Back log - "B" is for Burroughs

Hello all!

I am so sorry I have neglected this. It has been a terribly busy and tiring week. I don't feel like I have accomplished much in all this madness but alas thats the way it goes sometimes.

So, again RED ALERT ****SPOILERS***** ahead.



For my B author I chose Edgar Rice Burroughs who in addition to the Tarzan series wrote many other science fiction type novels (also serialized). The Tarzan series is actually enormous, something I learned in this process. It was hugely popular at the beginning of the twentieth century - so popular that there are 25 novels and tons of short stories in the Tarzan series.

The first novel "Tarzan of the Apes" was, in a word, fun. This book was just plain old fun. Action packed and light on the intellectual leanings it was a fun book to read and kept me up through the night wanting to know "omg wtf is going to happen to tarzan?!?". See, I would get so distressed I would slip into internet messaging lingo. Thats how exciting the adventures were.

I must say that Tarzan the Disney movie, what little I remember of it, departs GREATLY from this novel, not that an of us are surprised by that. Ok I was a little surprised. Though it is a large departure, its not as big of a leap when you read the other books, because the movie is really the first two books slapped together.

Whenever I watch movies based on the books it really gets confused in my mind which part was book and which part was movie for some aspects. Since I read about four of the first books back to back I am also a little confused about what was in which book to some extent. My apologies on that.

The first book is probably the one with the deepest running "themes" other than action packed fun of the four that I read. Obviously there is the man vs. wild thing but I actually found the concept and idea of family and the different things family means to be a big thing in this book. Its embedded in with lots of other things, but its there.

As we know from popular lore, Tarzan's parents are stranded on the coast of Africa and he is raised by apes. Whats interesting about this is how torn Tarzan is about the man vs ape thing. Even when he falls in love with Jane (which was so flaky Romeo and Juliette style, I see her, I love her. I don't buy that so much) he is goes back and forth whether he can really be like man and live like man with Jane.

I should note here, that everything in this book is embedded is deep levels of RACISM and SEXISM and general EXOCITISM (I feel like Im falling down the slippery slope of isms here) but its really worth noting. I could say, oh that was the times but I think thats a poor excuse. Yes, I realize calling all Africans "black savages" was acceptable at the time but even though that prevailed that wasn't acceptable for everyone and Im sure the author made plenty of money off juxtaposing Tarzan "the ape" yet moral man-ape above the "savage" Africans in his plotlines (which he does).

Also heavily sexist, with Jane fainting at the drop of the hat and needing to be rescued. Though Jane does have a feminist streak in her, not wanting to marry just anybody and learn about the world, but this aspect of her character is downplayed, ESPECIALLY after she marries Tarzan in later books.


Even against this backdrop, Tarzan does often explore "morality" and the laws of the white man, black man and the jungle all run into each other and he has to decide what is right for him, which is a developmental task everyone goes through. There are lots of sets of rules we could follow from our parents, our society, religion, etc, but which ones do we make meaning of?

However, the book (and the series as far as I've read) is really about adventure and its really good at that. Tarzan was the original MacGuyver taking down "Numa" the lion with whatever he could create in the jungle and surviving, on his own, in all kinds of societies from brute strength but also his own quick wit and thats what makes it really fun to read.

I recommend it, I know allisonface read this as well, so I would love to hear your reply to my post :) I may even like this more than Little Women, just because the ending of Little Women made me so ANGRY.

Thats all for now!

Look I added pictures!