Outlander Book Club: Voyager Chapter 22 breakdown

Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter

The biggest element of foreshadowing is the discussion of superstitions. Roger notes that seeing a man coming towards you on Halloween when walking out a house with your eyes closed is a good sign.

Claire is going to get to where she’s going. She’ll reunite with Jamie. All of this has not been in vain.

At the same time, there’s an element of foreshadowing in Claire having to face her fear. She’s scared to say goodbye to Brianna, but Brianna isn’t about to let her get away with that. Good on Bree!

Other than that, I don’t get a sense of much foreshadowing. It’s mostly in the moment, wrapping up the final chapters of Claire in 1968.

Adapting the Voyager chapter

Okay, so we’re getting into how the show adapted this chapter. Let’s start with the obvious part: the change to the time of year. Claire didn’t pass through the stones at Samhain in Outlander Season 3, Episode 5. Instead, she went at Christmastime.

I’m not clear on why the change to the time of year, but it did make sense for the way the storyline changed slightly. Instead of Claire going back to Scotland, Roger came to Boston. He says that he wants an American Christmas, but he has good news for Claire and that’s really the reason he came. Christmas was just convenient and would have been easier to explain to everyone, especially his workplace.

We get this chapter, some elements from the next chapter, and some moments from previous chapters rolled into one. There are also a couple of show inventions offering a little extra closure for Frank’s character, necessary from purely a TV show perception.

As for the elements from this chapter adapted, I’m glad we didn’t have Claire saying she couldn’t say goodbye to Brianna. Instead, the show focused on Claire’s fears of leaving, of not wanting to leave Brianna behind. It focused on Brianna’s sacrifice to allow her mom to leave (although we did still get Brianna tell Roger she’s selfish for not wanting her mom to leave) and Claire making the final decision to go.

Maybe it’s because I watched Season 3 before reading Voyager (I did this with the first four seasons), but I do prefer the way the TV show handled this part of the story.

What did you think while reading Voyager Chapter 22? Share in the comments below.

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