Voyager

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, gender discrimination, antigay bias, sexual violence and harassment, suicidal ideation, sexual content, cursing, illness, and death.

“He wanted to tell them to leave him; his purpose had returned to him with the waking, and he remembered that he had meant to die. But the sweetness of their company was too much to resist.”

Jamie thinks this when he is discovered on the battlefield at Culloden by a group of men he knows. This quote highlights Jamie’s emotional state after the battle and Claire’s return to the future, but also illustrates part of Jamie’s reason for fighting in Culloden. Knowing that many of his friends and kinsmen would die in battle regardless of his actions, Jamie believed it would be the noble thing to do to die alongside these men. His decision to keep living is, in itself, an act of sacrifice, forging ahead not for himself, but for those who still need him. This highlights the theme of Making Sacrifices for Love.

“So far as the Scottish Highlands go, most of the history is oral, up to the mid-nineteenth century or so. That means there wasn’t a great distinction made between stories about real people, stories of historical figures, and the stories about mythical things like water horses and ghosts and the doings of the Auld Folk. Scholars who wrote the stories down often didn’t know for sure which they were dealing with, either—sometimes it was a combination of fact and myth, and sometimes you could tell that it was a real historical occurrence being described.”

Roger tells this to Claire and Brianna when they are looking for sources that show how Jamie survived after Culloden. This illustrates the complications of history and how it can often be a messy thing to interpret. This idea comes up several times throughout the novel such as when they discover the story of Dunbonnet or when Claire and Joe help an anthropologist determine what happened to the skeleton found in a cave. This tension between myth and memory mirrors the broader discussion of how personal and historical pasts shape identity.