Sarkoja

Sarkoja is an influential Thark woman whose loyalty to the community’s harsh customs repeatedly becomes personal persecution. As a guard to Dejah Thoris and an enforcer of the old order, she helps endanger the captive and John Carter; as the betrayer of Gozava, she also embodies the hidden history that binds Sola to Tars Tarkas. Her disappearance after Tars Tarkas confronts her closes her part in that history without explaining what became of her.

Position and Authority

Sarkoja is one of the older women sharing quarters with John Carter, Sola, and other Tharks. She had served as a guard during Dejah Thoris’s appearance before the council, and, in the community’s ordinary evening conversation, she reports that the captive will be taken to Thark and made an exhibit at the great games before Tal Hajus. Her answer makes clear that the council plans not merely to hold Dejah Thoris but to display her death as public entertainment.

Her influence is more than that of a guard. At this point Sarkoja is Tars Tarkas’s oldest and most trusted female, and the narrative describes her as a powerful figure behind the throne. Tars Tarkas is the lieutenant in whom Lorquas Ptomel places exceptional confidence, so her closeness to him gives Sarkoja access to authority even though she is not herself presented as a formal ruler. The position helps explain why her report about John Carter can reach Lorquas Ptomel so quickly and why her actions affect the prisoners’ prospects.

Treatment of Dejah Thoris

When Dejah Thoris is brought before the council, Sarkoja is one of her two guards. Her conduct is deliberately harsh: she grips the prisoner painfully, twists her arm, and moves her by jerking or shoving her. The other guard is described as indifferent rather than actively cruel; Sarkoja, by contrast, appears to direct accumulated hostility at the captive. The contrast makes her treatment a choice and a practice, not simply a consequence of the duties of guarding.

Sarkoja also participates in the decision to take Dejah Thoris to Thark for the great games. In a community where the suffering of captives is treated as amusement, she reports the plan in the same matter-of-fact register as a practical arrangement. Dejah Thoris’s appeal to the council for peace and cooperation offers a pointed contrast: she argues that the red people’s scientific work sustains the planet’s air and water, and asks the Tharks to abandon their violent, loveless social order. Sarkoja’s subsequent conduct gives no sign that this plea alters her course.

Betrayal of Gozava and Sola’s Past

Sarkoja’s earlier actions are revealed through Sola’s account of her family history. Gozava, Sola’s mother, had kept Sola hidden and raised her with the love that communal child-rearing would have denied them. After Sarkoja discovered the secret, she confronted Gozava and demanded the identity of Sola’s father. Gozava refused to reveal the name, even under threats, and Sarkoja went to Tal Hajus to report what she had uncovered.

The consequences were severe. Gozava fled with Sola, then concealed the child among the other young Tharks before she was imprisoned. Tal Hajus subjected her to torture to force the father’s name from her; she remained silent and died in captivity. To shield Sola, Gozava claimed that she had killed her child and thrown the body to the White apes. Sarkoja alone disbelieved this account. Sola later says that Sarkoja suspects her true origin but has not exposed her, and that Sarkoja knows she was the one who informed on Gozava. The betrayal therefore remains a dangerous secret shared by Sarkoja, Tal Hajus, and Sola, while Tars Tarkas’s identity as Sola’s father is concealed from him and from others.

Escalation Against the Prisoners

In the present conflict, Sarkoja’s report to Tal Hajus raises the threat to both Dejah Thoris and John Carter. Sola warns them that Sarkoja has been to Tal Hajus and that there is little hope for either of them; she has heard that they are to be thrown to wild calots in the arena when the hordes gather for the yearly games. The threat marks a progression from Dejah Thoris’s planned public ordeal to a danger that includes John Carter.

Sarkoja’s part in John Carter’s attempted recapture is also explicit in the orders he overhears while seeking Dejah Thoris. A chieftain instructs four warriors to seize Carter if he returns to the chamber, bind him, and hold him in the vaults beneath the jeddak’s quarters for Tal Hajus. The speaker says Dejah Thoris is already safe in Tal Hajus’s hands and credits Sarkoja with having done a successful night’s work. The passage connects Sarkoja’s influence to a coordinated attempt to separate the prisoners and place them under Tal Hajus’s control.

During John Carter’s duel with Zad, Sarkoja escalates from political and custodial pressure to direct interference. As Carter struggles against Zad, Sarkoja uses a small mirror to reflect sunlight into his eyes, momentarily impairing him. Dejah Thoris knocks the mirror from Sarkoja’s raised hand. Sarkoja then draws a dagger and attacks Dejah Thoris, but Sola steps between them. The episode exposes Sarkoja’s willingness to manipulate a public contest and to threaten Dejah Thoris when that interference is discovered; it also places Sola in opposition to the woman who betrayed her mother.

Confrontation and Disappearance

Much later, after Tars Tarkas hears Sola’s story, John Carter accompanies him to Sarkoja’s quarters. Sarkoja looks at Carter with intense hatred, but Tars Tarkas addresses her directly about her role, forty years earlier, in bringing about Gozava’s torture and death. He warns that Gozava’s lover has learned of Sarkoja’s part and may subject her to a test of survival involving a wild thoat. He also tells her that the River Iss is a possible final pilgrimage. His warning is framed as notice, not as an announcement that he will kill her himself.

Sarkoja is gone the next morning and is never seen again. The account supplies no further explanation of her destination or fate. Her exit is nevertheless consequential: the secret that had linked her to Gozava’s death has been spoken aloud by Tars Tarkas, and the woman who once used her position to expose another person’s forbidden family life leaves Thark’s story under a threat shaped by the same brutal customs she helped enforce.