Style
A Princess of Mars is similar to many of Burroughs' tales: it is characterized by copious violent action. It is basically a travelogue, a tale of a journey and various encounters on that journey, which does not necessarily have a defined plot. It is also a captivity narrative - involving a civilized hero being captured by an uncivilized culture and being forced to adapt to the primitive nature of the captors to survive.
As is the case with the majority of the Barsoom novels to follow, it portrays a hero facing impossible odds and forced to fight a range of lurid creatures in order to win the love of the heroine. Burroughs' Barsoom is also morally unambiguous; there is no sense of moral relativity and characters are either good or evil. The tale portrays a hero with a sense of honor transcending race or politics. Compassion, loyalty and bravery are celebrated, and callousness, deception, and cowardice are frowned upon.
Read more about this topic: A Princess Of Mars
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes—countrysides and figures, movements and gestures—how could he have a style, that is originality?”
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“One who has given up any hope of winning a fight or has clearly lost it wants his style in fighting to be admired all the more.”
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“I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.”
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