The United States is named in the book’s concluding Project Gutenberg notice rather than in its Martian narrative. There, the notice situates charitable donations within the country and explains that questions about donations from abroad pose a legal and administrative difficulty for the organization.

The United States in the closing notice

The final pages identify charitable activity in all 50 states of the United States. This reference belongs to the publication notice, not to the adventures of John Carter: the central narrative unfolds on Mars, and the cited episodes involving Martian customs and political authority do not place the United States within that plot.

The notice distinguishes domestic charitable activity from donations received from outside the United States. It says that the laws of the United States alone overwhelm the organization’s small staff, presenting national law as an immediate limit on its capacity to address international donations. The country is thus invoked in practical, administrative terms rather than as a setting for fictional action.

Narrative and publication context

The reference occurs in the book’s end matter, where Project Gutenberg discusses charitable donations and the burden of compliance. Its placement creates a sharp contrast with the preceding account of Martian life: the novel’s action ranges across alien customs and struggles for authority, while the notice turns to the concrete legal and operational circumstances of distributing an eBook and receiving support.

The supplied passages establish no further role for the United States in the story’s events. Its grounded significance here is limited but specific: it is the jurisdiction named in the donation notice, whose laws the organization describes as demanding enough to tax its small staff.