Anna S. (annapi) reviewed on 10/28/2010 + 334 more book reviews

Another book on Mount TBR finally gets read as I need this review for a raffle entry in Play Book Tag on Shelfari. John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, is left marooned by mutineers on the coast of Africa with his pregnant wife. They survive about a year, and their infant son is adopted by Kala the great ape after her own baby is killed. Tarzan is raised by the ape tribe and grows into a "noble savage". Where the story takes a major downturn for me is when he manages to teach himself to read by studying the primers and books left in the shelter his parents built. I can stomach that he learned the basic words and connected them with the labeled pictures in the books, and even teaches himself to write, but it's ludicrous that he eventually understands the rudiments of grammar enough to communicate with the white men he eventually meets, without any instruction whatsoever. Add to that Burroughs' notion that "nobility" and being a "gentleman" are inherited, so that Tarzan is able to overcome his savagery to treat Jane with restraint even as he considers her his mate. (Yeah, right.) Okay, so once the reader can swallow those distasteful pills, as well as the minor racial biases scattered throughout the book in the descriptions of the black Africans and the Negress who is Jane's servant (understandable considering the book was written in 1912), then this becomes quite an enjoyable and thrilling adventure to excite the imagination. It's easy to see how it morphed into the phenomenon it eventually became.

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