Outlander Book Club: Voyager Chapter 22 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
It’s Halloween night, although there are a lot of mentions of the original name, Samhain. By the way, it is pronounced closer to “Sow-een” or “Sow-in” and not “Sam-hain,” just for those wondering how to say the word.
Claire, Roger, and Brianna are very close to being ready for Claire’s return. Roger gives Claire some coins for the time, including the smallest valued coin. What’s ironic is that buying them in 1968 costs more than the coins are actually worth in the 18th century. However, Claire points out that the value of products was different. Farmers didn’t live on much for the whole year.
This opens the dialogue of Roger forgetting that Claire has been to the past. She knows the value of the money and how to use it. He just has his professor hat on, which is easy to do. He’s probably spent a lot of time teaching Brianna a little more about the time and place Claire will go back to.
The three take part in one of the superstitions of the night. On Halloween night, a person should walk out of the door with their eyes closed. The first thing they see is a sign of things to come. After making a joke about walking into a policeman, that’s exactly what happens. That’s a good sign, though. A man walking towards you is a sign that you’ll get to where you’re going—your dream will come true. It’s a sign that Claire will get to where she wants and find Jamie.
When they return to the manse and Claire goes to bed, Brianna has a chance to be “selfish.” I don’t find her selfish at all. She just doesn’t want to say goodbye to her mom. Not this permanent goodbye, anyway. Roger even notes that a person (in that time) doesn’t expect to be permanently pulled apart from a parent except through death. Claire is choosing to go to the past and leave Brianna behind.
It’s hard for Bree. She’ll be left alone. Everyone who knew her growing up is gone. Anyone who remembers her first steps or her first words will have left her. There’s nobody to think she’s special just because she’s there and not because she’s done something. Bree feels like there’s nobody there to love her unconditionally.
In the end, Bree just has to accept it. This is Claire’s choice, and deep down, she knows that Claire needs to go back to Jamie.
Roger stays up that night so he’s awake when Claire comes downstairs. She can’t bear to say goodbye to Brianna and is leaving before dawn.
I do admit that I find this terribly selfish. Claire is the one choosing to leave her own daughter behind. Her reasons not to say goodbye are because she’s scared—scared of leaving Brianna, scared of not going, scared of not making it—but she seems to completely overlook the fact that her daughter has no choice in this. Her daughter just has to accept that she’s going to be orphaned.
Brianna has already lost one parent without the time to say goodbye. Now Claire is allowing that to happen again? It’s a selfish decision that I’m glad the TV show changed. More on that in a few minutes.
What I will say, though, is that it makes Claire human. I don’t expect to like Claire all the time, just like I don’t like Jamie all the time. Characters do things that I don’t agree with and that’s good writing.