According to Wikipedia, “Tarzan of the Apes” is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in a series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine in October 1912. So popular was the character that Burroughs continued the series into the 1940s with two dozen sequels. For the novel’s centennial anniversary, Library of America published a hardcover edition based on the original book in April 2012 with an introduction by Thomas Mallon.

Plot

As reported by Christopher Benfey in “The Swinger,” an outline of the plot is an English nobleman named John Clayton is sent to Africa to look into European abuses of native workers, who are said to be “held in virtual slavery” in the rubber and ivory trade. Clayton and his pregnant wife, Alice, are marooned on a desolate but beautiful part of the African coast. He then builds a little tree-house, but an attack by a “great anthropoid ape” leaves Alice traumatized and oblivious of her surroundings. The scene, which Lady Greystoke remembers only as “an awful dream,” is suggestive of rape—“screaming with rage and pain, the ape flew at the delicate woman, who went down beneath him to merciful unconsciousness”—though Burroughs is careful to make sure that the assailant, hit by a bullet from Clayton’s gun, dies just before penetration. The orphaned child is adopted by a grieving ape-mother named Kala, who has lost her own baby in a melee among the apes. The apes, in their ape language, call the ugly, hairless child “Tarzan,” meaning “white skin.” Tarzan matures slowly, according to ape expectations, but his powers of thought are superior; after solving the mechanism of the lock on his birth parents’ cabin, he learns to wield a knife, to lasso his prey and to swim, and, most amazingly, teaches himself to read and write, and not just English but eventually French as well (243). ^[1]

In his article, “Rediscovering “Tarzan” for the first time,” David Hwang deals with the author’s view about the story of Tarzan when he was asked to write a play about it. He asserts that Burroughs’ tale confronts issues of adoption, the meaning of family, culture clash and the quest to construct a personal identity from the pieces of one’s past. The core of his story: an intimate exploration of the confusion that erupts when two worlds meet. “The aspect of Tarzan’s dilemma with which I most identify is the sense of being caught between two worlds: one foot in each, yet never completely of either. Becoming a whole person means somehow integrating these disparate halves into a single unified self” (pg. 22). ^[2]

Author's Motivation

Mikko Tuhkanen’s essay, “Grotesquely Becoming: Tarzan’s Queer Humanizations”, explores Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Tarzan of the Apes as an early twentieth century text, which relates to another, but that “illustrates the vocative ethics of Western thought,”  which means the main stance of Western morals being just in the author’s, Burroughs’, society. Hominization refers to a process of becoming human, while this essay also analyzes a series of scenes where the novel’s protagonist, Tarzan, endures various obstacles in the process of his development. Second, the essay takes its cues from Burroughs’ previous readers, most notably Gail Bederman, who have argued that the novel evinces turn-of-the-century anxieties about the viability of Western Civilization in the face of emotional disturbance and other degenerative tendencies. This means the odd display of sexuality and the abolition of slavery as well as other acts of moral confusion in the nineteenth-century distressed the idea of their society to live or succeed in the future of America. The distorted or abnormal influence of Western society in Burroughs' upbringing is displayed in Tarzan of the Apes. ^[3]

Theme

The main theme of  “Tarzan of the Apes” is the idea that the male in the society plays a vital role in supporting and protecting the weaker population. Tarzan was brought up along with the tribe and adopted into it because of his gorilla mother Kala. As the book progresses, Tarzan adapts to the ape culture. For example right at the beginning of the novel, Tarzan has  a hard time to adapt to jungle conditions and was a vulnerable part of the tribe during battle.  Tarzan did not have the physical strength and stamina to climb trees or swing across the jungle as fast as the other gorillas which slowed down the rest of the gorillas. This made him somewhat of a misfit, an outsider. However he was considered as one of their own and was given help whenever required. Burroughs proves the theme of male protection and superiority with Tarzan multiple times throughout the book (Anon., 1999).

In her essay, “Tarzan as a cultural prism: Ideological Associations in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes,” Nora Hadi Alseed affirms that the novel had been composed in the meantime when the US government was setting up lands for national parks and the Audubon Society. “The novel thus presented the groundwork for the nation’s need for unspoiled nature which may save the country from corruption and decadence of the new urban lifestyle which was aimed at more urbanization.” The National Audubon society was resolved to be an American philanthropic natural association that has been built for preservation. This essay also evaluates the focal social relationship concerning Tarzan as it was resolved to be related with savagery and damaging tendency. The novel and the film have concentrated on perspectives identified with masculinity as a factor yet, in addition, relates to "racial oppressors" masculinity which has been minimally represented within the Anglo-Saxon writing previously. Dr. Alseed also highlights how Burroughs identified that in ape language Tarzan means “white skin”. “He has also been described as one who describes himself to the first outsiders he views as a man who has killed a number of black men.” Hence crafted through Tarzan can be recognized as one which was in accordance with the works displayed amid the season of viciousness against African Americans. Just before the narrative was distributed, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. The main objective of the organization was to fight the racial inequality of African Americans. The languages used by Burroughs in Tarzan of the apes demonstrate the racism which was highlighted by these organizations during their course of work. ^[4]

In essence, the story “Tarzan of the Apes,”  themed as a narrative of self discovery is very evident. By design Tarzan undertook the frame of masculinity that was obscured in Victorian time particularly in the nineteenth and a period of the twentieth century where "man of respect" was progressed extensively in the written work. Thus, ultimately becoming a cultural prism for the morals of old Western thought, due to coinciding evidence of white supremacy.