Tarzan of the Apes

About the book

After his English parents are stranded on the African coast, their child grows up among apes, learning the skills and dangers of the forest. The possessions left in his parents' cabin offer another education, including a puzzling route towards written language. Encounters with human visitors, particularly Jane Porter, bring questions of belonging and identity into a life already shaped by physical contest and observation. Burroughs builds the adventure around the contrast between different forms of knowledge and the uncertainty of recognition. The novel's account of heredity and civilization is also structured by racial and colonial assumptions that materially shape its characters and judgments. Its narrative momentum comes from the collision between an upbringing outside conventional society and the social history that continues to make claims upon its protagonist.

• Identity and belonging
• Nature and education
• Recognition

Why read it

For the original adventure's interplay of physical resourcefulness, self-education, and an identity that others cannot readily recognize.

Adventure novel · English text