Tarzan of the Apes
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
The following is part of a series exploring classic books for people who always meant to read them, but never quite got around to it.
Introduction
Let’s step into the untamed heart of the jungle, where legend has it that a baby was raised not by parents or villagers, but by apes beneath the sprawling African canopy. Today we’re traveling through the pages of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first published in 1912. This is the book that birthed a pop culture phenomenon and introduced a hero unlike any other.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was a dreamer with a boundless imagination. He conjured up wild adventures at a time when the world was still mostly undiscovered on paper. “Tarzan of the Apes” was his unlikely breakout, written as he struggled to support his family and published when he was nearly forty. Yet this single story transformed not only his life, but the landscape of modern adventure fiction.
Why does Tarzan still matter more than a century later? Perhaps it’s because we never really outgrow our fascination with the unknown – that primal longing to escape civilization’s constraints and rediscover what is basic, fierce, and free within us. The story offers more than chases and wild animals. It’s an exploration of what makes us human, what we owe to the world we’re born into, and how we shape our own destinies even when the odds are stacked against us.
Even if you’ve never thumbed through its pages, you probably know some version of Tarzan – the orphaned boy, swinging overhead, his name echoing through the trees. But the real tale is richer, stranger, and more thoughtful than the legend suggests. So, let’s journey together. What does it mean when your cradle is a leafy nest high above the jungle floor, and your lullabies are the roars of animals? What is civilization, when you’ve lived without it? Prepare to meet the man behind the myth, and discover the story you only think you know.
Story Summary
Our story opens at the end of the 19th century, on a remote stretch of African coast. There, a young English couple – Lord John Greystoke, also known as Lord Clayton, and his wife, Lady Alice – arrive under duress. They have been marooned, the innocent victims of mutinous sailors, and now face the daunting prospect of survival in a world utterly unfamiliar to them.
As days turn to weeks, John and Alice struggle to make a home. With dogged perseverance, John builds a cabin from the ship’s wreckage, stacking timbers in the shadow of ancient trees. The jungle, however, is an indifferent host. They have barely found their bearings when Lady Alice gives birth to a son – a fragile, beautiful new life in the midst of raw danger.
You can imagine the hope that little boy brings to his parents, and also the fear. Every night brings new threats: rustlings in the leaves, glinting yellow eyes, and the deep, predatory patience of nature itself. Over time, despair gnaws at Alice. She slips into a troubled silence, her spirit eroded by isolation and loss. John does all he can, but tragedy is relentless.
One day, disaster strikes from the treetops. A tribe of great apes, fierce and unfamiliar, raid their camp. Kerchak, the fearsome chieftain, storms the cabin in a rage. In mere moments, both John and Alice are dead, leaving their infant son alone, orphaned, without even the comfort of a human embrace.
But the jungle is never empty. Kala, a female ape who has just lost her own child, hears the abandoned infant’s cries. Her grief makes her brave and tender. Defying Kerchak’s wrath and the suspicion of her tribe, she scoops up the human baby and cradles him as her own. She names him Tarzan, which means “white skin” in the apes’ language.
That singular act of compassion changes the course of the boy’s life. Raised by Kala, Tarzan grows up among the apes, imitating their ways but struggling against his physical difference. He is smaller and weaker than his adoptive siblings, but his keen mind sets him apart. Every day is a battle – for food, for dignity, and for survival against jungle perils.
The apes have their own customs and codes, rough but strict. Kerchak, with his brooding violence, rules through terror. Tarzan is an oddity – not quite trusted, always watched. But Kala shields him fiercely, and through mimicry and determination, Tarzan learns to swing, leap, and fight like the others. “His senses were acute, his courage boundless, his muscles like steel,” Burroughs writes, underscoring the young man’s growing prowess.
Still, Tarzan is haunted by a nagging sense of difference. He is curious about his reflection in pools of water, about the strange box and books left behind in the now overgrown cabin. One day, driven by restless curiosity, he dares to enter that old shelter, discovering remnants of the life his parents tried to build. The books puzzle him – first strange objects, then a challenge. Letter by letter, across countless patient afternoons, he teaches himself to read, despite having no language beyond the guttural cries of the apes.
These books kindle dormant questions, tugging him toward an identity as much imagined as inherited. Tarzan’s mind, shaped by jungles and apes, now begins to stretch toward something larger. “I am different,” he thinks, looking at the pictures of men and women in faded volumes, “but which am I? Who am I?” The ache for belonging gnaws at him, both blessing and curse.
Jungle life is ceaselessly harsh. Tarzan faces wild beasts – leopards, lions, snakes – and rival apes who see his difference as weakness. Early on, he proves his mettle by killing a large ape, subduing Kerchak’s dominance for a dangerous moment. This act earns him a grudging respect. But nothing shields him from the jungle’s casual brutality. At one point, Kala, the only mother he has ever known, is killed by a native hunter. Tarzan’s grief is raw and untempered. In retaliation, he terrifies the native villagers with bold raids, leaving behind strange, ghostly warnings. His legend begins to grow, not only among apes, but among the superstitious people nearby.
Now, let’s pause. If you step back for a moment, you’ll notice that Tarzan’s journey is as much about learning the limits of love and loss as about learning to swing from vines. He is a creature of two worlds, standing astride the wild and the civilized, a fierce survivor and a lonely seeker. The world knows his name as legend, but within, he is a child searching endlessly for belonging.
Life shifts again when a new group approaches Tarzan’s jungle. An American expedition lands on the very same shore where Tarzan’s parents met their fate. Among them is Professor Archimedes Porter, a bumbling but warm-hearted academic, his faithful assistant – and most intriguingly, his daughter, Jane Porter. Jane is intelligent, spirited, and entirely unprepared for the dangers ahead.
Their arrival is chaotic. Almost immediately, the group runs afoul of the jungle’s dangers: stealthy lions, quicksand, and their own misunderstandings. It is Tarzan, ever silent and unseen, who becomes their secret protector. Watching from the branches above, he finds himself entranced by this strange new creature, Jane. For the first time, Tarzan is drawn not simply by curiosity, but by the dizzying sensation of love. “He saw that she was smaller and more delicately formed than the women of his books. Her hair was of a golden brown, and her skin fair like his own.” Jane is, to Tarzan, both a revelation and a puzzle.
On one fateful afternoon, Jane is separated from the party and cornered by a great ape, struck with terror. Tarzan sweeps in at the last second, confronting the beast in fierce battle. He saves her life, carrying her into the shelter of the trees in a display equal parts heroics and childlike awe. Jane’s terror gives way to a trembling curiosity as she studies her rescuer: wild, half-naked, and impossibly noble in bearing. Their first interactions are silent, punctuated by gestures and wonder.
While Jane returns safely to her party, she is never quite the same. Tarzan lingers in her mind like a dream, impossible and irresistible. Meanwhile, Tarzan keeps a watchful vigil nearby, drawn ever more powerfully by Jane’s presence and her worldliness.
But complications, as always, arise. The American party is beset by internal tensions. William Clayton, who happens to be Tarzan’s cousin and unaware he is not the true heir to the Greystoke title, is hopelessly smitten with Jane. There are jealousies, misunderstandings, and the growing sense that nature itself is pressing in. Pirates land onshore, threatening the group with violence and abduction.
Amid chaos, Tarzan operates at the edges – unseen, lightning fast, with an uncanny sense for danger. He leaves Jane cryptic notes, written in the careful script he taught himself but in broken, childlike English. Jane is both elated and unsettled. She senses that behind the messages is the wild man she cannot stop thinking about.
Soon, tragedy and courage collide again. Jane is kidnapped by the pirates, and Tarzan follows with fierce determination. The rescue is harrowing, involving chases through tangled forests, climactic battles at the pirate’s lair, and Tarzan’s valor shining in full. Jane and Tarzan find themselves thrust together, isolated from the rest of her group when a massive storm breaks. There, in the green cathedral of the jungle, Tarzan and Jane’s connection deepens. They share moments of genuine tenderness, and Tarzan, for the first time, dares to hope for something more than a solitary life.
Yet, their happiness is short-lived. Jane is torn between her obligations to her father and her inexplicable feelings for this wild stranger. Meanwhile, William Clayton still vies for her hand, offering security and status, everything Tarzan seems not to possess.
The Americans are eventually rescued and prepare to return to civilization. Jane, wrestled by conflicting desires, makes a fraught decision. She promises her hand in marriage to William Clayton, caught by circumstances and a sense of duty. Tarzan, overhearing this admission, is shaken. Instead of declaring his identity and birthright, he chooses silence, disappearing into the jungle. His heartbreak is its own kind of exile.
Alongside personal trials, a parallel story emerges about Tarzan’s birthright. Through a series of discoveries – the old cabin, lost letters, bits of evidence scattered across the years – it becomes clear that Tarzan himself is the true Lord Greystoke. He is not some outcast creature, but heir to a British title and estate, robbed of his place by fate and silence. The story leverages the old notion of identity as both inheritance and achievement: what makes a man who he is, his blood or his actions?
The jungle, which has been Tarzan’s cradle, is now his cage. Driven by love, loyalty, and a rising sense of justice, Tarzan sets out to find Jane in America. His journey is one of adaptation – struggling to fit into a world of manners, language, and restraint after a lifetime marked by wildness and intuition. He masters the most challenging landscapes yet: the drawing rooms and parlors of Baltimore and Paris.
These final passages are tinged with humor and poignancy. Tarzan blunders through etiquette, defers always to Jane’s happiness, and chooses, time and again, honor over self-interest. In the end, while his noble birth is revealed, and Jane comes to understand the depths of his love and sacrifice, Tarzan relinquishes his claim to both title and the woman he loves. He quietly helps secure happiness for others while turning away to a future unknown. “My mother was an ape. I never knew who my father was,” Tarzan says, summing up not just his origin, but his sense of place in two worlds – and, perhaps, neither.
The story of Tarzan is more than a string of adventures or feats of strength. It is, at its core, the tale of a boy formed by wildness, shaped by loss, and ennobled not by blood, but by compassion. In every scene, we see a hero torn between solitude and connection, driven always by questions that linger – about love, identity, and where, and with whom, we truly belong.
Reflections and Themes
Stepping back, what stays with us from Tarzan of the Apes? Clearly, its sense of adventure still calls to something primal inside. There’s a childlike delight in the idea of escaping into the wild, pitting your wits against nature, swinging through trees under the open sky. But Burroughs gives us more to ponder than just daring exploits.
At its heart, this story is about the tension between nature and civilization – the question of which shapes us more deeply. Tarzan is both animal and man, his life suspended between the honest savagery of the jungle and the complex, sometimes hypocritical world of humans. “The voice of the forest was always calling to him,” Burroughs writes, alluding to a restlessness that many feel even if they have never set foot outside their hometown.
There’s also a longing for family, and questions about belonging. Tarzan’s search is not just for his origins, but for acceptance. He isn’t recognized truly by the apes, nor by humans. Who decides who we are – our upbringing, our genes, or the choices we make? Burroughs circles this question throughout. In Tarzan’s willingness to risk his own happiness for Jane’s, we see the deepest kind of love, tested by both inner and outer wilderness.
Look, too, at the meaning of identity. Tarzan’s discovery of his English heritage is almost incidental by the time it comes – he has proven himself not by title, but in courage, kindness, and self-mastery. “He did not belong to this new race. He was still of the jungle,” Burroughs observes. The book prods us gently: What makes us civilized? Is it etiquette, or integrity? Title, or loyalty?
For anyone reflecting on their own life, Tarzan’s journey offers food for thought. Many of us, especially in later years, wonder about our origins and choices. We may feel adrift at times – caught between the person we seemed destined to be and the one we fought, learned, and stumbled our way into becoming. Tarzan’s story reassures us that belonging is not inherited, but won through acts of compassion and self-discovery.
Consider, as well, the story’s empathy for the outsider. Tarzan confronts prejudice within the apes, suspicion among humans, and always the challenge of translating identity across cultures. In a world that often sorts people into categories, his life is a reminder of what is gained by keeping curiosity and kindness alive, even when we feel isolated or misunderstood.
Burroughs’s prose sometimes carries the attitudes of its era. There are moments that reflect early 20th-century views on race, gender, and “civilization,” which can feel dated or uncomfortable. Yet, the enduring emotional arc – love, loss, discovery, sacrifice – is one that still resonates. One line, simple and heartfelt, lingers long after the last page: “Tarzan of the Apes, mighty fighter, mighty hunter, mighty man, was still a little child at heart.”
If you’re a retiree or simply an older adult exploring new chapters, Tarzan’s adventure speaks to the idea that growth has no end point. Even after weathering unimaginable adversity, Tarzan never stops questioning, loving, and changing. Maybe that’s the greatest adventure of all.
Closing
So, after all this time, stepping through the wilds of Tarzan’s jungle, what remains? An invitation to reconsider the familiar and rediscover the power of compassion – even when the odds seem impossible. Tarzan’s life, framed by both tragedy and fierce resilience, reminds us that home is more than a place, family is more than blood, and heroism is born as much from kindness as from strength.
If you have ever felt caught between two worlds, searching for your place, or wondered if you could reshape your story no matter where you begin, Tarzan’s journey is for you. His courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to keep moving forward, to risk his heart again and again. These pages may be filled with jungles and adventure, but their truest terrain is the human spirit.
As you turn this story over in your thoughts, perhaps you’ll find yourself asking: what qualities shape us most deeply? What wild things still move in your heart? What would you do, if you found yourself called to a different path at any age?
This has been The Book You Never Read — the story you always meant to read, now you have finally caught up.
About This Book
- Author description: Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American novelist and creator of iconic adventure stories, best known for his Tarzan series and his tales of Barsoom (John Carter of Mars).
- Source: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, available at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78