My last Outlander post for 2016! First, I would like to thank everybody who read my posts. I am in the process of writing two more Outlander posts that will be published in the first week of January 2017. Today’s post will be highly speculative and thought-provoking. First, this post is related to another one – Symbolism of the Blue Color, How It Relates to Claire, and Jamie’s Ghost, in which I brought up the possibility that the specter that Frank sees in Outlander could be Jamie’s astral body projection instead of a real ghost. When Jamie dreams, he has a tendency to see events in the future. He relates to Claire the well-being of his daughter and grandchildren in the 20th century. At the same time, OBEs or astral body projections tend to take place while one is sleeping or falling asleep. In A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Jamie reveals that he has seen Claire in the future (ch. 68):
. . . “That’s it. Ye were sitting at a desk, with something in your hand, maybe writing. And there was light all round ye, shining on your face, on your hair. But it wasna candlelight, nor yet firelight or sunlight. And I recall thinking to myself as I saw ye, Oh, so that’s what electric light is like.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed
“How can you recognize something in a dream that you’ve never seen in real life?”
He seemed to find that funny.
“I dream of things I’ve not seen all the time, Sassenach – don’t you?”
How does all this information relate to Voyager? Chapter 7 details the moment in which Claire discovers that Jamie was a prisoner at Ardsmuir. She says his name aloud, invoking him. Of note are the description of the time and the room after this invocation.
It was nearly three o’clock in the morning. Everyone was asleep, but the house, in the manner of old houses, was still awake around me, creaking and sighing, keeping me company. Strangely enough, I had not desire to leap up and wake Brianna or Roger, to tell them the news. I wanted to keep it to myself for a bit, as though I were alone here in the lamp-lit room with Jamie himself.
Of note is the description of inanimate objects acquiring life, which can also be extended to dead organisms becoming alive. It is nighttime, and electrical light is present. Claire is pretending that Jamie is around after exclaiming his name. If there is a correlation between this scene and the one in book 6, it seems that the invocation worked. It may be that Jamie’s ghost or astral body projection is present at that moment in which Claire discovers his whereabouts.
Brianna’s Second Sight
When Brianna is discussing with her mother and Roger the journal account in which Lord Melton mentions that he spared the life of a Fraser at Culloden, she is confident that her father survived the festering wound that he acquired in battle and that he was the Dunbonnet. Claire relates:
. . . She spoke with simple assurance, as though she had seen all the events described in Melton’s journal, and were sure of their outcome. “He did get back. He was the Dunbonnet, I know it.”
In subsequent books, it is revealed that Brianna can see events that take place at different times through her dreams. It is possible the she “saw” her father living in a cave.
Sources
Gabaldon, Diana. A Breath of Snow and Ashes. 2005. New York: Bantam Dell. 2006. Print.
– – – . Voyager. 1994. New York: Bantam Dell. 2002. Print.