Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The American Revolution and Neighbor Tensions

Content Warning: The source material discusses sexual assault and violence against women, and it contains historically inaccurate depictions of Indigenous Americans.

The American Revolutionary War is the backdrop of this novel. Brianna, Roger, and Claire come to this novel with a historical perspective of the war and a knowledge that the war will end with the patriots victorious. However, getting to that point proves to be complicated as Claire and Jamie wrestle with political tensions on their land, Roger takes part in the Siege of Savannah, and they all worry that the end won’t come soon enough to keep the young people on Fraser’s Ridge, particularly Jamie and Claire’s grandsons, from fighting.

At the beginning of the novel, the war is waging in the north around New York and New Jersey; therefore, it is distant from Fraser’s Ridge in the Carolinas. However, as the novel progresses, Fraser’s Ridge sees an increase in loyalists living as tenants on Jamie’s land, and their political views inform their actions. Jamie stops Cunningham from receiving guns and likely using them to arm the nearby Cherokees in order to use them in the fight against the patriots. Later, Cunningham makes an attempt to arrest Jamie as a patriot and turn him over to Major Patrick Ferguson, a British soldier coming to the area to build loyalist militia regiments. These moments of tension bring the war home for Jamie and Claire, but they also cause rifts between Jamie and men he has known for years and considered his friends and neighbors. Jamie is forced to evict some of these men, showing how political views can destroy relationships.

At the same time, Jamie’s adopted son, Fergus, feels the heat of his political views. As a patriot, Fergus publishes a paper that promotes his beliefs. Unfortunately, that brings trouble to his home. Brianna experiences this trouble firsthand when a couple of loyalists attack Brianna and Fergus’s wife, Marsali, while they are out shopping based solely on their knowledge that Marsali is Fergus’s wife. Later, someone places a burning package at Fergus’s back door, threatening to burn the house down. At the end of the book, Fergus sends Germain and his two daughters to Jamie and Claire because loyalists broke into his home and tried to kill him. Once again, neighbors turned on neighbors, leaving Fergus feeling as though his family is unsafe in their own home.

The Power and Lasting Impact of Love

The Outlander series is first and foremost a romance series. The core of the plot of each novel is the romantic relationship between Claire and Jamie. However, as the novels have progressed, they have expanded to include other romantic couples, including Brianna and Roger, Fergus and Marsali, and William and Amaranthus. Yet there are other forms of love in these novels that push the plot along, including the love between parent and child as well as love of neighbors and extended family members.

In this novel, Gabaldon creates tension in Jamie and Claire’s relationship using Jamie’s intense feeling of jealousy. Jamie is a highly romantic figure who is so deeply in love with Claire that the idea of any other man touching her makes him irrational. This is seen clearly when Claire suggests she write a letter to Lord John Grey and Jamie becomes infuriated because Claire married John when she believed Jamie had been killed during interoceanic travel from Scotland to the American colonies. However, it is not the fact that Claire married John that bothers Jamie but the fact that John told him they slept together. Although Claire denies this happened, Jamie is overwhelmed with jealousy at the thought of her sharing John’s bed. Further, when Jamie sees a picture of Frank Randall, Claire’s first husband, and reads his book about an upcoming battle near Fraser’s Ridge in which Frank states Jamie will be killed, he becomes suspicious. Although Jamie takes the warning of his death to heart, he struggles with the idea that Frank might have written this part of the book to somehow get back at Jamie for marrying Claire when she traveled into the past. This again is a spark of jealousy that colors Jamie’s view of the world around him. Finally, Jamie reveals to both Claire and Ian that he murdered a man Claire identified as her rapist. Although Jamie names several reasonable motives for this action, there is still a clear connection to Jamie’s love for Claire that explains his motive. Although jealousy often tears Claire and Jamie apart, it also reveals the incredible depths of their love for one another and shows motivations for many of the things they do for and with one another.

Brianna and Roger have a love that is passionate but more subtle than Claire and Jamie’s. At this point in their lives, Brianna and Roger’s focus is more on their children and their desire to protect them against potential harm. Each time Brianna feels her health and safety might be at risk, her first thought is her children. This isn’t unique to Brianna. Jamie and Claire took in a young girl, Fanny, after her sister died. Jamie continuously announces to the household at large that he will not allow any malice to fall on Fanny, particularly forcing her into a marriage or physical relationship she does not want. This relationship is connected to Jamie’s relationship with his son, William, and is likely an expression of his love for William. However, whereas Fanny is appreciative of Jamie’s protection, William wants nothing to do with it.

Dynamics and Definitions of Family

Family in Western cultures is often defined through the nuclear family: mother, father, and children. Gabaldon shows that traditional families have never truly been the norm. In this novel, there are multiple families that are made up of more than just a nuclear family and include orphaned children, stepchildren, stepparents, and other forms of non-traditional families.

Jamie and Claire begin the novel with their extended family in the home; they have taken in their grandson, Germain, and an orphaned girl, Fanny. Although Fanny is not technically part of the family, Jamie and Claire make it clear to her that they consider her family and are acting on her behalf as her parents. Previously, Jamie adopted a young French boy he renamed Fergus when he was living in Paris. Originally, this boy was an employee meant to help Jamie steal letters in his attempts to spy on the king, but Fergus became a part of his household, and Jamie gave him his name. This situation is familiar to Jamie because he was once taken in by his mother’s clan when he was on the run from the British soldiers.

William also grew up in an unusual family dynamic. William lost his mother shortly after his birth, and his father died sometime after. William was taken in by his mother’s sister and her husband, Lord John Grey. As an adult, William learned that his father was actually Jamie Fraser, not the man his mother had married, but this information doesn’t change William’s loyalty to John Grey as the only father he has truly known. However, William’s relationship with John Grey is threatened for a short time when William believes John Cinnamon to be John Grey’s biological son, creating a new crisis of identity for William until he learns the truth.

Another example of a different definition of family is seen when Ian goes to New York to check on the welfare of his first wife, Emily, and is asked to take in her eldest son, Totis, whom Ian believes to be his own son. At about this same time, Claire and Jamie take in a young girl named Agnes who has been thrown out of her own home. Throughout the novel, there are many examples of family dynamics changing as new people come in and some leave. These dynamics are important to the novel because they show that traditional families were not the norm, and they demonstrate how characters interact, what defines their core families, and what motivates them to take action on behalf of one another, no matter what their relationship might be.