Episode 701: A Life Well Lost

And we’re off! And at a lickity split pace, so it would seem! First episode, penultimate season…to the starting blocks, Sassenachs.

Warning- Contains spoilers from Outlander Episode 701: A Life Well Lost

Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls…

“I do wonder what you might have said about me,” Tom Christie implores of Jamie, wishing that he be remembered more favorably than what is perhaps deserved. As Jamie eulogizes that man before him, finding honorable words for someone who often behaved less than honorably, the church bells of Wilmington ring ominously in the background. The unspoken answer to the implied question: “It tolls for thee.”

It would not be the first time Outlander– the show or the novels- has referenced John Donne. Recall Claire and Ned Gowan reciting Present in Absence at the start of Rent (105), another episode that explored the concepts of identity and morality. As we see men across North Carolina avow themselves as either Loyalists or Patriots, we are reminded of Dougal and Colum debating the merits and faults of an allegiance to Charles Stuart.

And, as was the case in the Jacobite Rising—as is the case with any war—morality this hour leaps from the hypothetical and philosophical to the relevant and urgent. Is forgery a more punishable crime than murder? Can a suspected murderer also act as a healer? Is a good man still good if he kills a bad person? Is taking the life of one person justifiable if it means preventing the deaths of many others? Can a person consider themselves moral if they do nothing while others act immorally? Is it right to let a (maybe innocent) man commit himself to die if it is what he ultimately wishes? Is democracy worth a revolution? And, finally, can a former coward redeem himself as the hero?

Guidance and direction are our themes this hour, as nearly everyone stands before an ethical fork in the road. From Roger debating whether or not to assist Wendigo Donner to Governor Martin arguing where to sail the HMS Cruizer, our characters are figuratively and literally determining which paths they should take.

We’ve had exactly two episodes that feature a Jamie voiceover and both involve rescuing Claire from the clutches of English soldiers. Then, as in now, the paths our characters take become the legacy of their lives. “I’ve always known I’ve lived a life different from other men,” Jamie tells us at the start of The Reckoning (109). “And when I was a lad I saw no path before me…and one day I turned around and looked back, and saw that each step I’d taken was a choice to go left, to go right, to go forward or even not go at all. Every day every man has a choice between right and wrong, between love and hate, sometimes between life and death. And the sum of those choices becomes your life.”

Indeed. Strange, the things you remember.

I truly did not realize how much I had been missing the show until I again found myself in its familiar narrative. It was a remarkably strong start to the season and beautifully acted by all, but Mark Lewis Jones really elevated this episode with his subtle heartbreak and tragic poignancy. Note the transformation of his character this hour, as he evolves from a disheveled mess to a man of peaceful composure. Once Tom commits himself to a path of confession the road seems to open up fully before him. He is no longer lost…he has found a way back to redemption. There is clarity and serenity in his decision.

Roger and Bree are still adorable, throwing around cute anachronisms meant only for each other. But they stumble out of sync when one such anachronism (Roger’s hilariously awkward recitation of Muhammad Ali’s “float like a butterfly” mantra) improbably falls on the ears of another time traveler. The presence of Wendigo Donner in their midst throws a moral challenge to the MacKenzies: do they help this man because they are allied in their twentieth century origins, or was his crime of inaction during Claire’s abduction and rape too much to forgive? They argue both sides true to their characters— Brianna is mathematics, seeing much of the world in objective black and white; Roger is humanities, often viewing the world in subjective shades of grey. And while Roger is the minister-in-training, it is Bree who finds herself hearing Roger’s own confession of inaction. And, ironically, it is Roger’s inaction in this episode which gives them both a sense of moral peace.

Note: put a pin in Brianna’s decisiveness and Roger’s empathy because I have a feeling both of those traits will come in life-savingly handy later this season.

I never meant to hurt anyone, Donner assures Roger, I just wanted to get home. How often do we find ourselves on a path for which we never planned, aiming for a destination that seems increasingly out of reach? The intent—and morality—of our actions is easily displaced.

But, as Donne argued, no man is an island, even when lost. With every death we grieve and feel a rent in the fabric of humanity. We cannot ask for whom the bell tolls, because it tolls for all of us. Death is a certainty and a universal experience. We make moral choices as we go, hoping (as Tom Christie does) that in living a life well-lived we have given the world a life well-lost.

Slàinte.

Images provided by Outlander-Online.