Recent literary criticism often focuses on the identity of the eponymous protagonist of Tarzan of the Apes. Literary scholars, such as Jeff Berglund, Mikko Tuhkanen, J. Michelle Coughlan, Bijana Oklopčić, and Catherine Jurca have examined the overlapping themes of Tarzan's heredity, race, civilized behavior, sexuality, and escapist appeal. Writers in popular culture, such as Gore Vidal, often emphasize Tarzan's escapist appeal.
Heredity
Burroughs himself acknowledged the centrality of the theme of heredity in the novel, and its conflict with the environment. According to his biographer, John Taliaferro, he claimed in a Writer’s Digest, "I was mainly interested in playing with the idea of a contest between heredity and environment. For this purpose I selected an infant child of a race strongly marked by hereditary characteristics of the finer and nobler sort, and at an age at which he could not have been influenced by association with creatures of his own kind I threw him into an environment as diametrically opposite that to which he had been born as I might well conceive".[9]
The scholar Jeff Burglund notices that although Tarzan was brought up in the jungle far from other humans, he is inexplicably drawn back to his parents’ cabin and the objects which he finds there.[10] He discovers a capacity for gentlemanly behavior around Jane despite no one teaching it to him.[10] Although the African tribes which he fights practice cannibalism, he suddenly feels revulsion when he considers eating one of the African men he kills. When he refuses to eat the African, Burroughs portrays "hereditary instinct" as the reason.[11] Tarzan's genetic association with upper-class, Western civilization conditions his actions more than his violent environment,[12] and Berglund claims that Tarzan could represent the stereotypical "scion of English stock" in colonialized countries.[13] His racial superiority manifests itself through his behavior because it correlates with the ideals of Western civilization, whether he treats a woman politely or cannot force himself to eat an African man.[13]
Racism
Biljana Oklopčić emphasizes the portrayal of race in Tarzan of the Apes. She claims that Tarzan represents white, male opposition to the "black rapist" stereotype which was prevalent in the Southern U.S. at the time of its publication because the language which describes apes parallels propaganda against people of Sub-Saharan African descent.[14]
Catherine Jurca similarly analyzes Tarzan as opposed to tolerating the presence of people of other races and classes in favor of preserving his own culture. The way that Tarzan defends his corner of civilization, his parents’ home, from the "savages" who want to destroy it, reflects an early twentieth-century American attitude; as darker-skinned immigrants flooded the country, especially urban areas, white Americans feared that their culture would be destroyed by newcomers who did not understand or care about it, and tried to protect the suburbs in the same way that Tarzan tries to protect his home.[15]
Though Burroughs' admirers have tried to downplay claims of racism, or to explain that it was a common stereotype at the time the book was written, John Newsinger examines the extent to which Burroughs unfavorably described black characters. He wrote that Tarzan is the story of the "whiteman's conquest of black savagery", where the native Sub-Saharan Africans are portrayed as brutes whom Tarzan enjoys taunting and killing.[16]
Civilization
Tarzan's jungle upbringing and eventual exposure to Western civilization form another common theme in literary criticism of the novel. Berglund notes that Tarzan's ability to read and write sets him apart from the apes, the African villagers, and the lower-class sailors in the novel, and culminates in Tarzan recognizing himself as a human for the first time; moreover, he sees himself as a man who is superior to others unlike himself. Jeff Berglund argues that this realization exemplifies Burroughs' portrayal of whiteness and literacy as fundamental to civilization through implying that Tarzan's growth into a perfectly civilized person stems from his Western, white heritage and ability to read and write.[17]
However, Mikko Tuhkanen claims that the apparently civilized qualities of Tarzan, such as his interest in reading, threaten his survival as a human in the jungle. For Tuhkanen, Tarzan represents the fluidity with which humans should define themselves. He asserts, "[T]he human and the nonhuman become grotesquely indistinguishable" in the novel.[18] Humans mistake apes for other humans,[19] an ape tries to rape Jane,[20] Tarzan finds a surrogate ape mother when he cries out like an ape,[19] and he must act against his human instincts by jumping into a dangerous body of water in order to survive an attack from a lion.[21] Because simian and human behavior blend, and because civilized habits seem to threaten human survival, Tuhkanen claims that humans must contradict the expectations of civilization regarding the characteristics of humans.[22] For Tuhkanen, the novel exemplifies “queer ethics,” encouraging “perverse sexuality” along with other behaviors which Western civilization often discouraged.[23]
Escapism
Most of the stories that Burroughs wrote were stories that he told himself.[6] According to Gore Vidal, when Burroughs was unsatisfied with reality, "he consoled himself with an inner world where he was strong and handsome, adored by beautiful women and worshipped by exotic races."[6] The story served for the most part as a form of masculine escape that inspired men and boys.[7] The adventurous character of Tarzan also appealed to wider American audiences over decades as a powerful means of escaping the sense of boredom and frustration which accompanies a confining society,[24] and to the twentieth-century American desire to reconquer a home that seemed lost.[15] "In the eyes of contemporary man, huddled in large cities and frustrated by a restrictive civilization, Tarzan was a joyous symbol of primitivism, an affirmation of life, endowing the reader with a Promethean sense of power."[7]
