Point of View

Edgar Rice Burroughs tells his novel A Princess of Mars in the first-person reflective omniscient perspective, from the point of view of main character and principal protagonist, John Carter. Because the novel takes the form of a manuscript in which John Carter details his personal experiences on Mars, it is only natural that the novel be told from the perspective of John Carter in the first-person point of view. Because John is writing decades after the experiences contained in the manuscript, he is able to provide important contextual details, often interrupting the narrative to do so. This helps give the reader a better sense of events, and a better understanding of the world in which John finds himself. At the same time, the reflective perspective of the narration – in which John references events long past – is only natural given the fact that the experiences recorded...