A Princess of Mars has many similarities to Westerns, including a desert setting, a heroine taken captive, and a showdown with the antagonist. Burroughs worked as a soldier at Fort Grant, Arizona, where he patrolled the desert to protect white settlers. During this time he gained a great respect for American Indians and their warriors, such as Geronimo. Barsoom resembles a kind of Martian Wild West. Indeed, John Carter is an adventuring frontiersman who is cornered by Apache warriors in the Arizona desert before his transition to Mars. When he arrives there, he discovers a savage, frontier world with scarce resources, where strength is respected, and where the civilized Red Martians maintain their racial vigor by repelling the constant attacks of the Green Martians. The latter are a barbaric, nomadic, tribal culture with many parallels to American Indians.
A nostalgic desire to return to the frontier became a common theme in the United States during the early twentieth century. In the Disney movie John Carter, Bryan Cranston portrays a U.S. Calvary Major who tries to convince John Carter to fight American Indians. As the nation become more urbanized, the 19th-century frontier was romanticized as a lost world of freedom and noble savagery. Similar ideas may be reflected in the fate of the ancient white race of Mars, which is mentioned in A Princess of Mars and reintroduced in a later Martian novel, Llana of Gathol ; they are described as having become weak and degenerate through their dependence on the trappings and comforts of civilization.
Race is a constant theme in the Barsoom novels, as Barsoom is distinctly divided along racial lines. White, Yellow, Black, Red, and Green races appear in various novels of the series, each with ethnic qualities that often seem to define their individual representatives. Although John Carter is able to befriend the Green Martian Tars Tarkas, who shows noble qualities, Tarkas is called an exception to the rule, and remains a noble savage. John Carter himself is white-skinned, so that Barsoomians sometimes identify him with their own surviving White race, known as the Holy Therns; for example, Carter successfully impersonates a Thern named Sator Throg in The Gods of Mars . Carter's unusual appearance and un-Barsoomian strength and agility make him a kind of mythic figure, capable of achievements that no Barsoomian could manage.
The Red Martians have created the dominant culture on Barsoom. They are organized into imperial city-states that control the planetary canal system, as well as more isolated states in the hinterlands.
The Red Martians are hybrids of the ancient Yellow Martians, White Martians, and Black Martians, who joined forces when the seas of Barsoom began to dry up; their union created a hardy race capable of surviving in a dying world.
They are, like all the humanoid races of Mars, oviparous, i.e., their newborn hatch from eggs.
The Red Martians, like the Green Martians, eschew clothing, going nude except for jewelry and other ornamentation. In Chapter 11, Dejah Thoris derides Earth men, who "almost without exception, cover their bodies with strange, unsightly pieces of cloth."
The Red Martians are honorable and highly civilized; they respect private property and have a keen sense of fairness. Their culture is lawful and technologically advanced, and they are capable of love and family life. The chief crime in their cities is assassination.
The Green Martians are 15 feet tall, Burroughs wrote, adding from John Carter's observation of newly hatched children,
“
They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long necks and six legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two arms, with an intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and also independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning the head.
The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together, were small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on these young specimens. Their noses were but longitudinal slits in the center of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears.
There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very light yellowish-green color...."
They are nomadic, warlike, and barbaric; do not form families; have discarded concepts of friendship and affection (presumably in the name of survival); and enjoy torture. Their social structure is communal and rigidly hierarchical, with various levels of chiefs. The highest rank is the all-powerful Jeddak, who reaches this position through combat. They are tribal, and war among one another. They are primitive, intellectually backwards, and have no art or written language. Any advanced technology they possess is stolen from the Red Martians. They inhabit the ancient ruined cities of Barsoom.
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