Franklin Portman is a male normal who is the father of Jacob Portman and the son of the late Abraham Portman.
Biography
Early Life
Franklin was born in 1965,[1] around six years after his older sister, Susan.[2] He was neglected by his father, Abraham, with the most hurtful incident being that Abraham never showed up to take a four or five year old Franklin trick-or-treating, leaving Franklin crying in the driveway. What Franklin, his sister, and his mother all assumed was that he was on a trip, when in reality Abraham was hunting wights and hollowgasts, and could not come. Franklin's relationship with his father was further complicated when he and his sister discovered Emma's letters, and they assumed that Abraham was having an affair (which was not true). Most of his resentment comes from his childhood.
When Franklin was ten years old, he finally convinced his father to take him along for one of Abe's "business trips." They picked up H, who was uncertain about Franklin coming along. The three stayed in a motel when it got dark, but in the middle of the night a hollowgast appeared. Franklin witnessed his father hollowspeak, and then ran away to a cornfield and passed out. The next day, Abe had an ymbryne wipe Franklin's memory of the event, but not completely. This led to Franklin having nightmares for years.
Later in life, Franklin obtained a bachelor's degree in Asian languages (though he would never go to Asia). At some point, he tried to open a bird store with his sister but it never got off the ground.[3] He also met and married Maryann Portman.
Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children
Franklin joins his son Jacob on the trip to Cairnholm, and while he's there, he finds out that there are uncommon bird species there. As the book progresses, Franklin gets more depressed and drunk. Finally, when Jacob tells him he is leaving for awhile, Franklin believed that he had gone mad and that his son was on drugs.
Hollow City
Jacob has a vision of his father climbing a cliff on Cairnholm, looking for his dead body.
Later, Franklin calls Jacob near the end of the book, informing Jacob that he is also in London with Jacob's mother, looking for him. Franklin asks if Jacob is on drugs, but Jacob replies that he is peculiar.
Library of Souls
When Jacob sees his father, he had a 3 day beard and seemed to have a lack of sleep. Though glad to see Jacob, he is upset that Jacob unexpectedly left and demands an answer as to why. Miss Peregrine, about to memory wipe Franklin, is stopped but is stopped by Jacob. He believes Jacob's story about not remembering anything until he discovers Emma's letters.
After the letters were discovered, Franklin decides to commit Jacob to a place for crazy people. While in the car about to drive there, the peculiar children and Miss Peregrine save Jacob.
Description
Appearance
He has glasses and short, brown hair. In the graphic novel, he has brown dark eyes.
Personality
Franklin does not seem to embrace things out of the ordinary, particularly the peculiar world. He wants his family to be normal, and rejects the fact that his father and son are peculiar.
A lot of his long-term plans do not last long, an example being that he bought an expensive kitchen after seeing it in a design magazine and tried to justify it by deciding to learn to cook to throw dinner parties, but he stopped after a few lessons. He is also not a sentimental person. a trait he shares with his sister. Franklin is easily discouraged; he is caught in a "pathetic cycle" in which he becomes passionate about a project, but one small problem that comes up overwhelms him, causing him to abandon the project and move on to the next one. He is trying to "find himself" and prove that he doesn't need his wife's money.
Relationships
Family Tree
| Abraham Portman | Grandmother | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Maryann Portman | Franklin Portman | Susan Portman | |||||||||||||||||||
| Jacob Portman | |||||||||||||||||||||
Jacob Portman
Franklin and his son clearly demonstrate a somewhat closer relationship than Jacob and his mother, both understanding one another to some degree. It is he who accompanies Jacob to Wales in the first novel but then thinks that they shouldn't have gone to Wales.
At the end of The Desolations of Devil's Acre, Jacob talks to his freshly memory-wiped parents for the last time. He tells them that he is no longer angry at them, understanding that they could not have expected and did not sign up for dealing with Jacob's peculiarness, although they could have tried harder and been more open minded. Jacob also tells them that he is leaving them and the normal world. Although suffering from the side effects of being memory-wiped, Franklin says goodbye and good luck. In the moment before they exchange a final "love you," Jacob feels like he and his father are a million miles apart and as close as they'd ever been.
Abraham Portman
Although they were son and father, Franklin always had a difficult relationship with Abraham, which he tells Jacob about while drinking at the Cairnholm pub. Abraham was absent for much of Franklin's life, out hunting hollows (though Franklin thought they were regular business and hunting trips, etc), and did not make much effort to become closer to his children. Franklin also thought that his father was being unfaithful to his mother, and became afraid of what he'd find if he tried to dig deeper. Franklin tells Jacob that he thinks Abe went on these trips to deal with the pressure of having to be a father, but not knowing how. He also tells Jacob that "even when [Abe] was around, it was like he wasn't."[4]
He describes Abe as an "emotional Fort Knox" because of all the secrets kept and was more angry than surprised when learning about parts of Abe's backstory, hurt that his father had never told him anything. In the end, he believed that Abe had been so distant because he hadn't yet gotten over his fear of having a family, and had become so close to Jacob because Jacob had come along at the right time.[4] Franklin only wanted a normal father, and did not want to believe that Abe was not an ordinary person.
Franklin, at least as a child, also believed that nothing could frighten his father.
Gallery
Trivia
- The picture of the bunny boy (Franklin) was supposedly taken during Halloween, but the date on the photo states it was taken during June.
- He volunteers part time at the bird rescue.[5]
References
- ↑ Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children takes place in 2011, at which time he is 46.
- ↑ Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Chapter 8): Susan is around 4 years old in April 1963.
- ↑ Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Chapter 8)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Chapter 4)
- ↑ Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Chapter 1)