Gozava

Gozava is the woman Tars Tarkas loved and the mother of Sola. Her imprisonment and death at the hands of Tal Hajus, following Sarkoja’s betrayal, remain a concealed history that helps explain Tars Tarkas’s private grief and his later confrontation with Sarkoja.

Identity and Background

Gozava was Sola’s mother and the beloved of Tars Tarkas. Sola later disclosed that Tars Tarkas was her father, making Gozava the central figure in the concealed parentage that Sola alone could explain to John Carter.

The events began roughly forty years before Tars Tarkas confronted Sarkoja. After an expedition, Gozava was imprisoned by Tal Hajus, who sought to force her to name Sola’s father. She remained loyal and did not disclose his identity, even under torture; she died during her imprisonment.

Betrayal and Concealed Parentage

Sola said that Gozava told her captors she had killed her child to spare her a similar fate, claiming that she had thrown the body to the white apes. This account concealed Sola’s survival and protected the secret of her father. Sarkoja alone did not believe Gozava’s story. Sola suspected that Sarkoja continued to suspect her origins, but did not expose her because she also guessed who her father was.

Sola identified Sarkoja as the person whose tale brought Tal Hajus’s torture and Gozava’s death. She said that only she, Tal Hajus, and Sarkoja knew that Sarkoja had betrayed Gozava. Tars Tarkas, although he had learned the truth about Gozava’s fate, did not know that Sarkoja had been the informant. The secret therefore joined his love and grief to a betrayal he had yet to identify.

Tars Tarkas’s Grief and Reckoning

When Tars Tarkas returned from his expedition, Tal Hajus told him what had happened to Gozava. Tars Tarkas gave no visible sign of emotion while listening, but he did not join Tal Hajus’s laughter. Afterward, Sola believed his outward restraint concealed a lasting resolve to take vengeance when the chance arose, and that his love for Gozava remained as strong as when it had first transformed him.

Years later, once Tars Tarkas learned of Sarkoja’s part in Gozava’s death, he went to her quarters with John Carter and confronted her directly. He recalled that she had helped bring about the torture and death of a woman named Gozava, and warned that the warrior who had loved her now knew of Sarkoja’s role. He said he was warning Sarkoja because he considered it just. The next morning she was gone and was never seen again.

Narrative Significance

Gozava never appears in the present action, but the story of her death links Sola’s concealed identity to Tars Tarkas’s emotional history and to Sarkoja’s eventual disappearance. Her steadfast silence protects her daughter and the father she loves, while also leaving the truth divided among a small number of people. The delayed revelation turns Tars Tarkas’s apparent composure into evidence of grief held in reserve, and makes his later warning a reckoning with an old betrayal rather than an isolated threat.