Old Book Review: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs was a lot better book than I thought it would be.  It’s solid.  I liked it.  I finished reading it.  If you like that kind of thing, it’s a good book to read.  If you don’t like that kind of thing, then you shouldn’t read it.  That’s my review.

I wasn’t expecting to like Tarzan of the Apes that much because I usually don’t care for Edgar Rice Burroughs books anymore.  His stuff like the John Carter of Mars or the Pelucidar books were fun when I was a kid, but even back then I got tired of the formula that he used.  The protagonist gets introduced to a new environment.  The protagonist gets captured.  Protagonist gets rescued by a new character (or some other surprise element).  Protagonist goes to next new environment and either gets captured or in some other trouble.  Protagonist gets rescued by a new character (or some other surprise element). 

To be fair, sometimes the protagonist gets rescued by a character the reader is already familiar with.  Sometimes another character gets captured, and the protagonist has to rescue him/her.  Then the protagonist usually gets himself captured again.  Ugh.  There might be exciting chases in between too.  Sometimes the protagonist gets captured by the enemies chasing them, or they get captured by a new threat.  Every once in a while, the protagonist escapes and doesn’t get captured again.  That’s usually called “The End.”

Tarzan of the Apes is nothing like that.  There is some rescuing, but it doesn’t get tedious.  It’s kind of expected.  Since Tarzan of the Apes is the first book in the Tarzan series, it starts off with an origin, and it’s interesting.  I won’t get into the plot because you can get that anywhere.  I just enjoyed the pace of the story and appreciated how Burroughs explained Tarzan’s development (even though it’s completely far-fetched… you’re going to get far-fetched when you’re reading Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Everybody has seen Tarzan swinging through the jungle, fighting wild bests and defeating them with only his wits, strength, and maybe a knife, and that’s not even the most outlandish concept in Tarzan of the Apes. To the amazement of language teachers all over the world, Tarzan also teaches himself to read, just by looking at pictures with words next to them and figuring out the meaning of the letter corresponding with the pictures and words.

That’s probably impossible, but what do I know? Helen Keller was taught how to speak when she couldn’t hear or see. Maybe Tarzan was Helen Keller’s motivation. Then again, maybe Helen Keller was as fictional as Tarz… never mind.

Since Tarzan grows up in the African jungle in the late 1800s, there are interactions between European soldiers/colonists and African natives that might make modern readers uneasy.  There’s also a black female American servant whose dialect is written out in a way that will probably cause at least an eye roll from the reader.  Readers didn’t care about regional/racial dialects in dialogue in the early 1900s (some authors looooved to spell out racial/regional dialects in their dialogue), but the Esmeralda character in Tarzan of the Apes wouldn’t make it past editors today.  

I wouldn’t be surprised if an updated ‘apology’ version of Tarzan of the Apes has been rewritten so that Esmeralda talks and behaves like everybody else. I treat the uncomfortable stuff in books like this as a historical matter.  That’s one of the reasons I read old books.  I mean, it’s not the racist stuff I’m looking for.  I mean, it’s interesting to see the contrast between unfiltered attitudes of people back then with the writing styles of today.  If you want to find problems with this book, you’ll be able to.  But that’s also true about life in general.   

Even though I liked Tarzan of the Apes, I have little desire to read any other books in the series.  Since there’s a little bit of a cliffhanger at the end, I MIGHT read part of the next book to see how a certain situation gets resolved. Aaaarrrgh! That’s how they get you. Stupid cliffhangers!

I’m pretty sure the Tarzan series gets formulaic as it goes on. It’s almost impossible to write that many books without getting formulaic. Even Robert E. Howard got formulaic with a few Conan stories, and those were relatively short compared to Tarzan novels. I’ve looked at the other Tarzan book titles (Tarzan and the Ant Men, Tarzan and the Lion Men, Tarzan and the Leopard Men), and I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of stuff that’s even more far-fetched than what was in the original novel.  Maybe I’ll read the comic books instead.  Or I can read the comic strips.  Or I can watch the movies.

Or I can live my life as an Edgar Rice Burroughs character and go rescue somebody who’s getting chased.

*****

For more book reviews, see…

What was the deal with…? Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner  

Literary Glance: Dune by Frank Herbert 

Old Book Review: The Darkness and the Dawn by Thomas B. Costain  

My best friend had lousy taste in books, starring… Created, The Destroyer #1 |  

Was It Ever Normal To Make Rape Jokes?- Murderers Row by Donald Hamilton  

*****