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sonshinelibrarian 's review for:
Tarzan of the Apes
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
To say this book has not aged well would be a massive understatement. Not only is it horrifically racist and classist, the ending is just awful! I am a compulsive finisher - there are virtually no books that I've started that I haven't (eventually) finished. This just got worse and worse and by the time I got to the end I was mad I'd wasted reading time on it.
The idea that a child raised by ape-people could teach himself to read and write fluent English by using a handful of books left behind by his dead parents is laughable. But there were also so many instances of overt racism and classism as to make this book immensely uncomfortable to read.
Here are two examples that stood out to me.
"thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence he was ignorant." Even though the ape-men and the black tribe (don't even get me started on how they're portrayed) are cannibals, Tarzan's white, aristocratic birth makes him innately more moral.
"It was a stately and gallant little compliment performed with the grace and dignity of utter unconsciousness of self. It was the hall-mark of his aristocratic birth, the natural outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate."
Anyhoo. I will not be wasting any more of my time reading any more of the Tarzan books.
The idea that a child raised by ape-people could teach himself to read and write fluent English by using a handful of books left behind by his dead parents is laughable. But there were also so many instances of overt racism and classism as to make this book immensely uncomfortable to read.
Here are two examples that stood out to me.
"thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence he was ignorant." Even though the ape-men and the black tribe (don't even get me started on how they're portrayed) are cannibals, Tarzan's white, aristocratic birth makes him innately more moral.
"It was a stately and gallant little compliment performed with the grace and dignity of utter unconsciousness of self. It was the hall-mark of his aristocratic birth, the natural outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate."
Anyhoo. I will not be wasting any more of my time reading any more of the Tarzan books.