Outlander Book Club: Book 2, Chapter 5 breakdown

Foreshadowing within the Outlander chapter

There are a few clues in this chapter for things that happened in the future. The first is that Black Jack Randall was buried at St. Kilda. Why would this have happened?

It suggests that there are secrets to BJR’s life that nobody knew about, that even Frank didn’t find out. One thing I love is that we still get this sense that Frank is directly related to Black Jack Randall. Yet, nobody actually says “direct ancestor” in the chapter. At least, not that I noticed. They say BJR was an ancestor, which foreshadows the reveal at the end of Dragonfly in Amber.

There is clearly more to the story of how Jamie ended up at St. Kilda, too. Why there? If he died on the battlefield, he would have been burned like the rest of them. Even if he’d been shot afterward, he wouldn’t have likely been sent to St. Kilda. That suggests that he likely survived Culloden and even the aftermath.

But why St. Kilda? Or is it possible that someone else put the headstone there. We know the story now, but reading it for the first time, this part certainly brought up a lot of questions.

Another element of foreshadowing is Roger keeping things to himself. He had already learned that Frank was not Brianna’s biological father. However, he’d never told Claire or Brianna about the newspaper clippings. He does tell them in this chapter.

We know that Roger later keeps a newspaper clipping to himself. Roger has a bad habit of keeping secrets and then revealing them after the fact as if it’s no big deal now.

There are also elements of Culloden that are foreshadowed, especially Claire and Jamie’s involvement in it. One thing is clear from this chapter, they were important people within the battle. How else would they have had an audience with Charles Stuart?