Outlander Book Club: The Fiery Cross Chapter 21 breakdown

Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter

There are a couple of moments where the foreshadowing is. The most obvious bit is with the conversation about Jemmy. This is something that will always play on Roger’s mind. It’s something that all of them think about, if they’re all honest.

Roger will eventually get the proof that Jemmy is his. It is something that’s genetic, too. And it’s something Roger knows he has but it hasn’t come up yet.

The other bit of foreshadowing is in the discussion just before the bit about Jemmy. Roger thinks about which parent could have passed on this problem with his eyes. He doesn’t think it’s going to be his father since he was an RAF pilot, so it has to be his mom.

We already know a little about his parents, but not too much. There is going to be much more to come, and Roger will get a chance to find out that he has inherited something from his dad…the ability to time travel. There is a huge story there, and this chapter just offers a little foreshadowing into that.

Adapting The Fiery Cross chapter

The chapter was partly used in the TV series. Claire did test Roger’s eyes, but it was at his request and not at Brianna’s. He wanted to see if the fact he is a bad shot was because of his eyesight or just the fact that he’s a terrible shot. Instead of going into the binocular vision, Roger comments on the fact that the man who raised him was a minister, so maybe his inability to shoot a target is mental.

The conversation also moves onto the danger of the 18th century. The writers chose to make the eye test moment a chance for the internalization from the previous chapter, opting for it to be a conversation between Claire and Roger instead of Brianna’s thoughts. It helped to set up the overall storyline of Roger trying to get Brianna and Jemmy to the 20th century.

I didn’t really mind this change. After all, I forgot about the actual chapter in the book! Because of how little time we got, keeping the focus on Roger wanting to head back to his own time made sense to me. It made more sense than his concern that Jemmy wasn’t biologically his. The Jemmy topic was going to come up now and then with the Bonnet storyline, but for Roger, the focus was on getting back to his own time for safety.

What did you spot while reading The Fiery Cross Chapter 21? Let us know in the comments below.

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