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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
Plenty to chew on -- just hard to swallow, 4 Mar 2003
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 Weismuller 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 fantasy, a "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 English 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 happen to involve cousins, 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.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
TARZAN - A SURPRISINGLY GOOD READ, 5 Dec 2000
By A Customer
Ever since I was a child, I have watched films and series on the television of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Some have been good and some not so good. Some, like those starring Johnny Weissmuller, were brilliant for their time; telling the story of the baby lost to the elements of the jungle and the mercy of the Apes. Whatever film and TV programme makers have done in the past has been different in some way. The most memorable for me was the film version starring Christophe Lambert. Needless to say, I have been a fan of the story for the best part of my life. I have grown up with this as a pert of my existence. However, I did not even know if what I was seeing on film, was in fact, close to the details in the book in any way, so when the chance came to buy the book, after watching the Disney version with my children, I jumped at the chance. Was I in for a shock when I read this one !!! Sometimes, a film, like Lambert's film, shows graphic violence in order to get across a certain idea of the harshness of life in the jungle. The book though, is a different matter altogether. It is extremely descriptive of how the young Tarzan grows up, learning to hunt and kill for food. The description at times can change from beautiful [when describing the jungle] to brutal [when a killing takes place]. The idea is firmly planted in your mind of how man can change from kind and loving to merciless and murderous in a second, if provoked into survival. At every turn, the book takes you through the joys and turmoil of his life. Most notable is the time he finds a book in the cabin built by his father and finds a lot of 'bugs', which the reader finds out are in fact, words on a page. He then teaches himself to read, but he cannot speak and language other than Ape. This sounds odd, but the plot twists and turns, and even changes continent at the end, concluding in America in a swathe of heroism and glory for Tarzan as he returns again to rescue Jane Porter. This book will surprise you if you do not know the entire story of Lord Clayton and if you, like me, are the sort of person who has only seen the films and TV Tarzan, then I urge you to give it a read. It is a surprisingly good read.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Surprisingly enjoyable, 11 Sep 2007
I bought "Tarzan of the Apes" while I was on an adventure novel kick and, like the other reviewers, I was amazed by how good it was. The storyline is quite clever and very interesting - even though I knew many of the things that were going to happen (Tarzan and Jane meeting, for example), I was still intrigued by every plot twist Burroughs threw at me.
What I found most surprising was how much I liked the character of Tarzan himself. Obviously he has been represented and parodied so many times in so many different ways over the years that he has become almost a stock character - certainly, like Sherlock Holmes and Superman he is one of those fictional characters that everyone recognises, even if people haven't read the source material. Tarzan also has the fact that he is handsome, intelligent, strong, and innately "good" working against him. Who likes perfect characters? Surprisingly, however, I found myself rooting for him throughout the novel.
The first half of the book, where Tarzan has no human company, is more enjoyable, although I may feel that way because one tends to picture Tarzan in the jungle rather than in civilisation. Still, Burroughs writes superb fights and there are simply more of them in the first half - the second half is more concerned with Tarzan mooning over Jane and driving across America. It's far less compelling. However, the ending picks up considerably; while Burroughs clearly wrote it with a sequel in mind, he contrives the events in such a way that the reader's heart breaks for Tarzan.
"Tarzan of the Apes" can be quite easily criticised for its racist and sexist elements, and obviously I'm not about to defend them. However, if you are considering reading it, I'd recommend that you bear in mind that it *was* written in 1913 when such views were (regrettably) endorsed. There's a wonderful adventure story here, and it's well worth giving a go.
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