626 TARZAN
In any medium, Tarzan’s adventures are fi lled with untamed beasts, savage natives, lost
cities, beautiful damsels, and thrilling action.
Burroughs’s creation of the jungle hero was infl uenced by his reading the works of
authors like Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard. Tarzan’s origin, which was fi rst
published as a novel in 1914’s Tarzan of the Apes: A Romance of the Jungle, has become
one of the most famous tales in all of popular literature. Tarzan was born John Clay-
ton, the future Lord Greystoke, in a hut after his aristocratic British parents had been
marooned by their mutinous crew as they sailed along the African coast. Within a year
the infant is orphaned as his mother dies and his father is killed by an attacking band of
great apes. Miraculously, the baby is adopted by a female ape named Kala who is grief-
stricken at the death of her own off spring. Th e boy is raised by the simians and called
“ Tarzan,” which means “white skin” in the ape language. Burroughs described Tarzan
as growing into a tall, handsome, and extremely athletic man with grey eyes and black
hair. He is fully integrated into the ape society as he speaks their language and lives in
the trees. Eventually, he discovers the hut where he was born and teaches himself to
read with his family’s books. He also takes to wearing a leopard skin loincloth. After
years in the jungle, he encounters an American woman named Jane Porter who is lost
in the wild along with her father. Tarzan becomes her protector and ultimately chooses
Bruce Bennett as Tarzan in the 1935 serial, The New Adventures of Tarzan. Burroughs-Tarzan
Enterprises Inc. /Photofest
