Claire thinks about Brianna’s reaction to sickness at the Ridge in Outlander Book 6, Chapter 61
As sickness spreads across the Ridge, the people from the future have their concerns in Outlander Book 6, Chapter 61. Claire thinks about how Brianna is reacting to the situation.
The sickness hasn’t even started spreading all that quickly just yet. For now, it’s the MacNeills, but there are others who could be affected. Claire knows this as she gets to the bottom of the disease that is causing the problem. She’s sure it’s something that she’s not vaccinated against.
That’s part of the issue for the people from the future. This is something they could contract. It’s something Jemmy can catch. Of course, Brianna is going to react in a way that concerned mothers do. She wants to keep her son safe, and that means using her knowledge from the future to do something.
The chapter wasn’t used in the series. We know that Brianna would do what she could to keep Jemmy safe. The family has already had a discussion about how Jemmy could die of something that wouldn’t even been an issue in the 20th century.
However, I do think this chapter foreshadows things to come. Someone from the future is about to get very sick.
Let’s dive into A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 61.
Just the Outlander chapter
We start the chapter finding out that Claire is looking at stool samples under her microscope. She wants to find out what the illness is. Sure, she won’t be able to tell exactly what it is, but she’s hoping that she recognizes something.
One thing she does know is that it’s something she’s likely not vaccinated against. This makes things dangerous for her, Bree, and Roger.
The conversation moves on to something Brianna did earlier. Jamie notes that she poured boiling water on her arms. He even saw the blisters, but she didn’t seem to notice them or care. And she scrubbed her arms hard. This was after she came back from the MacNeills’ cabin.
Claire notes that Bree was doing what she could to keep Jemmy safe. This would have also been one of the first times she would have seen a death like this. Claire was used to it with the Spanish influenza and then the Second World War. Jamie also knows death from his time on the battlefields and even just growing up in the 18th century.
Claire realizes that the first death Bree would have witnessed would have been Frank’s. That was when she was a teenager. The medicine of the modern world has helped to reduce death. There have also been fewer wars, although we know Bree would have some memories of what happened in Vietnam on the TV—it was on the TV, though. Everything Bree had experienced was in a fictionalized or televised form.
Now she’s seeing it first-hand, and this is something she’s not vaccinated against. There’s a fear of the unknown. We can look at how people reacted when COVID first came out with sanitizing everything, including their groceries they brought into the house. Fear is real, and it can lead to us doing some crazy things.
Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter
There is a little bit of foreshadowing in this chapter. It all comes down to Claire talking about how she’s not vaccinated against some diseases, and this is likely one of them. Any of them could catch it.
We know that Claire falls sick. Everyone around her thinks that it’s the bloody flux. However, we later find out that she and Tom fall sick with something very different, and there’s a certain young lady at the Ridge to blame. But this is just foreshadowing that something is to come.
Adapting A Breath of Snow and Ashes chapter
We didn’t get to see this in the TV series. There wasn’t really a need for Claire and Jamie to talk about how Bree had never seen death the way they had. It’s something that could have happened off-screen.
There just isn’t the time to add every little part in the series. The start of the sickness and then Claire falling sick were the most important parts of the coming chapters. They lead to the next part of the story, so I don’t blame the series for skipping over how Bree reacted.
What did you spot while reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 61? Let us know in the comments below.
Like Claire and Jamie on Facebook for the latest from the Outlander Book Club and much more.