Critical Sources:
- Holtsmark, Erling B. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Twayne United States Authors Series. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
- ---. Tarzan and Tradition. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1981.
- Sampson, Robert. "Bumudemutomuro." Yesterday’s Faces, Vol. 2: Strange Days. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green U Popular P, 1984. 132-68.
illustration by J. Allen St. John for first edition
Gordon Griffith in the 1918 production of Tarzan of the Apes.
Discussion Questions
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Holtsmark makes the equivocating statement: "Tarzan himself is surely a religious being, if by religious faith is meant an acknowledgment of the existence of a nontemporal power outside oneself that is sensed to have influence in daily experience. If the term is narrowly conceived to indicate only an obeisance to worldly pomp and circumstance with all its attendant ritual, then Tarzan is equally surely not a religious individual" (ERB 41). How religious is Tarzan?
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A fuller account of Tarzan's linguistic understanding of the relationship between letters and spoken words in given in Tarzan of the Apes, chapter 7, "The Light of Knowledge." (Click here for an excerpt.) What assumptions can be affirmed and what questions regarding Tarzan's linguistic insight?
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Holtsmark (Tarzan 105) compares the encounter between Tarzan and Mbonga with Hector and Achilles, joining them with the image of the rushing lion. What other comparisons might you make between the archetypes of this story and other, older literature?