The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood

by Diana Gabaldon

  Q (from Mandy Tidwell): How personal do you think Randall’s encounter with Jamie at Wentworth really was? He doesn’t use Jamie’s name prior to that—just derogatory nicknames—and I thought perhaps Jamie was just a substitute for whoever “Alex” was. But reading Dragaonfly again, I really noticed how shocked Randall is at seeing Jamie in Paris. Maybe it becomes personal after you torture someone and don’t get that total surrender.

  A: Well, you know, you’d probably feel rather intimately connected to someone with whom you’d shared the experience (and believe me, they did share it; that’s why Jamie is shattered beyond the merely physical—Randall forced him into emotional engagement) of torture and repeated rape over a period of ten or twelve hours.

  Someone then requested elaboration on this answer—and got it:

  Hate and fear are emotions, and really destructive ones, too. Especially if they go so deep that you can’t let go.

  Imagine some fairly harmless situation—being in a boring business meeting, for instance. Normally, your body would be sitting there in durance vile, but your mind would be off roaming, thinking about dinner, remembering a conversation from earlier in the day, looking forward to watching the last episode of Breaking Bad after dinner, making mental lists of errands, etc.

  But what if you weren’t allowed that mental escape? What if someone who could read your mind was sitting right next to you and poked you sharply every time your attention wandered even slightly from what was going on? You can’t escape mentally, any more than you can physically. Think about that for a bit…forced to pay close attention to what’s going on, every single minute, no matter how much you dislike what’s going on. How long would it take for you to go mildly nuts? Majorly nuts, if it didn’t end? Majorly nuts if someone was deliberately hurting you and making you pay attention, asking you questions about what they were doing and how that felt…and so on? Majorly nuts if the person hurting you insists not only on hurting you and making you attend to the details of your own humiliation and agony, but engages your mind by making you think about something you Really Don’t Want to Think About—e.g., the nature of your sexual relations with your beloved?

  That kind of emotional engagement.

  And further discussion:

  Someone who’s abused over a long period of time does become accustomed to it and eventually grows to feel that this is “normal” (as in, they don’t see any other way for things to be). I won’t go into the possibilities for a victim actually to believe they enjoy the interaction—and I really won’t go into consensual BDSM (other than to note that it’s something completely different; in a real relationship of that kind, it’s really the submissive partner who holds the power), as that’s a bit outside the scope of the discussion.

  That wasn’t the case for Jamie; what he suffered was not habituation but an abrupt dislocation, an assault on his sense of self as well as on his body. He did still know what “normal” was, though, which gave him a way back, once Claire had rescued him from the immediacy of despair and helped him to heal his worst physical wounds, so that he had the strength for the struggle to survive spiritually as well as physically.

  Speaking of Dragonfly, I’ve had a good many people ask, over the years, why on earth Jamie didn’t immediately kill Jack Randall when encountering him at his brother Alex’s deathbed.

  Well, a) a deathbed—and remember, Jamie likes Mary Hawkins—and the scene of a tragic wedding is no place for personal violence, no matter how justified. And b) Jamie at this point suddenly perceives the commonality of humanity—regardless of personalities—and is moved to a compassion that embraces not only Mary and Alex but also recognizes the suffering in Jack. And in that recognition, he realizes (probably with some surprise, though he doesn’t discuss the occasion with Claire) that his own burden of rage has eased a little. This is where he begins to realize that his only way of recovering himself entirely is to forgive Randall; he already realizes that simply killing the man probably wouldn’t amend his feelings of violation and hate.

  That is, of course, a big thing to realize, let alone to accomplish—and it takes him a good long time (and constant practice) to accomplish it. But he does begin to realize it here, and that’s why he quietly escorts Randall back through Edinburgh afterward, both men alone with their thoughts.

  [Edited to add that I not infrequently hear this question, which seems to be based on a rather simple “Hey, this SOB raped me; I’d jump him on the spot, no matter what!” reflex assumption of what’s proper. The thing is…Jamie isn’t a simple man. Beyond that—he’s already done vengeful violence to Randall and both achieved whatever relief can be gained from that (what additional good might be done from attacking him here, for goodness’ sake?) and seen just what kind of collateral damage can result. He’s not stupid, and he has great self-control.]

  Additional comment from a reader (Tess Jones) participating in the discussion:

  You know, in my initial reading of DIA, I wasn’t surprised with Jamie’s behavior during the Alex/Mary/Jack deathbed/wedding scene. For one reason, Jamie had already acted once on the killer urge toward Jack Randall…with some pretty disastrous consequences! And for another, he sees Jack in a way he’s never seen him before, and I think he’s immobilized by the shock of his own empathy for Black Jack just then. But there it is. Jack was not a monster in front of him but a man grieving over the dying brother that he loved. Jamie had once had a brother whom he loved and lost to illness. Now, Teacher can come hit me with a ruler if I am wrong, but I think it is because Jamie was able to identify with Jack in this way (having lost & grieved a brother himself) that began his process toward forgiveness. It’s sort of ironic to note Jamie’s earlier statement: that it was his identification with Jack in terms of those baser instincts he saw within himself (thanks to Jack’s thorough education of him at Wentworth) which he gave as the reason he could not forgive Randall. Two different connections, both profoundly affecting Jamie’s ability to forgive Randall.

  I wasn’t surprised that, rather than going for his sword, Jamie was rooted to the floorboards, stunned by the scene before him and his own epiphany. I think (as another participant said) that it does become more clear once we read his lesson to Bree in Drums of Autumn and see what he’s learned about forgiveness in the twenty years since. I think also, if we bounce forward a bit, it’s drawn even sharper for us in reading Jamie’s attempt (in The Fiery Cross) to help Roger see Stephen Bonnet as not a monster, just a man; no more, no less. Jamie had Black Jack Randall thoroughly built up into a monster in his mind until the moment he saw him with dying Alex.

  To which I responded:

  Dear Tess—

  Yep. You got it.

  Reacting to a reader struggling to forgive and accept Jamie’s attempts at forgiveness:

  It’s good that you find it difficult, I think. One of the things I wanted to get across—not in that scene, but in the entirety of that theme through several books—is just how hard it is to practice forgiveness. Even when you think you’ve accomplished it, rage and hurt and nasty things come sneaking back, and there it all is to be done over again. Except that it becomes a little easier, maybe, because you know it can be done.

  I’m kind of wondering what might come sneaking back in Jamie’s fitfully recovered memories of Culloden, myself. (That’s not a tease; I really am wondering…. )

  And some more thoughts along those lines:

  Well, he certainly didn’t forgive him on the spot during the deathbed scene, no. Nor, probably, even consider “moving on.” He just experienced a jarring moment of empathy, suddenly seeing Jack’s love and grief for his brother. That wouldn’t have been anything he’d ever have expected to feel, and it must have rocked him. But he is a thoughtful man, and always has been, even in his younger years; he’d have thought about that unsettling moment of compassion and, with luck, realized that it offered him a way out, difficult as that way might be.

  As another participant in the discussion points out, he’
d already taken physical revenge on Jack Randall and not found it to be either satisfaction or catharsis. And it did cost him substantially. (He must at some point have thought that if he’d done as Claire asked and left Jack Randall alone, their child would have lived. This probably isn’t true, as Claire’s miscarriage was almost certainly due to physical factors and would have happened even without her rushing off to prevent the duel—but under the circumstances, I imagine almost any man would blame himself.) But he wouldn’t be inclined just to leap blindly on Jack Randall and start throttling him on impulse, even if the more bloodthirsty readers would have liked him to.

  [Edited to add that on looking back at Tess’s message, I see that it also refers to the events in later books. Yes, I see the point—but I do think that learning to let go is an important step in forgiveness, even if it isn’t everything. And he does remind himself that Jack Randall is only a man—which is both a reminder that Randall doesn’t possess any supernatural power over him and a reminder of that common humanity he saw in Randall. And I think that acceptance is another step on the road to forgiveness.]

  In response to a discussion of why Jamie didn’t fight back after Claire was released in Wentworth:

  Well, it wasn’t entirely a matter of honor. There are two additional factors operating there: 1) Claire’s escape—if Jamie fights back but fails to kill or disable Randall, Randall presumably would and could send soldiers after her. He (Jamie) has to keep Randall occupied long enough for her to get away. And 2) the man’s been imprisoned for weeks, starved, maltreated, and has just had his hand smashed with a hammer and nailed to a table. You have any idea how painful that would be and how much physical shock it would cause? (Claire does.) Randall did it (broke Jamie’s hand) not merely to be mean but with the specific intent of incapacitating him.

  Anyway, that would have anyone with less strength of mind and body writhing on the floor, incapable of thought or movement. Besides which, Jamie has just used whatever remaining resources he had in fighting Marley. He simply doesn’t have the strength to kill Randall and knows it—and he dare not try and fail, for reason #1.

  I mean—he’s not Superman.18

  In response to someone complaining about Jenny laughing at BJR:

  Well, I would note that had she not laughed at Jack Randall, he would undoubtedly have raped her. And it’s not as though she had any idea at the time what he’d proceed to do to her brother.

  For that matter, she expected to be raped and was willing to sacrifice herself to keep Randall from cutting Jamie’s throat in the dooryard. I really don’t see much room to find fault with her through that exchange, myself.

  Comment:

  Diana, doesn’t Claire realize the same thing about Randall (that Jenny did)? Maybe not to the point of laughing and taunting him, but realizing that he wouldn’t manage to succeed if she wasn’t hurt or afraid.

  Yes, exactly. When he urges her to scream, she realizes that “he wasn’t going to enjoy it unless I screamed”—and therefore doesn’t.

  In response to a discussion about the graphic nature of the Wentworth descriptions, including a protest by one reader that this part of the book made her feel “gross and filthy” and that I had, in effect, raped her:

  It was indeed the writer’s intent to make the reader feel assaulted and filthy, in re the Wentworth exposition. I call it that, rather than “scenes”—because (and this is what’s interesting to me. My reply to the original poster is all I have to say on the subject of pornography, etc. It’s Form Letter #13; very useful in these situations19) in fact…you never do see what happened between Jamie and Jack Randall after Claire left the building, so to speak.

  What you do see is a) Jack Randall driving a nail through Jamie’s hand, which is certainly explicit but not sexual save in the metaphorical sense (and I doubt most readers noticed the metaphor, or if they did, they assumed it to be a Christian metaphor—and it is, of course, that, too), and b) Jack Randall kissing Jamie, very simply (i.e., nothing explicit whatever in terms of physical description of the kiss).

  This is undeniably shocking and creepy—but it’s shocking and creepy largely because the explicitness lies on the side of violence, and the sexual context is revealed rather than shown.

  That’s why—in the purely “craft” sense—we never do see exactly what happened. We don’t live through it in real time with Jamie. We imagine things, based on the nail scene, and later we see the state of Jamie’s body from Claire’s point of view—both as physician and as outraged wife—and still later Claire hears an account of what happened—but we don’t. What we get are tiny, vivid details (very few of them explicit), embedded in the emotional matrix, which itself is rendered in poetic terms (and I don’t mean the Wordsworth/daffodil sort of poetry, either. Think Beowulf or Chaucer). We don’t live through it with Jamie; we live through it with Claire.

  I.e., this particular part of the book is probably the least “explicit” of any of the scenes involving sex—but it’s by far the most shocking, and it is so shocking precisely because we never look straight at it. Things seen from the corner of the eye are much more frightening than a monster in full view (something that escapes all but the most skillful horror-film directors), and by giving the reader only those small, horrid glimpses, you take hold of the most powerful tool any writer has—the reader’s imagination.

  Now, I have no idea whether the person complaining about grossness and filth was speaking only of the Wentworth expositions or whether the depictions of married sex truly struck her as gross and filthy…but if she meant Wentworth, she’s dead on. I did rape her. And I meant to. Because the power of Jamie and Claire’s relationship (and of their whole story) depends in large part on us identifying with everything felt by the two of them through this situation and its (long-reaching) ramifications. The best (possibly the only) way of doing this, as the writer, is to pull the reader into that same situation and make them experience—as opposed to merely read—it.

  A blow-by-blow description of what went on in Wentworth, seen in print in real time, probably would be pornographic, insofar as its value would chiefly lie in arousing (one way or another) the reader.

  The commenter is, however, wrong in saying that it’s the explicit or graphic nature of the text that offended her. It was quite the opposite.

  [N.B.: I’ll add a note here with respect to the TV show’s treatment of the Wentworth material. You can do things in a visual medium that you can’t do so effectively in print—and vice versa. Also, while the entirety of the book is told from Claire’s point of view—and therefore we can’t see anything that she doesn’t—the show can and does deal in multiple points of view and take in things happening in different places at the same time. Therefore, it derives a lot of its suspense and narrative force from the audience seeing what’s happening to Jamie at the same time that we see Claire’s increasing desperation as she tries to find and save him.

  It’s a different narrative structure, and very effective. But because television is a visual medium, you’re telling the story in terms of pictures, much more than in words. I can use people’s thoughts in a way that the show can’t; but they can use the stunning beauty of images to rouse and direct emotions in a very economical way, which I really can’t do in words. I think that Ron Moore and the production team (to say nothing of the very talented actors) did an amazing job in conveying the same sense of events and thus remaining very true to the essential story, while telling it in a necessarily more graphic way.]

  Part of a response to a conversation about changes during the editing process:

  Then there was the scene I’ve heard described (often) as “master mmphm” —the sex scene after Jamie gives Claire the wedding ring. The editor was concerned that it was too violent and suggested I take it out. I said I thought it was a necessary step in the relationship, as well as a necessary thematic element in the (linkage of) sex-and-violence thread that runs through the book—i.e., Claire succeeds in saving Jamie’s so
ul at the abbey because she understands how close sex and violence may be, has a relationship with Jamie in which those elements are often closely linked, and isn’t afraid to use them both to oppose the encounter he had in Wentworth (which was exactly the same thing, but not consensual—and a trifle more violent). She couldn’t believably do what she did unless we’d shown that element of edgy violence happening between them earlier. I could, though (I said), perhaps rebalance that scene a little.

  So I did. Essentially, all I did was alter some of the verbs and rearrange one or two sentences. The editor looked at it afterward and said, “I can’t even tell what you did, but it worked!” I’m sure there were other small things, but really, no big fights about anything—and no decent editor would buy a manuscript and then try to change the author’s intrinsic style, surely?

  Part of a discussion on how to write villains:

  Oh, he (Jack Randall) doesn’t/couldn’t exist in a vacuum—but neither did he need a story to walk into. He evolved along with the story. The first scene I wrote involving him was the one in which Claire meets him, right after emerging from the stones. In that scene, all I knew about him was that he was Frank Randall’s ancestor and looked like him. I had a vague thought that perhaps he’d turn out to be a strong love interest for Claire, and thus the conflict might be whether she was in love with her twentieth-century husband or with his ancestor…. That seemed mildly cliched, but who knows? As it was, though, the minute he saw her and they began talking, I knew he wasn’t that. And by the time Murtagh rescued her (thus making the link between the cottage scene where she meets Dougal and Jamie, which I’d already written quite a bit earlier, and the coming-through-the-stones part), it was clear to me that Captain Randall was rather dangerous.