Yes, yes, I know that he’s the main character of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom books. You can stop berating me now; that’s not what I’m asking.
What I mean is that we don’t really know what he is. Think about it: He’s immortal (“I do not know how old I am. I have always seemed to myself to be about thirty”). He’s capable of willing himself across interplanetary space. He’s a master of telepathy, and never even needed to learn telepathic blocking, neither of which (despite his own explanations) is an Earthly trait. He masters any and every form of combat on his first exposure to it, even against members of a warlike society raised on those forms from birth. He’s capable of having kids with Deejah Thoris, even though she’s not only alien, but we’re explicitly told that her reproductive system is unlike those of Earthly women. For that matter, the incomparable Deejah Thoris fell madly in love with him on first sight, even though he admits that he had no knowledge at all of Barsoomian courtship customs, and Deejah must surely have had thousands of other suitors. Clearly, this guy is not human, whatever he might claim.
So what is he? My personally theory is that he is literally Mars, the War God himself. It seems the only possibility which fits with all the observations. The only thing left to explain is why he has no memory of this. Comments?
A disclaimer, by the way: I have read most, but not all, of the Barsoom books, so it’s possible that there’s something critical I’m missing in one of them. If so, then spoil or not at your own discretion. I’m probably not going to read any more of them, having exhausted my public library’s supply, but if recommended, I might hunt up the rest.
But it should be pointed out that at least one other earthman managed the crossing and to adapt to Barsoom. I forget which book but it’s in there.
John Carter’s origin is never explained. He’s clearly a part of the narrators family and I would presuppose a parent etc in it. But there’s no backstory there, either.
I always figured he was some sort of freak like Lazarus Long.
Richard Lupoff posited that John Carter was a conflation of Edwin Lester Arnold’s “Gulliver Jones” and “Phra, the Phoenician,” both stories written a decade or so before “Princess of Mars.”
Gregory Paxton, in The Master Mind of Mars. But he’s actually a point for my argument, rather than against it. How so? He’s dying in a trench, when he looks up and sees the planet Mars in the sky. He then invokes Mars, god of warriors, and asks to be transported… And is. We note two things, here: First, invocations to the god Mars can be effective, and second, that Carter never needed to make any such invocation. Paxton also can’t transfer back, the way that Carter can (I believe it’s said that Carter relayed Paxton’s story back to Earth).
As to Carter’s Earth family, I don’t think that can be taken literally, considering his uncertain age. If he doesn’t know how old he is, then he can hardly know who his parents are. I always just pictured him as a sort of “adopted uncle”.
But, Chronos, did not John Carter imply on several occasions that he could be killed? I seem to recall that, in one of the later books, he thanks a Barsoomian for killing an assassin that was drawing a bead on him with a radium gun.
Baker: It’s been a year since I last opened the book. I’d say that getting half the name right from memory is pretty good :).
And Peyote, we already have to assume that he doesn’t remember who he really is. But even aside from that, Mars was subject to injury in the Greek myths (I know I’m mixing Greek and Roman, there, but the Roman didn’t really have myths about their gods personified). In The Illiad, he’s hurt badly enough to take him out of the fight, and by a mortal, at that (admittedly a mortal with the blessing of Athena). So even if Carter couldn’t be killed, he could be badly wounded, and being spared a wound is still something to thank a comrade for.
When John Carter states that he’s “always seemed to be about thirty” it doesn’t necessarily mean that he was created at that age and has always existed at that age. We never really have any idea of how far back his memory goes (datewise). All we know is that he’s an uncle who never seems to age. Now, if he’d known this family for a very long time, you’d think that they’d all start to wonder about the guy who never aged since before grandpa was born, they apparently haven’t. So it’s entirely possible that Carter could have had some traumatic event in his life which wiped out his memory prior to a certain point. This wouldn’t invalidate him being extraordinarily long-lived, but would explain why he has no memory of his youth. After all, Carter doesn’t talk about fighting with the Romans or hanging out with the Native Americans before the white man showed up.
Also, Dejah Thoris doesn’t fall instantly in love with Carter. I remember distinctly that when JC first meets her, she spurns him, and even states that he’s not fit to care for her “cat”.
Another one of Carter’s abilities is that he seems to be a whiz at languages. After all, he has to learn Martian without any of the Martian’s knowing English.
I always thought Carter was a Martian in that he had the long life span of the Martians, but was human. He had to have been young and in a family at one point to be related to ERB in the prologues.
