Tarzan of the Apes, Book 1

Tarzan of the Apes - by Edgar Rice Byrroughs - A Gunston Classic. Known as a classic within the adventure genre. Tarzan of the Apes by American author Edgar Rice Burroughs follows the story of a man raised by apes in the jungle. Published in 1914, this novel is the first in a series of twenty-four books that tell of Tarzan and his encounters with other humans, other societies, and even his own identity. Burroughs, wrote science fiction and fantasy stories that all include the theme of adventure.
Lord and Lady Greystoke sail to Africa in 1888, but a mutiny on their ship leaves them stranded. In hopes that they will be rescued, John Clayton builds a cabin in the jungle while his pregnant wife, Alice, prepares to give birth. When their son is born, Alice dies sddenly and John is killed by a gorilla mourning the loss of her child. The ape saves the baby and names the boy Tarzan which mean 'white skin'. The apes raise Tarzan but Tarzan always feels alienated and different from his family because of their physical differences. When Tarzan finds the cabin where he was born he begins to teach himself English. Things begin to change. Throught his life, Tarzan stives to build himself into a skilled hunter. He continues to chase after an identity that he's never known. With curiosity, danger and romance, Tarzan of the Apes is a classic, compelling tale that will keep you reading and hoping for more.

First published in 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs's romance has lost little of its force over the years--as film revivals and TV series well attest. Tarzan of the Apes is very much a product of its age: replete with bloodthirsty natives and a bulky, swooning American Negress, and haunted by what zoo specialists now call charismatic megafauna (great beasts snarling, roaring, and stalking, most of whom would be out of place in a real African jungle). Burroughs countervails such incorrectness, however, with some rather unattractive representations of white civilization--mutinous, murderous sailors, effete aristos, self-involved academics, and hard-hearted cowards. At Tarzan's heart rightly lies the resourceful and hunky title character, a man increasingly torn between the civil and the savage, for whom cutlery will never be less than a nightmare.

The passages in which the nut-brown boy teaches himself to read and write are masterly and among the book's improbable, imaginative best. How tempting it is to adopt the ten-year-old's term for letters--"little bugs"! And the older Tarzan's realization that civilized "men were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the jungle," while not exactly a new notion, is nonetheless potent. The first in Burroughs's serial is most enjoyable in its resounding oddities of word and thought, including the unforgettable "When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled; and smiles are the foundation of beauty."