Customer Reviews

Tarzan of the Apes

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs started writing adventure novels nearly 90 years ago. The most famous of his characters is, or course, Tarzan. And this book is the one that got the Tarzan legacy started.

In this book you meet Tarzan, learn who he really is, where he came from, how he became lord of the apes and protector of the jungle, and the English Earl of Greystoke. You also learn the story behind the story about Tarzan and Jane.

I've been a Tarzan fan for nearly 20 years. I've been collecting Tarzan books (older ones) for the past 15 years. I've read nearly all the books in the series, and this one is probably the best. I'll be the first to admit that if you read a lot of Tarzan books back to back you will see a somewhat formulaic approach to some of the installments. This first book, however, is original, interesting, and immensely entertaining.

I encourage you to read the book that got it all started in 1914 -- the premis, the character, and the mystique that spawned numerous films, and other spin-off media, and a series of books that spanned publication dates from 1914 well into the 1940s.

Move over Indiana Jones and James Bond -- Tarzan is the real McCoy. He's strong, brave, modest, wise, and good. He's got the attributes that we could sure use in a hero today!

Give this book a look. You'll be glad you did. It's a book that you could enjoy reading to your children.

5 stars for story, character development, readability, and content. Is it a literary classic? Yes, in that it holds its own respected place among fictional literature. Will it ever will literary acclaim? I don't think that Joyce or Faulkner need to worry.

But, hey, it's a fun read! Give it a try.

Alan Holyoak

I felt it would be a good idea to review the original TARZAN OF THE APES by Edgar Rice Burroughs as many are only familiar with how the character has been mishandled for the past seventy or so years. In his original form Tarzan was far from the monosyllabic simpleton as he was so often later portrayed. Instead, Tarzan was a man of aristocratic bearing who wielded great strength of both body and will, spoke several languages fluently, and easily mixed with British society.

Although Tarzan first appeared in TARZAN OF THE APES, the plot and some of Tarzan's characteristics were showcased in an earlier Burroughs work called THE MONSTER MEN. But it was the infant heir to a British title that rocketed Burroughs's fame. Tarzan begins as an infant shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. The rest of his family quickly dies but a local anthropoid ape (not a gorilla) who just lost a baby, claims pale, hairless baby and raises it as her own. Tarzan grows but is always weaker than the apes. But when Tarzan finds the hut left by his family he begins learning about his human side. With knowledge Tarzan is able to stand up to the more bullysome apes and life is good.

Years later thing change drastically when pirates maroon other humans near Tarzan's home. It is then that Tarzan learns to love Jane and she him although she first knows him as two different people. To her there is the forest god who rescues her and there is Tarzan who leaves her notes. But while Tarzan can read and write English and speak the language of the apes, French is the first human tongue he learns. A tongue that Jane does not understand. But eventually Jane becomes the force that drives Tarzan towards civilization and his birthright among British nobility.

In this first Tarzan novel, Edgar Rice Burroughs explores the idea of class as inherent. A British lord will always be a British lord and will always rise to the top no matter how far he has been pushed down. Tarzan, being raised by an unknown species of intelligent apes, has further to rise than any lord in history. But the rise he does because class will always prove itself. This is a popular theme and one that, in detective fiction, shows the difference between the British view and the American view. The British view used to hold that an aristocrat acting as an amateur, with easily best the professional laborer as in the Sherlock Holmes stories. The American view in detective fiction is that the closer to the grit you are the better you are at solving mysteries as in the Colombo or Sam Spade mysteries. But in TARZAN OF THE APES Burroughs takes the British view to its extreme.

TARZAN OF THE APES and the other early Tarzan novels are classics of adventure fiction. Lost cities, ancient civilizations, true love, heroism and other qualities of great adventures are all present in these novels. My wife really enjoys the original Zorro stories packed with romance and heroism. But when I lent her some of my Tarzan books she quickly became a fan of his stories as well. If you have never treated yourself to the original and only know what television and Hollywood have done to him, I recommend that you give Tarzan a try. I think you will be surprised.

I only discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs by accident a couple of years ago when I picked up a copy of this book "just because". It turned out to be far better and far cooler than any expectations I might've had.

If you think you know Tarzan and haven't read this, I've got news for you. YOU DON'T KNOW TARZAN. He's a hundred times more savage and a thousand times more interesting than all those movie versions of the character. He's also surprisingly complex and sympathetic even as he slaughters nearly everything that crosses his path. I'm amazed this book was written nearly a hundred years ago. It's so graphic and unapologetic for Tarzan's bestial nature.

That said, there are a few small flaws. Elements of the plot can be a bit contrived, but since it usually serves to get to more action, I can forgive that. Burroughs's writing, while still engaging, is a little stilted by today's standards. And it doesn't end with Tarzan getting Jane. That's the story of "The Return of Tarzan".

Not ending in a book ALWAYS bugs me. I hate cliffhangers. I don't need to be blackmailed to read the next one. You can read this book and enjoy it without reading the others. Still, even the great Edgar Rice Burroughs loses a star for this flaw because I REALLY HATE CLIFFHANGERS. Sorry, Eddie.

Do yourself a favor and pick this up. It might ruin you for other so-called adventure stories, but it's worth it.

The greatest adventure series of all time -- with the greatest hero. Needless to say, the books are nothing like any of the movies. Tarzan is an intelligent, independent individual, always striving to learn, with a strong sense of justice. He never gives up, no matter how hopeless the situation. He never kneels to any authority, no matter the threat.

I don't believe that there is an ounce of altruism anywhere in the stories. (He helps the innocent and helpless on occasion, but does not sacrifice himself or his goals. His goals include securing wealth, but not social approval or prestige. His self-esteem requires nothing from the opinions of others.) When in one scene he decides to give up his birth right in England for the security of the woman he loves, it is clear that her security is more important to him than the wealth and position. Indeed, it is only losing her that hurts him, for he cares little for European society.

The stories are not "politically correct." As a teenager Tarzan first encounters a native tribe and realizes he is more like these "apes" than his life-long "family." He is drawn toward them, but when one kills his ape "mother," he kills the native. In one story, where Tarzan risks his life to save a man from a lion, it is only because he becomes curious as to what the white man is doing alone deep in the jungle. He does not kill the lion, by the way.

Tarzan embodies the principles of accepting what he cannot change, changing what he can, and knowing the difference. There is a negative attitude toward religion (witchdoctors and religious figures are presented as frauds). While I don't know that I realized it at the time I was reading, thinking on it now I think Tarzan represented man's noble nature, when untouched by social corruption -- either that of native tribes or Western civilization. He is not alone in this nobility, simply the most pure. There are also noble Europeans and noble natives, as well as the evil doers.

Again, while I did not notice it at the time, I read a comment somewhere that the writing conveys a more sophisticated, or more formal, use of language than most modern stories.

Written in the first part of this century, the stories are dated by their depiction of ferocious gorillas, large apes, and unexplored Africa. In this, they remind us that much of Africa was indeed unknown to Europe as late as the first half of this century. Still, these are fantasy-adventure stories, and I had no trouble slipping into the Burroughs' world of suspenseful and weaving plots.

Tarzan is a superhero of unmatched courage, who has fully developed his physical strength and agility, and fully honed his senses. The theme is that others could do so as well (given the advantages of his childhood). In fact, his son achieves much the same capabilities -- through harrowing adventures! Even Jane significantly develops her human potential, even though she begins late in life.

It is unfortunate that the prevailing image of Tarzan of the Apes is the one that belongs to Johnny Weismuller, who played Tarzan in a series of forgettable films during the 1930's and 1940's. Tarzan, as Weismuller played him, was a grunting, monosyllabic elephant yodeler who is often caricatured as the one who says, "Me Tarzan, you Jane." The Tarzan as Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote of was truly a jungle man, but one who was erudite, fluent in many languages, and possessed of a strong code of jungle justice. I was more fortunate than most since my first exposure to Tarzan was in the series' opener, "Tarzan of the Apes." It was then that I was transported to a mythical jungle forest that I know now can not ever have existed in one place at one time. Burroughs' Africa in 1914 is seen more as a dinosaur-less Jurassic Park megafauna than as the western Africa as pictured in National Geographic. In Tarzan's stomping grounds, the reader sees a mixture of lions, tigers, elephants, and various anthropoid hominid ape-gorillas. But as a child, I did not notice such geographical anachronisms. What I saw was the most thrilling excitement of my first twelve years. I met Tarzan's biological parents, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, and the Lady Alice, both of whom were cast ashore by the mutinous villanies of Black Michael. I cried as both his parents died, the Lady Alice of disease, John Clayton at the hands of the killer leader of the apes, the ferocious Kerchak. Kala, a female ape soon adopts the waif, whom she calls Tarzan (White Skin). As Tarzan grew to maturity, so did I. As he learned to read the strange bugs of his father's library, I learned to read equally new and puzzling vocabulary. The death of Kala caused me to sob again. By the novel's end, I was hooked to read all sequels.
Recently, I reread the novel, with a mature perspective. What I found was there was nothing stale or juvenile about the book. True, I sensed some racist touches that other critics have so mercilessly hammered. Further, I saw other flaws in Burroughs' style, an overly florid dependence on sensory details, that occasionally intruded. But as an adult, I saw what I could only dimly perceive as a child. Tarzan's foster mother Kala protected the baby Tarzan with a maternal ferocity unmatched in literature. She was both the literal and figurative shield that permitted Tarzan to survive long enough to later meet and mate with Jane. Though Kala is killed off fairly early, she is mentioned often enough to set her off as one of the bedrocks of Tarzan's psyche. To me, Kala was my shield too. I needed her as a bulwark against my own Kerchaks. As long as readers need to visit a foreign and terror fraught land, they will need to do so in psychological safety. Tarzan may get them in, but it will be Kala who will get them out.

There are books that everyone 'knows' but hardly anybody reads any more. Reading these classics can be quite illuminating; they are not what you think. For example, do you really know how Dracula was killed? Or why The Virginian said "Smile when you call me that"? Read the originals; you'll be surprised.

"Tarzan of the Apes", the first of 23 Tarzan adventures by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is full of surprises. The Tarzan of this book is not the Johnny Weissmuller or Ron Ely that you might know. He is not raised by gorillas (as I had thought) but by mythical 'anthropoids', a sort of missing link between man and gorilla, with rudimentary speech and a social structure that includes ritual and dance. This is a science fiction tale, a sort of "Lost World" meets "Jungle Book". Tarzan befriends and converses with (and kills and eats) a variety of beasts.

There are aspects of the story that modern readers will find as hard to swallow as some of Tarzan's raw meat dinners. For example, this jungle is populated with lions, hyenas and elephants, creatures that in reality never go near rain forests. We are also asked to believe that Tarzan teaches himself to read and write from books that he finds.

Many modern readers will also find the racialism difficult to take. He boasts of being "Tarzan, killer of beasts and many black men". Coming on a village deep in the jungle, he immediately readies his bow and poisoned arrows. When his European companion admonishes him that it is wrong to kill humans, the hero protests "But these are black men". (Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe that scene was included in the Disney version). This is a 1914 American novel, with all the prejudices intact.

It's quite well written; Burroughs is very readable. The plotting is a strange mixture of ingenuity and clumsiness. There is a very clever device that involves Jane thinking there are two ape-men, one an admirer, the other her rescuer. But the plot also requires three separate mutinies, two of which just happen to involve cousins, to take place off the same remote African beach. This is beyond coincidence.

So is this genre classic still worth reading? I think so, for the same reason "Dracula" and "The Virginian" are still worth reading; this is the book that started it all.

Little did ERB realize when he launched his second novel in 1914, that he had created a pop icon hero who would delight youthful readers around the world. The author, who had failed in a variety of enterprises, combined his late-blooming literary talent with a fecund imagination, to create a typically American protagonist--one who reflected the 19th century's fascination with the Nature vs Nurture debate of human development. Can a "wild man" be truly half ape/half human; can such a creature be reprogrammed to reject two decades of savage training in favor of civilized manners? Is the love of a beautiful woman sufficient to lead a primitive person to rise above his barbaric conditioning, in order to compete with cultivated upperclass
swains?

Hollywood's numerous version of Tarzan's various adventures have distorted the author's original plot and careful details, such that an accurate rendering of the novel would be rejected by a falsely-educated public, who expect Tarzan to be
a grunting caveman with a superb physique. How false this is to his true heritage as the scion of British noblity. Let's get some basic facts straight: Tarzan taught himself to read and write (but not speak) English; French was the first language he learned to communciate vocally with his fellow men. He truly loved Kala, his ape foster mother, with the same tender devotion he would have lavished upon the mother he never knew. Blonde Jane did not speak with a British accent, since she was a Baltimore girl--the daughter of an absent-minded professor. Her father cared for three things in his life: Jane, academic research and the Porter family honor.

Since the general storyline is so well known, I will focus commentary on ERB's literary style. Like most of his future heroines, Jane is aged 19, with a perfect body, and is called a girl (never a woman). Naturally she endures abduction by a brute, but is ultimately rescued by her hero--saving her from "the fate worse than a thousand deaths." Other ERB elements include the famous pairing of words (rage and hate, pain and fear, etc), and his famous cliff-hanger chapter endings; this latter is necessary so that readers can keep abreast of what has been happening to other characters in the story, requiring some mental gymnastics.

On the down side, ERB has rightfully been criticized for his treatment of other races and nationalities. His jungle Blacks are little better than superstitious children, while faithful Esmeralda (Jane's nanny) speaks in dialect like some Mark Twain characters--another challenge for readers. The author clearly admires Frenchmen, but hates Germans as international bullies (who become the object of Tarzan's pro-English mischief in subsequent novels.) If Hollywood can whip up patriotic fervor
through the medium of movies, so may popular novels. The end of Tarzan of the Apes will prove a great surprise to first-time readers. Will he return to his beloved jungle, renouncing the veneer of civilization forever? Or perhaps accept life in the Western world? Are you sure you know the Real Tarzan, who wooed the mate destined for his heart in the jungles of two continents? What a man will sacrifice for Love...

Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic - "Tarzan of the Apes" - is the first in the series of Tarzan books, and is a quite entertaining novel. This first book relates some classic events in the Tarzan saga - how Tarzan's parents were killed and he came to be raised by the apes, how he learned to communicate with animals of the jungle as well as educate himself in the ways of man, his meeting Jane, and his eventual journey to the world of civilization and man. The story was originally published in 'pulp-style' magazines, (as was most fantasy and sci-fi of Burroughs' day); however, this represents some of the great stories that were produced from that style of fiction.

Virtually all of the events related in the novel are interesting and handled intelligently. Readers who have certain expectations of the story based on the cartoons and movies ' such as "Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan" - may be somewhat surprised by the content of the story. I personally liked how the author didn't spend too much time on any one aspect of the story, but rather, moved somewhat swiftly through the various events of story (those who like a quicker paced novel should enjoy it). Some readers may find Burroughs' depictions of the animals and natives who lived in the jungle to be a bit clichéd; however, while they certainly seem to be a product of his time (this book was originally published in 1914), I found his portrait of the jungle, and the "civilized" humans represented, to be somewhat quaint, but quite enjoyable.

Overall, 'Tarzan' is a well written story and one which can be enjoyed by today's standards. Those expecting a somewhat one-dimensional story or "super-hero" type Tarzan from the cartoons (and some of the book covers for that matter) should be pleasantly surprised. While this book may be most appropriate to read for adolescents through young adults, I'd recommend it for kids of all ages ' I'm 29 and enjoyed it, and plan to read others in the series!

Edgar Rice Burroughs, now catalogued as a classic writer actually became instantly famous before this book with his Princess of Mars book published in 1912, while this book later in 1914. The story of a lost boy in the jungles of Africa where the parents are mauled and killed by Apes, and likewise, the son taken up and raised as one. If you are familiar either with the new Disney rendition or the Hollywood Johnny Weissemuller versions, then you just have not met Tarzan, Lord Greystoke. Both Hollywood and Disney do an injustice, not only to Burroughs, but also to the story and the writing. Embarking on this book, I expected a quick fun, high adventure story that gets to the point without finesse or care of the medium. But E. R. Burroughs gives you all the excitement with the careful delivery of choice words to put you there. There is a lot more emotion centered around this book than one may expect from a jungle adventure. Subtle, but poignant are his words and a visual clarity of the personalities and action make this a worthwhile read, and certainly a classic that can stand next to many other verbosely exaggerated popular classics (I am not mentioning Dickens).

Edgar Rice Burroughs will never be nominated for world's great writer. But to quote Stephen King, "it's all about story dammit, story. Edgar Rice Burroughs knew this better than anyone." In Tarzan of the Apes you will discover the true meaning of "suspension of disbelief." You will not care about the geographical liberties Burroughs takes with Africa. The fact that Tarzan's jungle has lions and elephants which live in the more arid regions of Africa. All you will care about is "travelling along the middle terrace" of Tarzan's world and racing along to his next adventure. You will cheer for the heroes and utterly loathe the villains. Also do not expect the grunting, snorting, and nearly mute Tarzan of film. In all 24 Tarzan books he never said, "me Tarzan, you Jane." you will find in Burroughs' Tarzan a symbol of every ones desire to go primitive. If you are not a fan of highly imaginative fiction avoid this book at all costs. But if you do love a good STORY by all means pick up this book.