Tarzan of the Apes

It was 100 years ago that the first appearance of one of the most enduring characters in all of literature made his first appearance. Serialized in magazine form (and then published in book form in 1914), Edgar Rice Burroughs created Tarzan of the Apes in 1912. Since then, scores of films, TV and radio shows, comic books, and video games have centered around the hero. Burroughs himself wrote a few dozen sequels. Even a town in California was named after him.

Though the novel can't be called "literature," for a work of pulp fiction it is, as they used to say, a ripping good yarn. Much of it is familiar: an English lord, John Clayton, Viscount of Greystoke, and his wife Alice are put ashore on the coast of west Africa by mutineers. They build a cabin, and Alice gives birth to a baby boy. But she dies, and then Clayton is killed by an ape. A female ape, who has just lost her baby, takes the infant as her own, and he is raised as an ape.

He learns the ways of apes, and becomes proficient, due to his great size, strength, and agility. But Burroughs makes it clear that it is his intelligence that sets him apart. Without it, because he is not as strong as the apes, he would be easily killed, but because he is able to outwit other animals, and to use tools (such as a knife and rope) he becomes their king.

Tarzan, as he names himself, can also read. He finds his parents' cabin, and while not knowing his true parentage studies the books inside. He teaches himself to read, but does not know how to speak. Thus, when he is grown, and a party of white explorers reaches the area, he can leave a note for them.

Included in this party is Jane Porter, whom Tarzan instantly falls in love. He rescues her several times, but while saving a French naval officer from a horrible death by the local black tribe, Jane leaves. The French officer takes him back to civilization with him, and pieces together his progeny. Tarzan seeks Jane out in Wisconsin, of all places, and saves her from a forest fire.

This all makes for a lot of fun, but as a mature reader one can not help but make some serious analysis. First of all, there is the casual (and at times, overt) racism. Tarzan encounters the tribe several times, and always easily defeats them, mostly by scaring them. Burroughs at one point refers to whites as the "higher race," certainly well within the beliefs of his time. The tribesman are represented as superstitious and cowardly, and Tarzan constantly steals their poison arrows. (I was always amused that, in the films, the blacks stopped at the river's edge, reinforcing the stereotype that blacks don't swim).

Burroughs also seems to be using Tarzan to represent the ideal man, a man who can conquer nature but also, given that he is nobility, return to civilization and conquer that, too. Tarzan has no faults, except that he has learned the law of the jungle: "He killed for food most often, but, being a man, he sometimes killed for pleasure, a thing which no other animal does; for it has remained for man alone among all creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the mere pleasure of inflicting suffering and death."

At the end of the book, Tarzan not only rescues Jane from a fire, but from an arranged marriage to a villainous figure. Tarzan wants to kill him, but Jane stops him, fearing Tarzan would be arrested. Instead, Tarzan merely squeezes the villain's throat until he agrees to go away. How often, in the civilized world of litigation, would we desire this to be a solution to our problems? (provided we were strong enough to squeeze someone's throat).

The book also has some antiquated ideas about women: "But the girl, ah--that was a different matter. He did not reason here. He knew what she was created to be protected, and that he was created to protect her." Jane is given something of a backbone, though, compared to her maid, Esmeralda, who is described as being a 300-pound black woman who faints at the slightest provocation. "Gaberelle!" is her cry of choice, presumably a mispronunciation of "Gabriel." Toward the end of the book, sexism and racism combine when Jane is kidnapped by an ape, to "make her his wife." Surely fears of miscegenation, more than bestiality, make this scene vivid.

But, quaintness aside, Tarzan of the Apes is a rich adventure story. Tarzan gets in many scrapes, with lions, gorillas, and of course, the tribesman. There is a buried treasure, and some comic relief with Jane's father, Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, and his learned friend, Philander. They go wandering in the jungle and are stalked by a lion, and the professor is offended by this. They are, of course, rescued by Tarzan. I wondered what kind of ape he was raised by, since gorillas are pointedly mentioned as enemies, and I read that Burroughs created a fictional species, the Mangani. Burroughs creates an interesting world within the tribe of apes. Though it may be a potboiler, the book is a lot of fun, but I think I can skip reading the sequels.