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Loading... Tarzan of the Apesby Edgar Rice Burroughs
Amazon.com (ISBN 0760715432, Hardcover)First published in 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs's romance has lost little of its force over the years--as film revivals and TV series well attest. Tarzan of the Apes is very much a product of its age: replete with bloodthirsty natives and a bulky, swooning American Negress, and haunted by what zoo specialists now call charismatic megafauna (great beasts snarling, roaring, and stalking, most of whom would be out of place in a real African jungle). Burroughs countervails such incorrectness, however, with some rather unattractive representations of white civilization--mutinous, murderous sailors, effete aristos, self-involved academics, and hard-hearted cowards. At Tarzan's heart rightly lies the resourceful and hunky title character, a man increasingly torn between the civil and the savage, for whom cutlery will never be less than a nightmare.The passages in which the nut-brown boy teaches himself to read and write are masterly and among the book's improbable, imaginative best. How tempting it is to adopt the ten-year-old's term for letters--"little bugs"! And the older Tarzan's realization that civilized "men were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the jungle," while not exactly a new notion, is nonetheless potent. The first in Burroughs's serial is most enjoyable in its resounding oddities of word and thought, including the unforgettable "When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled; and smiles are the foundation of beauty." Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0486295702, Paperback)Unabridged classic adventure novel (1914) tells of an aristocratic English infant, abandoned on the death of his parents in the African jungle, who is reared by apes. Story includes riveting encounters with man-eating beasts, Tarzan's love affair with the beautiful Jane Porter, buried treasure, much more. Original, exotic, highly readable. Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 034531977X, Mass Market Paperback)Raised by a fierce she-ape of the tribe of Kerchak deep in the African jungle, the baby Tarzan grew to learn the secrets of the wild to survive--how to talk with animals, swing through trees, and fight against the great predators. He grew to the strength and courage of his fellow apes. And in time, his human intelligence promised him the kingship of the tribe. He became truly Lord of the Jungle.Then civilized men entered the jungle, and Tarzan was forced to choose between two worlds.... Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0812572386, Mass Market Paperback)When Tarzan is orphaned as a baby deep in the African jungle, he is saved from certain death when he is adopted by a she-ape. Raised as one of her own, Tarzan learns the way of the Kerchak-the tribe of great apes who rule the jungle. They teach him how to survive, to hunt, to swing through the trees, and to communicate with the other animals of the jungle. By the time he is a young man Tarzan has the courage and strength of ten men. But it is his human brain that allows him to be the King of the Apes. And Lord of the Jungle. But when his jungle domain is disturbed by the arrival of "civilized" men, Tarzan begins to wonder about his true identity. (retrieved from Amazon Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:52:50 -0400) |
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