Section 1: "From the Arizona Hills - A Fight That Won Friends"
1) In Chapter 1, Captain Carter runs into a scrape with Indians. How does this establish his sense of honor and old-fashioned values?
2) In Chapter 2, John Carter is magically whisked away to Mars without explanation. Is there a reason that the novel does not explain the reason for his passing to Mars, and is it important to the story to know why?
3) In Chapter 3, John Carter arrives on Mars and meets the Tharks. How does his interactions with them echo his earlier interactions with the Indians?
4) In Chapter 4, John Carter states that "There are other and natural causes tending toward a diminution of population, but nothing contributes so greatly to this end as the fact that no male or female Martian is ever voluntarily without a weapon of destruction." Does he react, you think, to this realization as a challenge or a threat?
5) In Chapter 6, John Carter fights white apes. Does this violence make him a good person compared to the Tharks, who are incredibly warlike?
6) What would you say is John Carter's motive for leaving Mars, based on his apparent choice to do so and his enjoyment of the land of Barsoom?
Section 2: "Child-Raising on Mars" to "With Dejah Thoris"
1) How does the descriptions of Thark culture help to immerse the reader in the world of the book?
2) How does the objectification of Dejah Thoris from John Carter's eyes key in with his personality?
3) How does Sola's personality differ from the rest of the Tharks?
4) Why do the Tharks pay special attention to John Carter?
5) How does Dejah differentiate herself in personality from the others John finds on Mars?
6) What is significant about John Carter's allegiance and friendship with the Tharks?
Section 3: "A Prisoner With Power" to "We Plan Escape"
1) How does John Carter react to his being made a Thark chieftain?
2) Does John Carter find himself identifying more with the Martians than other humans?
3) What do the Tharks think about concepts like friendship and allegiance?
4) Do you think that John Carter calling Dejah and Sola "my women" is insulting or degrading to them?
5) Is John Carter's "inverse" view of his skill with men and women charmingly old-fashioned, or is it an unacceptable view to take from modern eyes?
6) What would you predict at this point happens between John Carter and Dejah Thoris?
Section 4: "A Costly Recapture" to "I Find Dejah"
1) Does John Carter like killing, or does he fight Warhoons purely for survival?
2) What is the main difference between the Tharks and the Warhoon?
3) How do Kantos Kan and John Carter get out of killing each other in the arena?
4) Do you think the atmosphere plant is brought up later in the novel?
5) Why does John Carter choose to help the Zodangan attacked by Tharks?
6) If you could give John Carter one character flaw, what would it be?
Section 5: "Lost in the Sky" to "At the Arizona Cave"
1) Does John Carter seem invincible to you in this book?
2) How does John Carter's presence change the political atmosphere of Barsoom?
3) Does the climactic battle in Zodanga remind you of any other action books or films you remember?
4) Could the book have ended appropriately at the end of the Zodanga fight, without the epilogue about the atmosphere factory?
5) Why does John Carter not immediately go to the failing atmosphere plant and enter the code to open the door?
6) What is significant about John Carter's reaction upon returning to Earth?
COMPARE/CONTRAST ESSAY
Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series of books has been in publication since 1912, and consist of eleven serialized novels taking place on the fantastical version of Mars known as Barsoom. The stories, including the first novel A Princess of Mars, told tales of swashbuckling superheroes and entirely alien cultures - a work that has influenced nearly all major science fiction works since its creation, from Star Wars to Avatar. This old fashioned tale of a Confederate veteran who finds himself literally spirited away to Barsoom, only to find adventure and become a hero there, was finally retold a century later with Andrew Stanton's 2012 film John Carter. This film takes the first book and stays largely true to the spirit of the book, though it streamlines it considerably to maintain a consistent narrative and provide deeper character work. All the same, the film maintains the book's sense of fun and derring-do, with impressive special effects to demonstrate the world of Barsoom.
The character of John Carter is one of the most substantial changes when adapting A Princess of Mars to the big screen. In the books, John Carter is the prototypical hero - he is nearly ageless, has superhuman strength and jumping powers on Barsoom, and has no tragic backstory or pathos to him. John Carter, in the books, is the quintessential adventurer, with few distinguishing character traits other than his penchant for fighting and his love of women, particularly Dejah Thoris. In the film, however, John Carter is given a few demons to work through; played by Taylor Kitsch, this John Carter is slightly younger, and has become a reckless mercenary after the death of his wife and child by Indians, which is revealed slowly over the course of the film. Instead of immediately taking to the world of Barsoom, he spends quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to get home. It is only after he falls for Dejah Thoris and finds renewed purpose among the people of Barsoom that he decides to turn from "John Carter of Earth" to "John Carter of Mars."
The original publication of the book was serialized - this means that the book was written and released, chapter by chapter, in a science fiction magazine before it was compiled into a novel. This leaves the book itself as a very episodic work, where each chapter has its own beginning, middle, and end. In the case of John Carter, however, they had to frame it into a single story that had its own specific arc. As a result, some of the segments of the book were entirely left out, like the visit to the atmosphere factory, the time spent with the Warhoon, and much of his interactions with the Heliumite Kantos Kan. Instead, the film is streamlined into his attempts to get home, all the while rescuing Dejah and fighting the war against the cities of Helium and Zodanga. With this, the film gives up the travelogue narrative of the book while turning it into a perfectly acceptable and enjoyable science fiction adventure story.
Works Cited
AMC. "Film Terms Glossary." AMC Filmsite. 2012.
Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. Taxonomy of
educational objectives: the classification of educational goals; Handbook I: Cognitive
Domain. New York, Longmans, Green, 1956.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars. 1912. Print.
Lupoff, Richard A. Barsoom: Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Martian vision. 2001. Print.
Stanton, Andrew. Dir. John Carter. Perf. Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe. Disney,
2012. Film.
