Group “C” should answer TWO of the following:
Q1: Dejah Thoris, trying to explain to John Carter why they
can never be married now, says “It is custom. We are ruled by custom upon
Barsoom” (149). Why does Burroughs create a world that prizes custom/tradition
over free-will and love? Does this contrast with our own laws and values? Or is
it a science-fiction echo of it?
Q2: Do you find the various twists and turns of the
plot—always in Carter’s favor—a little too unbelievable or convenient? Note
that the Zodangans never question John Carter’s strange name until he escapes,
and then exclaim, “who ever heard of such a name upon Barsoom!” (152). Why does
he make it so easy (relatively) for John Carter to dash from one escapade to
another? Or is this secretly why we like the work—because we know he’ll always
escape?
Q3: After the defeat of Zodanga, Carter writes, “In a
hundred places they had applied the torch, and columns of dense smoke were
rising about the city as though to blot out from the eye of heaven the horrid
sights beneath” (172). Though Carter is reunited with his love and his friend,
Tars Tarkas, the entire city is destroyed, looted, and its citizens left to the
sword. Is this supposed to darken his ‘happy ending’? Or is this simply a
reflection of his conversion to Martian beliefs: that all enemies deserve to be
destroyed?
Q4: The book could have easily ended with the end of Chapter
26, or at the beginning of 27, when he describes watching over his egg with
Dejah Thoris. Instead, he robs us our Hollywood happy
ending by having the entire planet die—or seem to die, before he is
transported back to Earth. Why do you think he did this? Was it merely to set
up a cliffhanger for his next book (and he wrote many of them)? Or does it
underline other themes we’ve encountered earlier in the book?
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