A Return to the Primeval

Tarazan ranks as one of the greatest characters in modern fiction. Like many characters he's been horribly represented in the popular culture, from the early Johnny West movies where he's cast as a paladin-like hero of the jungle, to the Disney movies where his civilized genetics overcomes his wild upbringing. In all these depictions he's a hero, a champion of animals or people or some such.

But Tarzan was none of the these things. In Tarzan the Ape Man, the first of Edgar Rice Burrough's 24+ novels involving the character, Tarzan is a creature of the jungle, wild, savage and free; he has little mercy for the weak and no fear of the strong. He's curious, adaptable, tireless in his endeavors; he does not pontificate on the morality of his decisions, he kills to protect his territory or tribe and he does so with impunity. He shows mercy from time to time, but he can be utterly merciless . . . though never cruel. When he must kill, he kills and moves on. His is a force of will. The primeval will possessed of all animals, the drive to survive no matter the circumstance.

Tarzan is that echo of ourselves as we once struggled in the cold dawn of our own history.

When he at last enters the worlds of men he is curious as he tries to understand it; and it is not the world he finds wanting, but those who people it. Civilization has no place for Tarzan, even in the later stories as he lives in a bungalow he always prefers the jungle, the wilds. The bungalow is for Jane, not for Tarzan.

His character appeals to me even now, as it did many years ago, for in Tarzan we see ourselves as we should be, able to cope and adapt, able shrug off misfortune and success as if either were the same.

At the end of the tale, when Tarzan returns to the jungle, vanishing into the green his backward glance captures that moment, of so long ago, when we left the jungle; in it we see a reflection, a fleeting memory of the primeval creatures we really are.