Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Hello? I know you are near; why can I not see you? There are many gothic elements prominent in numerous short stories; for example, psychological issues, spirits, and ambiguity. The elements formerly listed are prevalent in Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, and “Don’t Ask Jack” by Neil Gaiman. Notably, in Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, psychological issues are prevalent throughout the book; both the grandpa and Jacob conjure up images of people to help solve problems within themselves. Jacob’s brain “had conjured [her] up at the very moment [he] was looking at,” (Riggs 125) pictures of the girl, while inside his grandpa’s childhood home. Since Jacob was skeptical about the loss of his grandfather, it only made things worse for him psychologically. Before long, he even lost all his real friends he had and never came to realize that the all his new “friends were imaginary” (Riggs 344). Indeed, in “The Devil and Tom Walker,” the gothic element of spirits/ghosts are common throughout the short story. The devil is “commonly called Old Scratch” (Irving 325) which is the spirit that controls Tom and all his actions.The devil convinces Tom to sell his soul, in order to possibly make a profit in return. Tom’s ways to become rich

Jack lies under all the other toys “holding his secrets… waiting for the children” (Gaiman 3) to come back to play with him. The ambiguity of the short story leaves the reader wondering: how long Jack will wait before the children will return- or if they ever will. Gaiman ends the story with many unanswered questions of what will happen to the toys; he neglects to inform the reader whether they will be thrown out, if new children will come to play with the toys, or if Jack will “wait forever” (Gaiman 3) to be played with