Tars Tarkas

Tars Tarkas is a Thark chieftain, statesman, and warrior whose changing relationship with John Carter helps turn a society governed by custom and combat toward friendship and alliance. His arc joins public authority to private grief: he is Sola’s concealed father, and his buried attachment to Gozava becomes a measure of the emotional life that Thark custom has suppressed.

Identity and Authority

When Carter is brought before the Thark ruler, Tars Tarkas is identified as the community’s virtual vice-chief, a man of considerable ability in both statecraft and war. He presents the circumstances of Carter’s capture to the ruler and accompanies the newcomer as the gathered warriors examine him. The position gives Tars Tarkas influence, but not freedom from the customs that organize Thark life: formal standing is publicly recognized, while advancement and legitimacy remain closely tied to combat.

At the egg incubator, Tars Tarkas explains Carter’s arrival to Lorquas Ptomel, the Thark jeddak, and summons Carter to join them. The scene places him between the new captive and the ruling circle, acting as intermediary within a community whose young are raised collectively and whose future depends on the incubator. His authority is practical as well as ceremonial: he can direct Carter’s movements and help interpret the society into which Carter has fallen.

Doubt within Thark Custom

The council scene exposes the conflict beneath Tars Tarkas’s public role. Dejah Thoris argues that the Tharks’ communal order has produced hatred and lovelessness, and urges them to join the red Martians in efforts to sustain their dying planet. Tars Tarkas rises as if to answer. Carter observes a look of inward struggle, as though he were resisting heredity and long-established custom; for a moment, his expression seems almost kind. The young woman’s appeal is interrupted by a warrior’s assault, and the council’s old values reassert themselves. Tars Tarkas does not openly break with the assembly, but his brief readiness to speak makes visible a possibility the society’s habits immediately constrain.

His response to Carter’s accidental killing of a warrior shows how completely Thark standing is measured through violence. The dead warrior’s arms and ornaments are brought to Carter, and Tars Tarkas watches as Carter understands that the killing has made him a chieftain in the community’s rough system of justice. Carter’s new rank and the freedom that comes with it are not bestowed through personal trust alone: they follow from victory and the dead man’s status. Tars Tarkas’s quizzical attention registers Carter’s altered position within the rules he is still learning.

Sola, Gozava, and Private Grief

Tars Tarkas’s past is bound to Gozava, whose torture and death followed a betrayal by Sarkoja. Sola tells Carter that only she, Tal Hajus, and Sarkoja know who her father is, and discloses that the father is Tars Tarkas. She trusts Carter with the secret without imposing conditions on what he may later say. The revelation recasts Tars Tarkas’s place in the community: the warrior who appears to belong wholly to its hard public order has a daughter and a history of love, both obscured by the customs that govern Thark life.

When Carter returns to Thark and finds Tars Tarkas again, the chief’s grief is evident in his face as he recalls what was done to the only thing he had ever loved. He agrees to go before Tal Hajus, but first asks to speak with Sarkoja. He warns her that Carter knows of her part in Gozava’s death and that, although Thark custom forbids Carter from killing her, he could test her survival by tying her to a wild thoat. Tars Tarkas presents the warning as an act of justice; he does not carry out the threat himself. Sarkoja is gone the next morning and is never seen again. The episode gives Tars Tarkas a means of confronting the old crime within the limits of the society’s own customs, while leaving Sarkoja’s final fate unstated.

Friendship with John Carter

Tars Tarkas’s relationship with Carter develops through shared danger and mutual recognition. When Carter arrives in the midst of a battle between Tharks and Warhoons, he sees Tars Tarkas fall after stumbling over a body, with three opponents upon him. Carter intervenes, fighting one attacker before Tars Tarkas regains his feet and defeats another. Tars Tarkas answers with a slight smile and tells Carter that no other mortal on Barsoom would have acted for him as Carter did; he says he has learned that friendship exists. The rescue makes their connection reciprocal: Carter’s earlier place among the Tharks had been defined by capture and rank, but here he risks himself for Tars Tarkas without an exchange of status or reward.

Carter has also challenged the Tharks’ treatment of animals, arguing that kindness toward thoats makes them more dependable in battle. Tars Tarkas asks to learn Carter’s method, which Carter later demonstrates to Lorquas Ptomel and the assembled warriors. The resulting mounts are more tractable, and the improvement in military movement is sufficiently striking that Lorquas Ptomel gives Carter a heavy gold anklet. Although this episode centers on Carter’s practice, Tars Tarkas’s willingness to ask for instruction shows a capacity to consider a useful alternative to customary force. It also foreshadows how the friendship between the two men can change Thark practice through persuasion as well as combat.

Jeddak and Alliance

Tars Tarkas’s accession follows a challenge to Tal Hajus’s fitness to rule. Carter denounces the jeddak for avoiding battle while exercising power over defenseless people, and proposes Tars Tarkas as a brave and worthy leader. Lorquas Ptomel puts the question of fitness to the council; twenty chieftains raise their swords in assent, making the decision final. Tal Hajus fights Tars Tarkas and is killed. Tars Tarkas becomes jeddak and immediately makes Carter a full-fledged chieftain, recognizing the rank Carter had won during his first weeks in captivity. Political succession thus confirms the same combat-based code that had first elevated Carter, even as the new ruler’s choices begin to redirect that code toward a larger purpose.

As jeddak, Tars Tarkas accepts Carter’s proposal to rescue Dejah Thoris from Zodanga and return her to Helium. He presents the mission to the council both as a chance for plunder and as a strategic opportunity: an alliance with Helium could give the Tharks greater security of sustenance, allowing them to increase the size and frequency of their hatchings and strengthen their position among the green Martians. The appeal deliberately meets the council on familiar terms—war and loot—while attaching those motives to a possible political relationship with the red Martians.

The march shows Tars Tarkas’s ability to turn that proposal into collective action. Three days after the decision, he leads a force of one hundred thousand; during the night marches, he recruits another fifty thousand from other hordes. Ten days after departure, the army reaches Zodanga at midnight, one hundred and fifty thousand strong. The separate hordes are difficult to keep in harmony, but their quarrels recede before their shared hostility toward the Zodangans, whose campaigns have targeted Thark incubators. The scale of the force and the discipline needed to assemble it establish Tars Tarkas not just as a victorious fighter but as a political organizer.

After the alliance’s success, Tardos Mors greets Tars Tarkas as both a great warrior and a friend. Tars Tarkas replies that a man from another world has taught the green warriors the meaning of friendship, and credits Carter with making the Thark hordes able to understand and return the Heliumites’ goodwill. The exchange gives the relationship a consequence beyond private loyalty: Carter’s friendship with Tars Tarkas has helped make relations between the two peoples imaginable. Tars Tarkas remains a product of a society that rewards force, but his rise to leadership allows him to use its military power in service of an alliance rather than isolation alone.