While Tarzan is rescuing D'Arnot from the natives, a rescue ship recovers the castaways. Tarzan spies on the newcomers, aids them in secret, and saves Jane from the perils of the jungle.Īmong the party is French naval officer Paul D'Arnot. Tarzan's cousin, William Cecil Clayton, unwitting usurper of the ape man's ancestral English estate, is also among the party. They, in turn, regard him as an evil spirit and attempt to placate him.Ī few years later when Tarzan is 21 years of age, a new party is marooned on the coast, including 19 year old Jane Porter, the first white woman Tarzan has ever seen. Avenging himself on the killer, Tarzan begins an antagonistic relationship with the tribe, raiding its village for weapons and practicing cruel pranks on them. Later, a tribe of black Africans settle in the area, and Tarzan's adopted mother, Kala, is killed by one of its hunters. Tarzan kills Kerchak and takes his place as "king" of the apes. As he grows up, Tarzan becomes a skilled hunter, exciting the jealousy of Kerchak, the ape leader, who finally attacks him. Upon his return from one visit to the cabin, he is attacked by a huge gorilla which he manages to kill with his father's knife, although he is terribly wounded in the struggle. Using basic primers with pictures, over many years he teaches himself to read English, but having never heard it, cannot speak it. The infant is then adopted by the she-ape Kala.Ĭlayton is named "Tarzan" ("White Skin" in the ape language) and raised in ignorance of his human heritage.Īs a boy, feeling alienated from his peers due to their physical differences, he discovers his true parents' cabin, where he first learns of others like himself in their books.
When he is one year old his mother dies, and soon thereafter his father is killed by the savage king ape Kerchak. Some time later, their son John Clayton II is born. John and Alice (Rutherford) Clayton, Viscount and Lady Greystoke from England, are marooned in the western coastal jungles of equatorial Africa in 1888. In April 2012, in advance of the novel's centennial anniversary, the Library of America published a hardcover edition based on Burroughs' original novel, with an introduction by Thomas Mallon.( ISBN 978-1-59853-164-0).
Scholars have noted several important themes in the novel: the impact of heredity on behavior racial superiority civilization, especially as Tarzan struggles with his identity as a human sexuality and escapism. So popular was the character that Burroughs continued the series into the 1940s with two dozen sequels. The story follows the title character Tarzan's adventures, from his childhood being raised by apes in the jungle to his eventual encounters with other humans and Western society.
It was first serialized in the pulp magazine The All-Story beginning October 1912 before being released Tarzan of the Apes is a 1912 story by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the first in the Tarzan series.
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