COLLECTED ESSAYS ORIGINALLY POSTED TO ERB-LIST LISTSERVER.    TARZAN OF THE APES has been summarized at the ERB SUMMARY PROJECT. The following is one reader's view of the themes, characters, and author's writing and is not a summary or synoposis of Edgar Rice Burroughs' most famous novel.    John Martin's article is an important piece which not only illustrates the depth of ERB's Tarzan as an enduring literary character, but suggests how new readers might gain greater insight when reading the novel for the first time.

COMMENTS AND REPLIES FROM ERB-LIST

CHAPTER 9

Korak:

I greatly look forward to your breaking relatively new ground with Return of Tarzan. I have not reread that in years!

Bridge:

I'm looking forward to it too. However, I don't have a patent on this "one chapter at a time" idea so if you or anyone else wants to start reading RT -- or any other ERB book or series -- and share any comments with the list, I would happily read whatever you had to say. And, I would probably go ahead and read and report on them myself later but, hey, the more the merrier!

Korak:

My own thoughts about Kulonga are somewhat mixed. The fact is that it would have been more understandable if Tarzan had killed him the instant he caught up with him as an act of passion. The way he went about stalking the man is kind of creepy.

Bridge:

Tarzan DOES have a kind of creepy mindset (it's part of his personality). We see this in the next chapter I'll review, which is called "The Fear-Phantom" (love that title!). In this chapter, Tarzan places Kulonga's headress atop a skull in a native hut. Now, wherever did he get THAT idea? Tarzan did a lot of creepy things. In another episode (can't recall if it's this book or some other) Tarzan throws a dead body into a native village. Then there's RT, in which Tarzan and the Waziri pick off the ivory bearers one by one while calling out in scarey voices: "Drop the ivory." Why did Tarzan have a creepy mindset? Well, if you grew up with the apes, maybe... Of course, if we get into ERB's mind, we will see that the stalking of Kulonga is also a literary device, to enable Tarzan to learn more of man's ways, such as the ability to start fires and use weapons. If Tarzan had simply killed Kulonga and then appropriated his weapons, he (a) would have had to learn to use them by trial and error and (b) I believe he would have made the fatal error of testing the point of the poisoned arrows with his fingertips -- the same instinct that causes us to touch wet paint to see if it's really wet.

Korak:

Tarzan would have been aware from his books that humans consider apes to be animals and thus potential game, and besides, here was his very first actual human being. One would think that Tarzan would have forgotten all about Kala and ran to the fellow with open arms in the heat of the moment.

Bridge:

With all due respect, I think that if you rethink the above sentence you might think differently. Tarzan is incapable of forgetting all about Kala -- this was his mother, the only mother he knew; in fact, the only one who ever showed him any love in the jungle; he did, indeed, love her as a son. How could he simply throw that aside and run to embrace Kulonga?

Korak:

Kulonga was a real ugly tatooed gangsta and the apeman sensed that the guy was a depraved cannibal, thus he had no problem killing Kulonga. I think that a sensitive person can sense things like that and judge a man's character from face value sometimes. Obviously in this instance.

Bridge:

The tattoos certainly didn't "help" Kulonga (what if, instead of Kulonga killing Kala, it had been a gorgeous blonde white hunter with a safari?). However, Kulonga was to be killed, tattoos or not. The philosophy behind this is explained in the next chapter: "All things outside his own tribe were his deadly enemies....And he realized all this without malice or hatred....And when he killed for revenge, or in self-defense, he did that also without hysteria, but it was a very businesslike proceeding which admitted of no levity." Notice the way he kills Kulonga in Chapter IX. After learning all he can about the man, he simply catches him with a noose about the neck, hauls him into a tree, and plunges a knife into his chest. Just as perfunctory as a modern day executioner pulling the switch. Tarzan does not take time to explain to Kulonga why he must die (even in a langauge which Kulonga could not understand), he does not slap him around a little first, he does not torture h! im to d eath -- just a simple knife thrust and his duty to his mother has been done. Then, it's on to other things.

Korak:

Because remember in Greystoke when the cop shot Tarzan's beloved foster father, and Tarzan was bitterly grieved but he did not take vengeance because he was just an animal after all.

Bridge:

I think that another reason Tarzan did not take vengeance was because he was a little more civilized by that time, or at least able to understand the concept of law and able to restrain himself from his natural tendencies. It was also a poignant movie scene when, earlier, Kala had been killed and Tarzan cried unconsolably and kept grabbing her hand and using it to pat him on the head the way Kala used to do when she was alive, as if this act could somehow restore what once was. Not having seen the movie in awhile, I can't remember what Tarzan did after Kala was killed (in the movie). Maybe someone else can tell us that. Did he go after the local natives or something? We know, of course, what he did in the book.

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CHAPTER 14

Reply to Korak:

Your explanation seems as logical to me as anything I've read on the subject.

Actually, I've read very little on the subject. I think there's been an article or two in ERBapa over the years.

Some of these major controversies, such as "Where does JTT fit into TA" and how could you (Korak) grow from a little baby to a lean, mean fighting machine in such a sort time, are beyond my areas of interest. Little controversies, fine; the big ones, I leave for the guys who like to stay up late at night poring over Burroughs volumes, geneaological charts, and obscure books such as "Fashion Trends Among Little-Known African Cannibal Communities."

Hey -- I'm one for simple explanations, such as yours. Here's another one: Since ERB didn't have space to tell us every single thing Tarzan did 'twist 12 and 20, he likely had another loin cloth at an earlier age (JTT) and wore it out, so had to go naked again until TA-13. Works for me!

Tarzan was unskilled at making his own clothes, as he appropriated Sabor's hide earlier and found out that it got stiff as a board after awhile (not to mention that it probably got rather smelly and had tse-tse flies buzzing around it!!). Tarzan was also unskilled at making his own arrows, which was why he had to keep looting them from the cannibals. As I read on in the Tarzan series, it will be interesting to see if ERB ever tells of him making his own.

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CHAPTER 17

Korak konquered this question...

Professor Porter is known for repeatedly uttering "Most Remarkable" and one other two-word expression. What is Mr. Philander's favorite two-word expletive in this and the previous chapter?

By answering...

"Bless me!" And in the previous chapter their nicknames were Skinny and Ark. Porter also says "Tut, tut," with great regularity.

Then he added...

I just discovered something most remarkable myself, when I went to look up this pop question- my 1967 G&D TOA has the Burials chapter replaced by The Wreck of the Lady Alice chapter from Return of Tarzan. These fifteenpages seem to be the only misprint in the book. I wonder how that happened?

Bridge replies...

Congratulations for your 100 per cent score on the test. And, by the way, it WAS an "open book" quiz, so it WAS okay for you to look up the answers.

Which Tarzan of the Apes is the 1967 G&D one? Is it the greenish-covered one with Tarzan watching the party on the beach from the trees, or is it the yellow covered one, with Tarzan hefting a rock to throw at an ape? I checked both of my copies in those categories, and couldn't find such an error, so yours might be a real rarity. But let me know for sure, please, what's on the cover of the book so I (and others) can double-check their copies.

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CHAPTER 21

The set-up:

Bridge said in his TA-21 review that Leopold II was responsible for terrorism in the Congo, which was the situation that Mbonga's tribe of cannibals were fleeing (TA-9).

Korak replied..

Thanks for that! I have always wondered about that reference. Quite interesting.

AQ Porter observed...

Another reason the "1872" theory doesn't work. John Clayton Sr. was sent out to investigate the Congo Free State mess; he could not have done so before it began.

The Red Hawk added...

I suppose Leopold's atrocities in the Congo were really the first genocide of the 20th Century. At least, there was a public outcry and, as you say, Leopold lost control of what had been a private fiefdom as it became an official Belgian colony. Always think of Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness" in connection with the Belgian Congo.

I don't think ERB said it directly that Greystoke was going to Africa to investigate Leopold's colonial policies-but you state that Leopold began to rule the Congo in 1885, so that could tie in with why Greystoke went to Africa in the first place.

Bridge takes it from there....

Thanks for those comments. I had remembered the reference in Chapter 9, but had forgotten about the reference in Chapter 1, which was supplied first by AQ Porter. The Red Hawk added some further thoughts from the Chapter 1 reference.

I went back and re-read that part of Chapter 1, and the Red Hawk is correct that it doesn't specifically state that Lord Greystoke was going to investigate the Congo, per se, but "a British West Coast African colony." The condition of this colony, however, sounds similar to the situation described in the Congo, and there ARE references, in TA-1, to "savage tribes along the Congo and Aruwami."

But was the Congo a British colony? Wikipedia says that Britain had a "technical claim" on the Congo via Lieutenant Cameron's 1873 expedition from Zanzibar to bring home Livingstone's body, "but was reluctant to take on yet another expensive, unproductive colony."

So maybe John Clayton Sr. was going to investigate British interests in the Congo itself, or maybe he was going to investigate the situation in an actual full-fledged British colony which was being affected by what was going on in the Congo.

Whatever the case, it appears that this real-life situation in the Congo serves as a kind of historical backdrop for the whole story of "Tarzan of the Apes," thus lending support to ERB's statement on the novel's opening page that it "may be true."

When you think about it, ERB really was a writer of "historical fiction," tieing Tarzan into not only this news event, but also into others, later on, such as World Wars I and II. And, of course, his Martian novels are linked to the Civil War (John Carter) and World War II (Ulysses Paxton), The Land that Time Forgot is World War II-related, and then there are further examples, such as the Apache novels, as well as other stories.

So, in "Tarzan of the Apes," we see that a political-military-criminal situation in an African nation was what brought Tarzan's parents to Africa in the first place; natives fleeing the situation then, unknowingly, helped this wild child to learn of the existence of other creatures like himself and to learn the use of weapons; and, eventually, these same natives served, unknowingly, as the catalyst which would bring Tarzan into contact with D'Arnot, who would lead him along the final steps to civilization.

So, thanks for the comments, fellow erblisters. They helped me to see a picture I hadn't seen before, and I'm happy to pass back this summary of further thoughts to you all.

It's nice to be in such thoughtful and helpful company.