Beasts of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Cover via AmazonWhen I was a young child, I loved climbing trees. I also really loved animals. Eventually, I grew up adolescence, and these early predilections likely had an influence over me as I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan series. I'm not sure if I owned the entire series and read them all, but whatever I could get my hands on I got and read. It is likely that if I didn't read the entire series, I nearly did.

Last year, I felt the urge to revisit this hero. Having been in Canada for the first time in years, I took the opportunity of finding the first book, Tarzan of the Apes. It has been long enough since I first read it that it was very nearly like reading it for the first time. It was a pleasure. In short, I often get tired of purified heroes which lack any kind of depth. Too often, in modern film, developed antagonists are more interesting because they are more human than the heroes. Tarzan, on the other hand, is not at all like that. He is a killer, even if he does have his peculiar code of ethics which somehow he got from his instincts rather than from his tribe of apes.

Image via WikipediaBeasts of Tarzan is the third novel in the series. Having come off the heels of having read Le Mort d'Arthur, it is somewhat wanting. The truth is that the protagonists in the story are relatively two, if not one, dimensional and far from interesting. However, the hero is portrayed as something of a bungling idiot. Despite his superhuman senses, he cannot interpret people very well. Also, despite it being said that he has superhuman olfactory senses, he cannot seem to distinguish his own wife, Jane, from that of any other woman. This is not to mention the odour of his two, up to this point, great antagonists, Rokoff and Paulvitch.


Ultimately, in this novel, Tarzan learns that he can control many beasts of the jungle. These animals swiftly become very important to Tarzan. He cannot control the men, despite efforts to both bribe and intimidate. Thus, his only real trusted friends, aside from his wife Jane and Mugambi, are the animals themselves.

Tarzan, of course, manages to triumph over Rokoff. He kills him, but Paulvitch manages to escape. Though it is believed that he has died, it is more likely that he will survive to try his luck again with destroying Tarzan.