Outlander Book Club: Book 1, Chapter 1 breakdown

Foreshadowing for future storylines

The second part of the Outlander Book Club is to explore the foreshadowing. There’s plenty early on.

There are a few things that I can see that connect to future storylines. The first is definitely the ghost. We know that the Highlandman outside is a ghost. And he is definitely Jamie. How he’s there, we don’t know yet. That’s for something in Outlander Book 10.

In a way, the conversation with the ghost is foreshadowing something to come. Frank worries that Claire was unfaithful. She eventually is. Despite being in the past, she’s still married to Frank in her own linear timeline. Even though he’s not around in the past, she still loves him and is still married to him, so she does have an affair by marrying and falling in love with Jamie.

But there are a few other elements even from the beginning. We get a sense of Claire’s stubbornness. At age five she was unwilling to go to a boarding school. She wanted to remain with her Uncle Lamb, and that meant going on a journey around the world. It’s clear that the story is setting her up as a woman who will be able to survive in the 18th century.

Then there’s Frank’s love of history and facts. He tells Claire everything he finds fascinating. For some, this is annoying. But I like it. It shows that Frank is passionate about something and he wants to share that passion. Claire isn’t interested but amuses him, just like I guess Frank would just amuse Claire when he’s not interested in something she is passionate about.

But the facts Frank shares are important for Claire, even if she doesn’t realize it. The facts about Highlanders’ superstitions definitely foreshadows events that will happen. I’m thinking mostly about the changeling child and the fears that Claire is a witch. There are other superstitions that come up in future books.

One of the superstitions made me think of Stephen Bonnet. There’s the story that Frank tells of contractors killing one of the workers when building homes and burying that body in the wall. We know that Bonnet was a contractor and almost killed at one point.

At one point, Claire mentions 100 brushes of her hair. This connects to 100 lashes that Jamie received—it was actually 200 in the end, but it started as 100. This is actually something I’ve overlooked in the past, probably because I haven’t assessed the novel in the way I am doing with this readthrough.

Another connection to Jamie would be the story of the Scottish man who was scared of needles. We know how Jamie later reacts to the idea of needles, although he doesn’t scream like a baby.