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Jayline Lopez
Professor Malvin
ENGL 114A
November 22, 2015
Power Corrupts
Throughout the novel, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
clearly demonstrates that when power is possessed it is abused. The corruption of power is part
of our everyday world, in this case it is a lingering matter in the novel. William Ellery Channing
also argues that children and parents hold a certain power over each other, and that absolute
power tends to corrupt human nature (2). It is important to read novels like Miss Peregrine's
Home For Peculiar Children because it teaches us the consequences of the abuse of power.
Ransom Riggs brings to life a various amount of peculiars, people with very special
abilities, into his book. Throughout the novel many of the peculiars possess powers that differ
from one another. These special capabilities cause some peculiars to use them in inconsiderate
manners and to their own convenience. Their inconsiderate actions can cause consequences to
other peculiars as well as normal humans, but of course the peculiars tend to be ignorant to the
consequences that come from their thoughtless behaviors.
We are first presented to Miss Peregrine and the power she maintains over the peculiar
children that reside in her home. The peculiars are confined in a loop that really has no escape
that Miss Peregrine has created. They relive everyday as September 3, 1940. People such as Miss
Peregrine, better known as an ymbryne, "...create temporal loops in which peculiar folk can live
indefinitely" (155). This demonstrates that the peculiars are trapped and their growth is stunted

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ever since September 3, 1940 when the loop was fist created. They remain at a young age, with
the same physical qualities of a young child, but age in accordance of years.
As a result of the loop, the children are deprived of a future and the ability to shape it as
they please. Outside of the loop they are told by Miss Peregrine that the world is only black,
white, and shades of grey. They are taught that there is nothing to look forward too in the real
world. Answering the questions of the wonders the peculiar children had about the real world,
Jacob tells them about how it actually is and realizes that the children were "...starving for new
faces and new stories" (198). These children were amazed by the twenty first century and all of
its technological advances. Miss Peregrine on the other hand was rather subjective and found it
inappropriate for her peculiar children to see the world outside the loop as one they would have a
possibility to live in. She scolds Jacob and expresses that their is no use in acknowledging the
future and describing how wonderful it might be by saying, "Yours is a world they can never be a
part of, Mr. Portman." (210) Miss Peregrine also argues the fact that the peculiars cannot live
anywhere else besides the loop by stating, "This is their home. I have tried to make it as fine a
place as I could. But the plain fact is they cannot leave..." (210). Miss Peregrine is not giving the
children a choice to live in the loop, rather she is forcing them to stay in the loop, depriving them
of a life in the real world. The peculiars remain incapable of growth physically and in maturity
because of the power Miss Peregrine has over them.
Power is taken for granted throughout the novel. Some peculiars exemplify this by going
out of their way to get what they want with their special abilities. Enoch for example has a very
unique ability. His peculiarity consists in his ability to resuscitate dead organisms such as
humans or even give clay figures life. In order to give life to people, he has to go through the

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gruesome process of attaining a heart from a living organism such as an animal. In this manner
he connects the working heart to a non-living object or organism to give them life. The matter
with this is that Enoch is careless of who's life he takes away and who he gives life too. He
describes his peculiarity by stating, "That's what I can do--take the life of one thing and give it to
another, either clay like this or something that used to be alive but ain't anymore... Soon as I
figger out how to train 'em up proper, I'll have a whole army like this. Only they'll be
massive" (217). The power he possesses blinds him of what barbaric actions he is doing. He only
realizes his pleasures and how fun it is to bring objects to life to satisfy his inner childlike self.
The special abilities that peculiars are endowed with may cause outrageous ideas on how
to use them. So much power is in one's bare hands that there is high temptation on satisfying
those ideas without noting what consequences may come in the future. Miss Peregrine describes
a very consequential moment in which peculiars thought they had complete control over their
powers and tried to manipulate time to become immortal. "Some years ago, around the turn of
the last century, a splinter faction emerged among our people--a coterie of disaffected peculiars
with dangerous ideas. They believed they had discovered a method by which the function of time
loops could be perverted to confer upon the user a kind of immortality; not merely the
suspension of aging, but the reversal of it" (258). These peculiars, delirious and determined to
pursue their ambition of immortality did just so, except their goal did not happen. Conducting an
experiment to achieve immortality, these peculiars caused an immense explosion and were not
peculiars anymore. They were better known as hollowgasts, ugly, frightful creatures that preyed
on peculiars. Their ignorance cost them their lives and their peculiarity, but worst of all other

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peculiars were suffering for their actions. Peculiars all over the world were being killed because
of the hollowgast.

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