Well, here we have it, the works of Tarzan complete and what a mammoth task that was. This is an interesting series to critique. Like with so many books, they are so far removed from the movies, it is shocking. Looking at the Johnny Weissmuller movies, by today’s standards, uncomfortably racist.
Over all the stories were fun, the key to reading Tarzan is to read it superficially. The moment you truly look at the stories, you become uncomfortable, you ask too many questions, the more questions you ask the more that appear.
On one side, the concept of an unknown land and continent opens up a plethora of potential for themes and story lines. Lines of “the missing link” tribes, lost civilisations forgotten in time, the quest for money or eternal youth are all great stories. HOWEVER, looking at them more closely 99% of all these stories you would assume that Africans are dim witted half wits and all the advanced civilisations with money, stone buildings etc were all White. The social/ race divide was truly shocking. In part a reflection of the period, but also a reflection of the author.
In SO MANY cases we have two ‘white’ cities at war with each other’s for eons. These civilisations were descendants of Europeans. One Roman, another English, or Saxon. Yet they have all managed to live in touched, unseen by anyone around them. Each group once never thought of trying to communicate with their country of origin.
Then, we move onto Jane and their son. Makes two random appearances and completely forgotten. Why? Tarzan and Jane, nope, just Tarzan doing whatever he liked, we is KING OF THE APES, LORD OF AFRICA. Africa is his domain, who cares about wife and child!
Then, in other stories, we have the (White) Americans coming to Africa to pillage, plunder, kill as many animals as they can for fun, take gold and jewels. I’ve made links with this in other stories, of Roosevelt reading in Africa killing game, Hemingway doing the same, all these combined have created a sub view of a rich continent for people to use at their beck and call.
The last book and ending, kind of just ended. It ended more on a whimper rather than a glorious bang of satisfaction. So, although many of these stories were truly fun to read, the key is “keep it superficial”