Tarzan of the Apes (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs (Author), John Seelye (Introduction) "I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other..." (more)
Key Phrases: bull ape, primeval woman, white ape, Jane Porter, Professor Porter, Lord Greystoke (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

First published in 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs's romance has lost little of its force over the years--as film revivals and TV series well attest. Tarzan of the Apes is very much a product of its age: replete with bloodthirsty natives and a bulky, swooning American Negress, and haunted by what zoo specialists now call charismatic megafauna (great beasts snarling, roaring, and stalking, most of whom would be out of place in a real African jungle). Burroughs countervails such incorrectness, however, with some rather unattractive representations of white civilization--mutinous, murderous sailors, effete aristos, self-involved academics, and hard-hearted cowards. At Tarzan's heart rightly lies the resourceful and hunky title character, a man increasingly torn between the civil and the savage, for whom cutlery will never be less than a nightmare.

The passages in which the nut-brown boy teaches himself to read and write are masterly and among the book's improbable, imaginative best. How tempting it is to adopt the ten-year-old's term for letters--"little bugs"! And the older Tarzan's realization that civilized "men were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the jungle," while not exactly a new notion, is nonetheless potent. The first in Burroughs's serial is most enjoyable in its resounding oddities of word and thought, including the unforgettable "When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled; and smiles are the foundation of beauty."

Review

“[Burroughs has] a gift very few writers of any kind possess: he can describe action vividly.” —Gore Vidal


From the Trade Paperback edition.

?[Burroughs has] a gift very few writers of any kind possess: he can describe action vividly.? ?Gore Vidal


From the Trade Paperback edition. -- Review --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; . edition (October 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140184643
• ISBN-13: 978-0140184648
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (99 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #863,642 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tarzan, the original "real" action hero, May 30, 2000

By	Alan R. Holyoak (Idaho) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Tarzan of the Apes (Mass Market Paperback)

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

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Tarzan Legend Begins, July 13, 2004

By	Joshua Koppel (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tarzan of the Apes (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

46 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Plenty to chew on - just hard to swallow, February 17, 2003

By	Peter Reeve (Thousand Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: Tarzan of the Apes (Dover Thrif) (Paperback)

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.