History Literature / TarzanOfTheApes

* AbsentMindedProfessor: Professor Porter, Jane's father.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: Canler

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Tarzan is hostile to black people. D'arnot even calls him out on this.
** Mind, Tarzan is hostile because a black warrior killed his ape-mother, Kala, in an unprovoked attack.

* NightmareFuel: The fate of the mutineers who stranded Jane's party; they quickly ran out of food on the ship, and with their only navigator dead the survivors were all extremely ill and eating their dead comrades by the time they were discovered.

* ScreamingWoman: Jane's maid Esmerelda screams her head off at the slightest provocation.

* UnbuiltTrope: The book ends with Tarzan [[DoesNotGetTheGirl choosing not to pursue Jane]] when he realizes that she'll be happier in life amongst other civilized people than in the harsh wilderness he grew up in (though the sequels undid this). The book also has a rather cynical portrayal of the RaisedByWolves and YouKilledMyFather tropes.

* BadassLonghair: Tarzan

''Tarzan of the Apes'' was published by Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs in 1912[[note]]In a magazine. The novel was published in 1914[[/note]] and takes place in roughly the same time period. It is the first of his ''Literature/{{Tarzan}}'' series, which spans over two dozen published books, most of which are now in the public domain.[[note]]In the United States at least. It's still in copyright in Europe.]] Can be read [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/78 here]].

After a brutal mutiny aboard the ship ''Fulwada'', the English lord, John Clayton, is marooned in [[DarkestAfrica an African Jungle]] along with his pregnant wife, Alice (Respectively Lord and Lady Greystoke). John builds a secure treehouse to protect from the beasts of the jungle, and spends a year providing for his wife and infant son before the two English nobles both die. A band of apes[[labelnote:*]]referred to in the books as "Mangani," who in turn refer to gorillas as "Bulgani"[[/labelnote]] lead by the savage Kerchak goes to explore the Clayton's tree home shortly after John's death. The female ape, Kala, finds the young Lord Greystoke and adopts him, naming him "Tarzan", meaning "white skin".

Kala raises Tarzan among the apes and he grows up as a creature of the jungle, fighting lions/leopards[[hottip:*: In the original edition, Tarzan encounters lions in the African jungle, which was later retconned to leopards.]], and having many unseen encounters with the natives. Tarzan finds his old cabin and teaches himself how to read over the course of a decade. One day a group of foreigners become stranded in the jungle by boat as well, one of them being his cousin William Cecil Clayton, and another being an American girl named Jane Porter. And [[ItWasHisSled we all know how that turns out]].

''Tarzan of the Apes'' was published by Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs in 1912[[hottip:*: In a magazine. The novel was published in 1914]] and takes place in roughly the same time period. It is the first of his ''{{Tarzan}}'' series, which spans over two dozen published books, most of which are now in the public domain[[hottip:*: in the United States at least. It's still in copyright in Europe.]]. Can be read [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/78 here]].

* MisplacedWildlife: Lions in the African jungle? What madness is this! Burroughs later retconned them to be leopards.[[labelnote: *]]Lions live on the savannah and sometimes in very dry forests, never in the rainforest-like jungles of the Mangani. [[/labelnote]]

After a brutal mutiny aboard the ship ''Fulwada'', the English lord, John Clayton, is marooned in [[DarkestAfrica an African Jungle]] along with his pregnant wife, Alice (Respectively Lord and Lady Greystoke). John builds a secure treehouse to protect from the beasts of the jungle, and spends a year providing for his wife and infant son before the two English nobles both die. A band of apes[[labelnote:*]]referred to in the books as "Mangani," who in turn refer to gorillas as "Bulgani"[[/labelnotenote]] lead by the savage Kerchak goes to explore the Clayton's tree home shortly after John's death. The female ape, Kala, finds the young Lord Greystoke and adopts him, naming him "Tarzan", meaning "white skin".

After a brutal mutiny aboard the ship ''Fulwada'', the English lord, John Clayton, is marooned in [[DarkestAfrica an African Jungle]] along with his pregnant wife, Alice (Respectively Lord and Lady Greystoke). John builds a secure treehouse to protect from the beasts of the jungle, and spends a year providing for his wife and infant son before the two English nobles both die. A band of apes[[labelnote:*]]referred to in the books as "Mangani," who in turn refer to gorillas as "Bulgani"[[/note]] lead by the savage Kerchak goes to explore the Clayton's tree home shortly after John's death. The female ape, Kala, finds the young Lord Greystoke and adopts him, naming him "Tarzan", meaning "white skin".

* MisplacedWildlife: Lions in the African jungle? What madness is this! Burroughs later retconned them to be leopards.[[labelnote: *]]Lions live on the savannah and sometimes in very dry forests, never in the rainforest-like jungles of the Mangani. [[/note]]

After a brutal mutiny aboard the ship ''Fulwada'', the English lord, John Clayton, is marooned in [[DarkestAfrica an African Jungle]] along with his pregnant wife, Alice (Respectively Lord and Lady Greystoke). John builds a secure treehouse to protect from the beasts of the jungle, and spends a year providing for his wife and infant son before the two English nobles both die. A band of apes lead by the savage Kerchak goes to explore the Clayton's tree home shortly after John's death. The female ape, Kala, finds the young Lord Greystoke and adopts him, naming him "Tarzan", meaning "white skin".

Kala raises Tarzan among the apes and he grows up as a creature of the jungle, fighting lions/tigers[[hottip:*: In the original edition, Tarzan encounters tigers in the African jungle, which was later retconned to lions.]] (but no bears, [[Film/TheWizardOfOz oh my!]]), and having many unseen encounters with the natives. Tarzan finds his old cabin and teaches himself how to read over the course of a decade. One day a group of foreigners become stranded in the jungle by boat as well, one of them being his cousin William Cecil Clayton, and another being an American girl named Jane Porter. And [[ItWasHisSled we all know how that turns out]].

* MisplacedWildlife: Tigers in the African jungle? What madness is this! Burroughs later retconned them to be lions, which in turn brings up a number of other problems[[hottip:*: Lions prefer savannahs and dry scrublands to forests, and even then they only live in very dry forests. They aren't native to anywhere near the rainforest-like jungles that Tarzan inhabits.]]. Gorillas on the other hand, don't live in the same areas as lions either, preferring dense jungles and swamps.

* OrwellianRetcon: Tarzan fights tigers in the earliest editions of the book, but Burroughs had this changed to lions in later editions when he found out that tigers are not native to Africa.

* StockAnimalName: To apes, all male lions are Numa, all lionesses are Sabor and all leopards are Sheeta.

After a brutal mutiny aboard the ship ''Fulwada'', the English lord, John Clayton, is marooned in [[DarkestAfrica an African Jungle]] along with his pregnant wife, Alice (Respectively Lord and Lady Greystroke). John builds a secure treehouse to protect from the beasts of the jungle, and spends a year providing for his wife and infant son before the two English nobles both die. A band of apes lead by the savage Kerchak goes to explore the Clayton's tree home shortly after John's death. The female ape, Kala, finds the young Lord Greystroke and adopts him, naming him "Tarzan", meaning "white skin".

''Tarzan of the Apes'' was published by EdgarRiceBurroughs in 1912[[hottip:*: In a magazine. The novel was published in 1914]] and takes place in roughly the same time period. It is the first of his ''{{Tarzan}}'' series, which spans over two dozen published books, most of which are now in the public domain[[hottip:*: in the United States at least. It's still in copyright in Europe.]]. Can be read [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/78 here]].

* AbsentMindedProfessor: Jane's father.

* TheMutiny: the crew of the Arrow mutiny and maroon Lord Greystoke and his wife on the African coast; and later, the mutinous crew that abandons the second party on the same exact stretch of coast.

* NubileSavage: Despite being raised on the same diet as apes, Tarzan is not malnourished and has an impressive and perfectly toned physique. Even though the only meat he eats is raw and is often buried in the dirt for days in the tropical jungle, he doesn't suffer from tapeworms, echinococcosis, hep A or any sorts of internal parasites or diseases. Tarzan doesn't have headlice or fleas either, even though he's lived with apes his whole life. If he's got bad teeth, no one ever talks about it. Less egregious than everything else, though, is the fact that he's clean shaven most of the time. Tarzan got the notion from his picture books that civilized men should be beardless and have short hair, which he presumably emulates by using his hunting knife to shave and cut his hair.

* StockAnimalName: To apes, all male lions are Numa, all lionesses are Saboor and all leopards are Sheeta.

* TouchOfTheMonster: Jane when kidnapped by Kerchak.

* AnimalSkinAttire: Subverted -- Tarzan kills a big cat and plans to wear its skin: "But he found the hide had dried as stiff as a board, and as he knew naught of tanning, he was forced to abandon his cherished plan."

* EvolutionaryLevels: Caucasians are said to be more evolved than blacks, and humans in general, more evolved than apes.
* FairForItsDay: When D'arnot is captured by an African tribe, the narrator comments on the horrible tortures they plan to inflict upon him, but goes out of his way to implicitly compare their actions to the "arch-hypocrite" Leopold II of Belgium. Drawing at least some degree of moral parity between African natives and European royalty is pretty advanced for a turn of the century author.

* MightyWhitey: The supremacy of white people is brought up several times within the novel, and Tarzan takes this view to the extreme.

* TheMutiny: the crew of the Arrow mutiny and maroon Lord Greystoke and his wife on the African coast.

After a brutal mutiny aboard the ship ''Fulwada'', the English lord, John Clayton, is marooned in [[DarkestAfrica an African Jungle]] along with his pregnant wife, Alice (Respectively Lord and Lady Greystroke). John builds a secure treehouse to protect from the beasts of the jungle, and spends a year providing for his wife and infant son before the two English nobles both die from an unexplained cause. A band of apes lead by the savage Kerchak goes to explore the Clayton's tree home shortly after John's death. The female ape, Kala, finds the young Lord Greystroke and adopts him, naming him "Tarzan", meaning "white skin".

* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: It never ''is'' explained why Tarzan's parents die, nor do they have much of a presence in the story. Tarzan even renounces them for his adoptive mother, Kala.
** Alice Clayton died in her sleep, but John Clayton was killed by Kerchak.

* NobleSavage: Tarzan, of course.