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| Painting by J. Allen St. John |
This is the seventh
volume in ERB's Tarzan series. I read it at least once in my
youth – perhaps twice. I know I had two of the Ballantine Books
paperback editions – the 1969 printing with the cover painting by
Robert Abbett (shown below), and the 1976 printing with the cover by
Boris Vallejo (shown further below). The latter depicts one of the most
memorable scenes in this story. Tarzan, crossing a barren desert, is
almost overcome by the heat, dehydration, and starvation. He feigns
death to lure down the only living creature in sight, a vulture that
has been wheeling above him – and when it's in reach, he snatches
it and makes a meal of it. The revolting scavenger's rancid flesh and foul blood sustain
him long enough to complete his trek to more hospitable terrain.
Wow!
That's not the only
image that has stuck with me across the years. Just as memorable is
the sequence that opened the book. Tarzan desperately racing
cross-country in British East Africa, having just learned of the
outbreak of war with Germany, determined to remove his beloved wife,
Jane, from their African estate to a more secure location – and
finding himself too late. The Germans have already attacked the
plantation, massacring Tarzan's faithful Waziri guards – crucifying
Jane's bodyguard Wasimbu against a wall and leaving Jane's corpse
for Tarzan to find, burned beyond recognition, identifiable only by her wedding band.
At which point,
Tarzan is at war – not just with the German soldiers who
perpetrated the atrocity, but in his mind with the German race as a
whole. This affords Burroughs the opportunity, in the context of the
world of the Great War and its immediate aftermath, to indulge and
express the typical American view of the “Bosch,” the “Huns”
(the working title for the book was indeed, “Tarzan Against the
Huns”), etc. Tarzan the Untamed is quite jingoistic.
Tarzan's quest for vengeance that wreaks havoc on the Germans in East
Africa occupies about a quarter of the book during which he moves
stealthily and at will back and forth across the battle-lines, at one
point unleashing a starving lion into the German trenches, at another
discovering that there is a female German spy in the ranks of the
British command.
Eventually, the
despoilers of his half-civilized life with Jane destroyed, he
determines to make the long trek to western Africa where he will live
out his life at his father's cabin, done with the world of man. It's
during that journey that the passage through the desert takes place –
but once through although still far east of his destination he
discovers that native soldiers under German command have rebelled and
made their way to the same isolated jungle he has found, along with
their captive, that same female German spy. The innate racism of the
age when this story was written comes through here, because although
she is an enemy there is no way the noble jungle lord can leave a
white woman in the hands of the black savages. Further adventures
ensue – the German woman, Bertha Kircher, is absolutely taken with
the manly Tarzan despite his palpable hatred. When he – along with
a downed British aviator, Lt. Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick – are
captured by the natives and are to be burned alive for the natives'
feast, Kircher manages to communicate Tarzan's plight to some of the
great apes with whom he had taken up and leads them on a
rescue raid! At length, Tarzan and his charges find themselves in
another of ERB's many lost cities that pepper the dark continent –
Xuja, whose people are insane masters of a subspecies of black-pelted
lions and worshippers of parrots and monkeys. Along the way, Tarzan
rescues and befriends one of the black lions which later comes to
their rescue, allowing them to hold out against the denizens of Xuja
until the clatter of machine-guns signals the arrival of a
search-and-rescue party that had been sent for Smith-Oldwick.
In the end, Bertha
Kircher is revealed not to be a German spy at all – but rather a
British double-spy, Lady Patricia Canby; she and Smith-Oldwick
are engaged; but best of all Tarzan has discovered that German
documents she had been carrying all the time reveal that his beloved
Jane is in fact still alive, that he has been the victim of a
cruel hoax while she has been captive of the Germans all along. But
the search for Jane will have to wait for the next book, Tarzan
the Terrible.
* * *
My
reading of Tarzan the Untamed this time was in one of the free Kindle
editions. It does not have any cover illustration, so I reverted to
that of the first book publication for the post heading. You can't
go wrong with J. Allen St. John's paintings!
A few comments, to
supplement those included above in my short synopsis:
I believe those two
powerful, memorable scenes from this book to which I refer at the
beginning were combined by Robert E. Howard in his Conan
novella, A Witch Shall Be Born, into the scene that made it
into the Arnold Schwarzeneggar movie – Conan, crucified on a tree,
tormented by vultures, killing one with his bare teeth!
“Tarzan
desperately racing cross-country in British East Africa, having just
learned of the outbreak of war with Germany, determined to remove his
beloved wife, Jane, from their African estate to a more secure
location – and finding himself too late.” – Reading this so
soon after seeing John Carter as I did this time, I have to
wonder if the creators had this passage in mind when they formulated
the addition of John Carter's back-story for the movie. Whether they
did or not, the scenes resonated for me. They were similarly
powerful, even though since this was a reread of Tarzan the
Untamed I knew that here we would ultimately have a happier
ending.
Just as the racism
and jingoism of the age informed ERB's writing, so did some then
popular (and not now entirely dispelled) pseudo-scientific theories
linking physical appearance with mental ability and character. ERB
was an adherent of the theories of phrenology
and physiognomy
holding that the shape and measurement of an individual's skull and
facial and bodily features reflected and expressed innate personality
and character traits. To wit, the Xujans, insane because of
centuries of inbreeding in their isolated little valley, sport
yellowish skin, wiry black hair, receding foreheads, prominent canine
teeth, and a generally wild-eyed aspect which leaves ERB's characters
with no doubt from the instant they see them that they are maniacs.
There's one aspect
of Xujan feminine fashion that brings to mind the current lawsuit by ERB, Inc., against Dynamite Entertainment. Besides
the charges of copyright and trademark infringement which seem to me
quite fuzzy since the early books of both the John Carter
series on which Warlord of Mars is based and the Tarzan
series on which Lord of the Jungle is based (including Tarzan
the Untamed) are in the public domain (under US law, at
least), ERB, Inc., alleges that Dynamite's portrayal of the
characters in Warlord of Mars is pornographic. (See especially the Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris series covers here.) The definition
of “pornography” being somewhat in the eye of the beholder (and
Dynamite's practice of releasing “risqué”
variants of some of its covers notwithstanding), the counterargument
in the case of the Warlord
of Mars covers is
easy, that the portrayal of scantily-clad or even naked women is
perfectly in keeping with ERB's written descriptions, which have the
Martians wearing nothing but jewelry and ever-present harnesses to
carry their weapons – filtered through the modern comic book
artistic convention that more often than not has those women sporting
breasts the size of cantaloupes (the appropriateness of which is
itself a separate debate). Anyway, what has this to do with Tarzan
the Untamed? Well, here we have ERB clearly and explicitly
describing the women of Xuja as clad only in diaphanous scarves that
wrap around their bodies from below their breasts and down –
leaving the breasts explicitly exposed. Forced into this garb to
join the Xujan king's harem, Bertha Kircher takes exception! Since
Tarzan the Untamed is in the public domain, assuming Dynamite
is able to withstand the legal onslaught (which may or may not be
driven by the even more famously litigious Disney with its infinitely
deep pockets and ability to get intellectual and creative property
laws rewritten to its advantage seemingly at will) and continue
publishing Lord of the Jungle, if they follow what seems to be
the developing precedent of Warlord of Mars then within a few
years they will be adapting this book into their comics. Whereas the
description of Martian female fashion is ambiguous enough to allow
the “jewelry” to conceivably include what Dynamite represents as
basically golden pasties covering Dejah Thoris' nipples, I don't
think there's any such ambiguity about Xujan female fashion. Were
Dynamite to choose to go full broke and represent it as ERB describes
(doubtful, but go along with me for the sake of argument), would ERB,
Inc., then see that portrayal as “pornographic”?
I noticed something
in reading this novel regarding ERB's practice in giving names. More
often than not, he tends to use full names where most writers would
just use their first or last name. Bertha Kircher is almost if not
always “Bertha Kircher,” not “Bertha” nor “Kircher.” The
same with the British aviator Lt. Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick is
repeatedly called just that – although in this case “Smith-Oldwick”
eventually suffices for most of the story. Repeatedly typing all
four names must have become burdensome very quickly. This is the
first of ERB's non-Martian novels that I've read in many years, and I
had believed such repeated use of the characters' full names was a
distinctive feature of that series, reflecting the alien culture ERB
was trying to portray, but it seems rather to have been a more
general feature of ERB's style. I still don't think “John Carter”
and “Dejah Thoris” would either of them address or refer to the
other with anything less than that full name, however.
Anyway, this was a
great read which has me wanting to expand my rereading of the Tarzan
series – I'm particularly looking forward to delving into Tarzan
the Terrible, the renewed search for Jane that takes Tarzan to
yet another lost African world – with dinosaurs! – and even to
read some of the volumes I never read as a youth. Unlike the Mars
series, all of which I read, I think I only read about half of the
two dozen or so Tarzan books. I'm particularly curious how
different my reaction to some of the books might be as a
fifty-year-old from what it was as a fifteen-year-old. There were a
couple of the Tarzan books that, for whatever reason, I did
not like at all – most memorable in my own mind being the third,
The Beasts of Tarzan. Eventually … Tarzan the Terrible
will be next, however, which I remember loving as a kid. But I have
the last of the “Christian Adventures of Doc Savage” before it in
the queue, so it will be a while.
Cheers!, and Thanks for reading!
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