and they leave him a picture of Emma and Abraham along with a note from Emma as proof that the exchange occurred.
Back in the loop, they bury Victor and prepare to leave. The book ends with the children casting off into the ocean with battleships on the horizon.
Chapters 10 – 11 Analysis
Chapters 9 and 10 present another struggle within Jacob—whether to stay with the peculiar children or to leave with his father. Jacob’s ignorance is replaced with knowledge. He understands his grandfather on a level different from ever before. Martin, a symbol of knowledge, disappears from Cairnholm and is found dead in the ocean, suggesting that Jacob’s knowledge may be limited. Sure enough, it is almost too late when Jacob tells Miss Peregrine and the others about the disappearance and death, which signals the appearance of a wight or hollowgast on the island.
Similarly, Jacob’s ignorance of the true role Dr. Golan played in his life comes to light in the presence of Martin’s reanimated corpse, which allows knowledge to be again shared. Dr. Golan was a spy, which endangered Abraham’s life, Jacob’s life, and the lives of the peculiar children. Malthus, the tentacle-mouthed monster, symbolizes Jacob’s fear, which has reemerged with the appearance of a wight and hollowgast on the island, who threaten the people he has come to know and love.
Knowledge is restored upon Dr. Golan’s death, and the children return to the house with Miss Peregrine in tow. Emma is able to locate a book filled with the locations of all the loops in the world, the only way they can follow the people who took Miss Avocet. Knowledge is also imparted on Jacob’s father when Jacob, Emma, Millard, and Olive show him their power and leave him with a picture of Emma and Abraham and a letter written by Emma.
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