Thark is an ancient Martian city occupied by the green Martian hordes that have taken their name from its long-forgotten people. It serves as the principal seat of Tal Hajus’s rule and the place where John Carter and Dejah Thoris are brought as captives; its immense but sparsely inhabited architecture embodies both the scale of green Martian power and the harsh social order that Carter encounters there.

Identity and Setting

The city stands at the center of a district claimed by Tal Hajus, Jeddak of Thark. Thirty days after arriving on Barsoom, Carter’s party enters the ancient settlement, whose name and buildings outlast the people who originally built it. The green Martians have appropriated that inherited name, making the city a marker of a much older history even as its present inhabitants live among the remnants of a vanished civilization.

The Tharkian hordes number about thirty thousand and are divided into twenty-five communities. Each has its own jed and lesser chieftains, while all answer to Tal Hajus. Five communities have their headquarters in Thark; the others are scattered among deserted cities elsewhere in the district. The city is therefore not simply a single settlement but the administrative and symbolic center of a dispersed territory.

City Plan and Quarters

Carter and Dejah Thoris enter the great central plaza early in the afternoon. Their arrival draws attention because the returning expedition has brought two captives, who become the focus of inquisitive groups. The response is not a warm welcome for the expedition: the city’s inhabitants formally acknowledge only those warriors or women with whom they have direct dealings, and curiosity about the prisoners soon eclipses the return itself.

The captives are assigned separate quarters. Carter’s home is an entire building on the avenue leading south from the plaza, at the far end of the square and along the route by which the expedition entered. The architecture recalls Korad, but on a larger and richer scale. His quarters could have housed an earthly emperor; the Tharks, however, chiefly value the size and vast chambers of a building rather than its suitability as a home.

The city’s hierarchy is visible in the placement and scale of its buildings. Tal Hajus occupies the largest public building, though Carter judges it entirely unfitted for residence. The next largest belongs to Lorquas Ptomel, followed by the jeds of lesser rank. The jeds’ buildings front on the plaza, while warriors live with the chieftains whose retinues they belong to or take shelter in the thousands of untenanted buildings in their own quarter. Each community is assigned a particular section, so settlement follows communal divisions as well as rank.

Captivity and Escape

The city makes the captives’ position concrete: their accommodation is spacious, but their freedom is absent. Carter seeks out Sola after settling into his quarters, intending to speak with Dejah Thoris and persuade her to maintain a truce until he can help her escape. He finds Woola watching from a second-story window across the street, a small indication that the people and animals connected to the captives are distributed through the city’s occupied buildings rather than held in one visible enclosure.

The danger of remaining in Thark becomes explicit when Sola reports that Dejah Thoris is to be thrown to wild calots in the great arena once the hordes gather for the yearly games. Carter appeals to Sola to join an escape, and Dejah Thoris offers her a home, protection, and the affection she has been denied by Tharkian customs. Sola weighs their hope against the geography: the great waterway leading toward Helium lies fifty miles to the south, and a swift thoat could reach it in three hours, but Helium itself is five hundred miles away, mostly through thinly settled country. She expects pursuit and warns that the Tharks would exact a toll of life along the way. The city is thus both the captives’ immediate refuge and the point from which escape becomes a perilous journey.

Power and Historical Significance

Thark’s authority extends beyond its plaza. When Carter later proposes rescuing Dejah Thoris and returning her to Helium, Tars Tarkas uses the prospect of battle and the riches of Zodanga to rally green Martian forces. Twenty mounted messengers ride across dead sea bottoms to summon the hordes. The expedition sets out three days later with one hundred thousand warriors; after Tars Tarkas recruits another fifty thousand on the march, the force reaches Zodanga ten days after departure. Its scale makes plain the military reach that can be mobilized from Thark and its allied communities.

The city’s social order is also central to the book’s contrast between green and red Martian societies. Dejah Thoris describes the red expedition as a peaceful scientific mission to chart air currents and measure atmospheric density, arguing that its work helps preserve the air and water supply on which life on Mars depends. She condemns the green Martians’ communal ownership of women and children and their lack of homes, art, written language, and love, while inviting them to cooperate with the red people. Her appeal briefly moves the assembled warriors, and Tars Tarkas rises with an expression Carter reads as an inward struggle against custom. Thark is therefore not merely a ruined city occupied by a warlike people: it is the setting in which the possibility of political and moral change is voiced, even as the established customs and rivalries continue to govern events.