Aug 31
by Edgar Rice Burroughswith an introduction by Gore Vidal
-Tarzan Series, Book 1-
(New York: Signet, 1990)
Paperback, 288 Pages, Fiction
ISBN: 9780451524232, US$4.95
“The Tarzan legend returns us to Eden where, free of clothes and the inhibitions of an oppressive society, a man is able, as William Faulkner put it, to prevail as well as endure.” —Gore Vidal, from the Introduction
From the Cover: Set amidst the vibrant colors and sounds of the savage African jungle, this classic work, rich in suspense and action, has beckoned generations of readers on a glorious journey to romance and pure adventure. This is the story of the ape-man Tarzan, raised in the wild by the great ape Kala, and how he learns the secrets of the jungle to survive—how to talk with the animals, swing through the trees, and fight the great predators. As Tarzan grows up he makes many friends: Tantor the elephant, Ska the vulture, and Numa the lion. When this paradise is invaded by white men, Tarzan’s life changes, for in this group is Jane, the first white woman he has ever seen. Speaking directly to our childhood fantasies, this exhilarating work takes us to that faraway place in our minds where dreams prevail, and where we, too, can be masters of our environment.
My Review: My son, Connor, has recently discovered Disney’s 1999 film, Tarzan. We were at the library looking for a DVD for him. He loves animals and among his favorites are elephants and gorillas. When he saw the cover for Tarzan, with Tantor and Kerchak and Kala and Terk … he flipped. Now, two three sometimes even four times a day we watch Tarzan and Connor sits on the couch (or the floor) with his Schleich animal figurines—an African elephant, a leopard, a gorilla, a crocodile, a rhino, a hippo—and watches Tarzan.
Waaaaaaaay back in 1999, when Disney first released the animated film, I picked up Burroughs’ novel because I wanted to know the real story of Tarzan and not the Disney-a-fied version. Now, as my son has discovered the film I thought I should pick up Burroughs’ once more and go through it. Not for my son—he’s only 30-some-odd months old—but for myself.
This time through Tarzan of the Apes I was struck by how many cultural narratives have sprung up surrounding Tarzan … and nearly all of them have nothing to do with the novel. For example, if I were to ask you to describe “TARZAN” to me, I would be willing to bet that most, if not all, of the following would be in your answers:
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Rides an elephant named Tantor
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Hangs out with a chimpanzee named “Cheeta”
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“Me Tarzan, You Jane”
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Wears a leopard skin loincloth
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Swings from vines through the jungle
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Carries a spear
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Has a stone knife on a belt in his loincloth
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Calls animals with his yell
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Has a necklace of animal teeth/fangs
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Was raised by gorillas
Would you be surprised if I told you all but two of these are cultural constructs that have come from the films, especially the Johnny Weissmuller films of the ‘30s and ‘40s. (The two on the list that are from Burroughs’ book as well as the many films are swinging from vines through the jungle and riding an elephant [though in the book Tarzan’s interactions with Tantor all happen “off screen” so to speak] … in Burroughs’ book, he states numerous times that Tarzan is not being raised by gorillas, but rather by a species of great apes unknown to science who call themselves the Mangani—“Tarzan,” in the language of the Mangani, means “White Skin.”) Though, really, I guess it should come as no surprise that our cultural concept of Tarzan comes from film and TV because, honestly, who reads anymore? It’s a waste of time.
We pause for station identification while Bryan gets himself under control.
Okay, better now.
Burroughs’ Tarzan, however, is not the grunting proto-human speaking broken English of Weissmuller or Disney but is instead the epitome of the noble savage. Numerous times Burroughs takes great pains to point out that Tarzan’s abilities and successes come from the fact that he descends from a great and noble man (and nobleman), John Clayton, Lord Greystoke. This focus on Tarzan’s white nobility brings forward the racism and science of the time (Tarzan of the Apes was written in 1914) especially as Tarzan interacts with the black cannibals in the novel. From what I can find, Burroughs’ racism in the Tarzan novels was not “mean-spirited,” so to speak, and merely a byproduct of the time in which he lived, and in fact the racism and sexism that appears in his early novels disappears or transforms into satire when Burroughs moves to Hollywood to expand the “Tarzan Brand.” However, the depiction of the native Africans in this first Tarzan novel is not favorable: Tarzan is portrayed as superior to the natives since they tortured and ate their victims and Tarzan does neither. Burroughs also makes it a point to emphasize that this superiority is because of Tarzan’s noble British (read: white) blood and man’s (again, read: white) reason.
However, in spite of the dated thinking, Tarzan is a fascinating novel because Burroughs manages to cram so much into a very short (relatively speaking) novel—it is only 288 pages long. In Tarzan Burroughs touches on themes of man’s status in the Animal Kingdom, nature v. nurture, Victorian/fin-de-siècle fears of man’s savage side and man’s duality, atavism, Darwin’s theories of evolution, the belief in man’s inherent nobility, man’s inhumanity to man, “The White Man’s Burden,” the list goes on, and I could easily write a critical paper on each of these topics using solely Tarzan as my main text. It would be an interesting exercise to do so … maybe …
Also, I found Tarzan to be an interesting novel in the school of realism and naturalism (a category dominated by such literary luminaries as Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Jack London, to name a few). Burroughs makes his Tarzan quite realistic and does an excellent job of making his “Ape Man.” To read Tarzan is to believe that, under similar circumstances, a baby raised by apes would turn out much like Tarzan does.
Yet Tarzan is principally a novel to be read for enjoyment. In spite of the fact that I cannot turn off the “literary critic” portion of my brain, I can put it on “sleep mode” and enjoy a fun and exciting and adventurous story like Tarzan. My only complaint, and it’s not much of a complaint, I admit, is that Tarzan of the Apes ends on a cliffhanger of sorts (something I don’t remember from my first reading in 1999) and now I need to go out and pick up the other 25 novels in Burroughs’ series. I recommend you do the same, especially if you’ve got a 10-12-year-old boy in your family. Tarzan is one of those novels that every pre-teen boy needs to read. (The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson are also on the list). This is not to say that your pre-teen girls wouldn’t also enjoy Tarzan of the Apes, but I think that this book should be required reading for the boys in your life. Get them off the Wii or PS3 or Xbox or what-have-you and have them read a book that will challenge them and spark their imaginations and awake in them their sense of wonder and adventure.
