Outlander Book Club: Book 1, Chapter 24 breakdown

Foreshadowing within the Outlander chapter

Let’s look at some of the foreshadowing within the chapter. There are a few clues of what’s to come next.

The first is everything with Dougal and Geillis. While Claire thinks Laoghaire is the one that Dougal has got pregnant, there are some clues to it being Geillis. The main one is Arthur noticing something when he sees Geillis naked. He’s seen Geillis’s pregnant belly and likely knows that the child isn’t is.

This foreshadows why Arthur has really died. Throughout the chapter, Claire keeps mentioning that Arthur is looking ill, much more ill than he has in the past. He’s also losing weight quickly. There are plenty of hints that he’s going to die, but is it really through natural causes?

All of this is foreshadowing that Geillis is the one to do it. She’s just had to speed up the process at the dinner table because Arthur has seen the pregnancy. He knows that he’s not the father and Geillis needs to do anything she can to cover it up.

There’s also some foreshadowing of Geillis being tried as a witch and the use of white witches. Claire sees a book titled L’Grimoire d’le Comte St. Germain (possibly foreshadowing his introduction into the books later) and Geillis makes it clear that she’s a white witch.

It’s clear that this is going to come up again. We’ll have mentions of white witches (in the second book) and Geillis will be viewed as a witch. All that’s protecting her is Arthur.

I think there’s also some foreshadowing of Geillis working with Dougal again. We’d already got some of that in an earlier chapter, but Claire thinks that Geillis may be finding out if Claire is a spy when being drugged. Instead, it’s foreshadowing that there’s far more to Geillis than meets the eye.

Finally, some foreshadowing is about Claire specifically. Jamie calls her “my silver one” because of the way her hair looks in the moonlight. Is this foreshadowing that Claire will come into her powers when her hair is white?

He also calls her his white dove. More foreshadowing of the hair change or even of her becoming known as a white witch? I like to think that some of this was considered for future books.