Outlander Book Club: Book 2, Chapter 10 breakdown

Foreshadowing within the Outlander chapter

There are three elements of foreshadowing that stand out for me. The first is how shortsighted Frank is in his research. He’s so focused on Black Jack Randall that he doesn’t even consider researching Alex.

It would be interesting to see what was written in history about Alex. We know little about him from Dragonfly in Amber, but there’s a chance something would have been written, at least when it came to him becoming Sandringham’s secretary. Would it have led to any clues that Alex is actually Frank’s direct ancestor after all?

As we already know that Claire gets back to her own time, the dream of Frank isn’t foreshadowing that. However, I do think it might be foreshadowing that Frank researches Jamie Fraser when Claire returns. I do wonder if it foreshadows that Frank will find Claire in his research in the future.

Remember everything from the chapter at St. Kilda. Not only is Black Jack Randall buried there, but Jamie is too. Is this all connected to Claire’s subconscious thinking about Frank? Okay, so it’s out of order. The chapters in 1968 took place after this chapter (even though it was before in the book) but that does stop Claire feeling like Frank would do something like this. Or maybe it’s that Claire hopes Frank is looking for her now.

The final element is Claire heading back to the future. We know that happens. We get this sense of how she’ll mourn for Jamie.