“You were not born
and reared in the jungle by wild beasts and among wild beasts, or you would
possess, as I do, the fatalism of the jungle.”
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| Ballantine Books, cover art by Boris Vallego |
Somber words for a rather dour Tarzan if you ask me. This isn't the Saturday
matinee movie star Tarzan, but rather the existential loner that is the Tarzan
of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 7th Tarzan adventure, Tarzan the Untamed.
Tarzan has plenty of reason to be grim in this novel. In the opening
pages we witness him returning home to his estate only to find it burned and
razed to the ground by a patrol of German soldiers that were lost in the
jungle. Tarzan is aware of the recent start of the World War (WWI), and has rushed
home to his estate to stay with his mate Jane, unaware that Jane has already
unknowingly welcomed a band of German soldiers and their guides into their
estate during his absence. When Tarzan arrives, he finds evidence of a deadly
struggle between his faithful servants and the German soldiers. Vultures circle
overhead above the dead bodies of servant and soldier alike. Tarzan rushes into
what’s left of the home’s foundation to discover Wasimbu, Jane’s Wasiri body
guard, crucified to a wall, and Jane’s charred corpse lying in their bedroom.
Stripped of his European trappings Tarzan reverts to the jungle beast he was
raised as, and swears vengeance on all German soldiers that trespass within his
continent.
The earliest chapters of the novel move quickly as Tarzan tracks the
surviving soldiers to a German camp where he manages to infiltrate by night to
hear the officers discuss their war plans against the British. He hears a few
of the men brag about a captain who’d lead a company of men into the “English
Lord’s” estate, killing members of the Wasiri tribe there, crucifying their
leader, and raping and murdering the lady of the estate. Tarzan waits to catch
one of them alone, pounces on him like a jungle cat and demands from him the
names of Jane’s killers. It was Hauptmann Schneider and Under-lieutenant von
Goss, his hapless victim replies. Then Tarzan takes the man by his throat, and
wrings him by the neck three times in the air before hurling his lifeless body
into the jungle. Armed with the names and a single-minded determination to kill
all Germans, Tarzan thus begins his “untamed” adventure.
It’s the setup for a fairly straightforward plot, you’d think. But as
the novel progresses the reader is taken on events that veer wildly from the
mission of vengeance that Tarzan originally embarks upon. Yes, Tarzan gets to
kill plenty of Germans in aide to the British soldiers he encounters on his
search for Schneider and von Goss. He also dispatches a handful of savage cannibals
and a slew of inhabitants of the lost city of Xuja. Yes, there is a lost city
in this novel! There is also a beautiful German double agent named Bertha
Kircher and a dashing British aviator named Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick to
complicate Tarzan’s untamed adventures.
The main plot of vengeance for Jane’s murder is soon cast aside for a
series of adventures involving chases, rescues and escapes featuring Bertha
Kircher. Tarzan constantly reminds himself that he hates Bertha because she is
German. Still, he is unable to kill her outright or leave her to the mercy of
the jungle because she shows a remarkable level of courage and resourcefulness.
And because she is a white woman! Yes, if you’re going to read a novel that is
nearly a hundred years old featuring a savage and untamed Africa during a world
war, you’re going to get a dose of racial (and cultural) stereotypes. Also, the
novel was originally serialized in two separate publications as “Tarzan and the
Huns” and “Tarzan and the Valley of Luna” before appearing in the present novel
format as Tarzan the Untamed.
One fascinating aspect of the lost city of Xuja is that it’s inhabited
by a race of lunatics. Simple and childlike one moment, gibbering and maniacal
the next. As we’re told, one can immediately tell they’re maniacal imbeciles
because of the shape of their heads and by their abnormally long canines. Bertha
Kircher and Smith-Oldwick are kidnapped and swept deep within the walled city
of Xuja. Smith-Oldwick is thrown into a lion pit while Bertha is taken before
Xuja’s Queen Xanila.
As Bertha Kircher’s eyes
alighted upon the occupant of the room the girl gave a little gasp of astonishment,
for she recognized immediately that here was a creature more nearly of her own
kind than any she had seen within the city’s walls. An old woman it was who
looked at her through faded blue eyes, sunken deep in a wrinkled and toothless
face. But the eyes were those of a sane and intelligent creature, and the
wrinkled face was the face of a white woman.
Queen Xanila than tells Bertha of her capture by the Xujan’s from a
band of Arabian slave raiders that had become lost in the “desolate and arid
waste” that surrounds and protects the hidden valley of Xula. There they were
attacked and killed by a patrol of Xujans and Xanila was brought before the
palace of Xula’s ancient king where she was wedded to him against her will. For
sixty years Xanila has remained confined within the palace walls, outlasting a
series of Xujan kings, until the day Bertha is brought to her as a potential
replacement.
Meanwhile, Smith-Oldwick is trapped in a lion pit, while Tarzan is
outside the walled city of Xuja, planning yet another rescue before he can then
abandon all vestiges of modern society and return to his childhood home among
the great apes.
I have to say, I've yet to be let down by Edgar Rice Burroughs’s
ability to churn out an exciting suspenseful tale. With tons of suspense,
rescues, blood and gore, Tarzan the Untamed, wild and loosely plotted as it may
be, was just as engrossing as the other novels I've devoured by ERB. It’s been
a number of years since reading one, and who knows when I’ll get around to
another Tarzan adventure (maybe sooner than later) but this one is a fine
example of Burroughs delivering at the peak of the Tarzan saga.
Oh yeah, and as for Jane's demise...well come on, you got to know that she's not going to be offed like that, so early in the game!
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