The barsoomians live extremely long lives… a thousand years..?
You can imagine how good a sword fighter you would be if you lived to be 300 years old. All the fighting men on mars are, by earth standards, superb fighters…
The cities of Barsoom have been being purposely abandoned because there is no water to sustain them… The oceans receded slowly over a long time.
This leaves entire cities left intact in semi good condition…
Most of the John Carter stories tend to be about pursueing Dejah Thoris … and the action and adventuring involved tend to be about meeting new and interesting peoples and apparently killing a few of them..
John Carter himself was portrayed as being the essence of the fighting man’s spirit…!
John Carter has apparently always existed in many different times and always was a fighting man of one sort or another…
John Carter is after all a fictional character meant to be used as a story telling device.
That said…
I always thought John Carter was maybe a living man at one time and through some kind of Indian spiritualism magic his spirit was sent to Barsoom and given a super strong body and tremendous good luck.
I always liked the adventures because John Carter was always discovering lost civilizations …. entering abandoned cities and discovering that he was not alone.
The plot devices of Dejah Thoris and other princesses always getting themselves Kidnapped was a completely new Idea to me… I would …with certainty …pursue anyone who kidnapped one of my family.
John Carter always had to kinda sneak around to get into these not so abandoned cities and sneak off with Dejah thoris before the might of the inhabitants crushed or captured Dejah and himself…
I love all the sneaking around … The fights when discovered… and mad races to safety..
Its fun stuff….
John Massey
June 6, 2012 at 1:40 am
