Tarzan of the Apes

Tarzan’s childhood in the jungle is complemented by his education via the books left behind in his father’s cabin, and this combination of survival skills and book learning allows him to develop knowledge of both the animal world and the human world. Although these books allow Tarzan to develop a sense of himself as a human rather than an ape, his first encounter with other humans destabilizes that fledgling identity. Differences in race become a barrier less surmountable than species for Tarzan, who recognizes African people as his own kin but cannot bring himself to join their society. Thus, the racist elements of Burroughs’s perspective are introduced into the narrative well before Tarzan ever has his first conversation with another human being.

The themes of Nature Versus Nurture and Hybrid Identity and Belonging are featured in this section of the novel in equal measure, for Tarzan grows up between two cultures—the apes and the English. When he fights the gorilla Bolangi, these two identities are stated to complement one another, for the narrative asserts that “in his veins […] flowed the blood of the best of a race of mighty fighters, and back of this was the training of his short lifetime among the fierce brutes of the jungle” (29). However, Tarzan eventually becomes dissatisfied with this hybrid state, for although he loves his ape mother, Kala, he soon grows tired of ape society because of their limited language and intelligence. Instead, he begins spending more and more time inside of the Claytons’ cabin because although he remains unknowing of the cabin’s origins, his father’s books and relics “exert a strange and powerful influence over him” (31), and with this aspect of the protagonist’s life, Burroughs implies that nature, in this case at least, supersedes nurture. As Tarzan learns to read, he realizes that he is a human rather than a “strange” ape, and he begins distinguishing himself from the apes by developing rudimentary technology and altering his view of his physical appearance. Tarzan was previously ashamed of his appearance, looking at his reflection and admiring the “beautiful broad nostrils of his [ape] companion,” (23) declaring the features of the ape beside him to be “so handsome” (23). Yet his books change this self-hatred into a desire to take on a more human appearance, and with this, he begins to reject his Hybrid Identity and Belonging. Tarzan’s awakening sense of his own humanity through education transforms his sense of inferiority to the apes into a growing pride and feeling of superiority over his adoptive culture.

Additionally, these chapters bring Tarzan into contact with other humans for the first time, but racial and cultural difference between Tarzan and the African people results in his continued isolation from other humans. Burroughs depicts Indigenous Africans using racist stereotypes and inaccurate cultural practices in order to show why Tarzan could never successfully be integrated into human society in Africa. This authorial bias necessitates that the text construct clear reasons why Tarzan is unlike the other humans who live successfully in the African jungle and why he could never be happily adopted into their culture. Tarzan’s first contact with African people is therefore highly antagonistic, as the hunter Kulonga shoots and kills Tarzan’s adopted mother, Kala. This hostile relationship is only worsened when Tarzan observes the villagers torturing an enemy and preparing to eat the body. In Burroughs’s highly biased world, the practice of cannibalism implicitly unites the ape and human societies in Africa, thus setting both of them apart from the protagonist’s supposedly superior state of being. The apes also engage in the ritualistic torture and consumption of an enemy ape during the Dum-Dum ritual, which Tarzan participates in enthusiastically. The African villagers engage in a parallel ritual that also involves dancing and tormenting a body, reducing their humanity to the level of an animal. Yet Tarzan’s instincts prevent him from participating in cannibalism, for when he kills Kulonga, he debates eating the body, but ultimately shies away from the idea. As Burroughs states, “All he knew was that he could not eat the flesh of this black man, and thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence he was ignorant” (48). While Tarzan does eat ape meat, he instinctively refuses to eat human meat, thus marking himself as different, and in the eyes of the author, as “superior” to the African villagers. Thus, in this portrayal that strays boldly into the realm of caricature, the author’s bias toward scientific racism soon becomes apparent. Burroughs employs his biased and inaccurate depiction of ethnic groups in Africa in order to portray Tarzan’s whiteness as a form of hereditary advancement that gives him a natural dominance over the non-white people whom he is able to kill and exploit through fear.