Jungle Love Indeed

The following was originally posted on Satanosphere last February. There may be a few inside jokes.

The logistics of starting an online book club proved impossible to one relying on instantaneous results or the hard work of others. I have chosen therefore to read on my own and share therefrom the observations formulated during my venture.

The diverse Satanosphere community shares disparate reading lists: Some learn from Alice Walker and Anne Rice while others rush through Philip K. Dick while yet others bask in Shakespeare. I know of at least one of you who has sampled Chaucer. To inaugerate the first of many book studies I shall boil these books together until the pages are a mesh of pulp, for it is from the pulpiest of pulp fictions I shall discuss today: Jungle Tales of Tarzan

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in the final quarter of the 19th Century and after being kicked out of school cow-punched with his brothers on their Idaho Ranch. He joined up with the army for a spell but was bored as there never seemed to be any renegade Indians to send back to the Reservation.

In the first decade of the 20th Century, having a family to feed, Edgar submitted a story for serialization. It was accepted and the publishers wanted more. That first story would become Princess of Mars and launch a series that would be second only to another of Edgar's creations. Before the final installment of the initial serial Burroughs had finished his third novel: Tarzan of the Apes.

Most are familiar with the loin-clothed Tarzan who swings on jungle vines and makes the Johnny Weismuller - Carol Burnett yell. Some will even remember the cartoon with the annoying monkey who couldn't hold a candle to the spacemonkey Gleek. The original Tarzan was born to Lord John and Lady Alice Clayton after they were shipwrecked in Equatorial Africa. While still an infant he was orphaned yet found sustenance from Kala, a she-ape who had recently lost her own balu. At first this ugly hairless white ape seemed destined for an early demise. He didn't develop nearly as fast as his cousins for one thing. His advanced human brain and the primordial development of his muscles changed that for the better. He also frequented the bungalow where the skeletal remains of those he didn't know were his parents lay. With the aid of picture books and elementary primers Tarzan had taught himself to read and write English (a situation which enabled him to leave a legible message when white intruders arrived years later, even though he couldn't understand the spoken word.)

The 6th book in the series, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, takes place in his final teen years when he already knew how to read and was far more advanced than his simian cousins, yet before the introduction of Europeans and his return to his rightful place as Lord Greystoke.

Before continuing I wish to reiterate that this book is pulp. It is as pulp as pulp can be. Yet the first book from which the series germinated was well-written and included in the First Edition Library along with such classics as Grapes of Wrath, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and Catch-22. That is for another day.

The story begins with that SOS favorite: Beastiality. The young ape Teeka stretches herself luxuriously into a most alluring picture of young, feminine loveliness. Tarzan was going to make her his mate, but Taug had other plans. Tarzan's former playmate had his eyes on Teeka also, and the two bulls were ready to rumble in the jungle. Physically Tarzan was at a great disadvantage but his brains and trusty knife (procured from his parents' stash) always proved an equalizer and beyond. The fight barely commenced before Sheeta the panther attempted to make Teeka his dinner and Tarzan's plans were abruptly switched to dispatching him. With the aid of a grass rope the big cat was stopped in its attempt. Notwithstanding Tarzan's bravery and might, Teeka found Taug the more appealing mate.

Tarzan's realization that he is MAN and not APE is the theme that binds the otherwise stand-alone chapters together. He spends long hours studying the ways of some tribesmen who've built a village nearby. Tarzan hates them with every fiber of his being ever since one of them killed Kala with an arrow. He kills them without mercy and constantly finds ways to bait and terrorize them. Yet he learns something of the ways of man from them and had utilized their ways more than once to his own advantage.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' portrayal of Africans is an unfortunate one, yet altogether standard for the time it was written. The tribesmen are prone to outrageous tattooing and cosmetic mutilation. They are stupid and superstitious, wasteful and cruel. They are cannibals who file their teeth to eat the flesh of men better. Some observations of Burroughs on their race include:

Her child was a boy of ten, lithe, straight and, for a black, handsome.

Being a boy, and a native African, he had, of course, climbed into trees many times before this.

...and for the first time there entered his dull, negroid mind a vague desire to emulate his savage foster parent.

And my personal favorite:

In imagination he was wanting, and imagination is but another name for super-intelligence. Imagination it is which builds bridges, and cities, and empires. The beasts know it not, the blacks only a little, while to one in a hundred thousand of earth's dominant race it is given as a gift from heaven that man may not perish from the earth.

Okay, then.

Tarzan's tortures of the tribesmen make it difficult for the modern reader to accept him. He delights in tying Africans to stakes and hearing their screams while lions or hyenas rend them flesh from bone. Interspersed throughout is a reminder that the blood of British Nobility flows though Tarzan's veins which gives him a sense (primordial as it may be) of honor. It seems cut and dried that Burroughs is a racist with offensive thougths and beliefs. But could it be that Edgar Rice Burroughs is being purposefully over-the-top to make a statement against British Aristocracy, Imperialism, and the White Man's Burden?

Burroughs was part of the American frontier, a representative of a group of people who first romanticized the idea of the individual. The idea of nobility held little appeal to men of the wild west. A less than appealing portrayal of Tarzan's distant cousin in England is briefly given afterall.

Furthering my question is numerous scenes from the book focusing on Tarzan's inner struggle on who he is as a MAN and in his quest to understand what GOD is, as it's the one word from his many books he's having trouble understanding. His constant learning on those two subjects always involves an act of mercy towards a tribal member, even while he still loaths their very existence. Burroughs even makes a point of informing us the tribe relocated to their current settlement after fleeing the cruelties of the Belgians in the Congo under King Leopold.

But probably not: it's probably all coincidental. Burroughs was probably clueless enough to share his colorful descriptions of African Cannibals to civilized African-Americans without realizing the hurt or anger he would cause.

By the time the book ends Tarzan realizes he is greater than any ape. (The apes of the Tarzan series are not chimpanzee, orangutan or gorilla. They are a non-existent breed which walks upright more often than the knuckle-crawling gorillas.) He is on his way to becoming Lord of the Jungle. He understands GOD as the invisible feeling which stays his hand on certain occasions. He fights at the side of a warrior merely because he was about to be killed under unsporting circumstances and feels the first speck of acceptance towards his mortal enemy. The civilization bred into him is showing itself, in its own primordial way.