From: julie@pascal.org   
      
   On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 5:56:50 PM UTC-6, William Vetter wrote:   
   > On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 5:53:44 PM UTC-4, J.Pascal wrote:   
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   > > On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 2:49:04 PM UTC-6, William Vetter wrote:   
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   > > > What I see from the first volume:   
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   > > > 1) "Me Tarzan; you Jane," is absent; that Tarzan initially could read   
   English at perhaps a seventh grade level, but knew how to speak none at all.   
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   > > > 2) The signature yell from the movies is never described, except as "the   
   battle cry of the bull great ape."   
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   > > > 3) Africa has a nearly complete canopy of foliage that Tarzan travels   
   through primarily by running along branches.   
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   > > > 4) The coastline of Africa abounds in pirate coves; the coastline is   
   essentially the same as the setting in Treasure Island.   
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   > > > 5) Tarzan has a pecking order relationship with Great Apes, has a   
   wait-and-see attitude toward White humans, and regards colored Africans as   
   inherently brutal savages.   
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   > > I loved these books when I read them in high school.  It is very very   
   true, however, that they were written at a time when Darwinism and evolution   
   of humans to higher forms and a new understanding of genetics and a fashion   
   for eugenics was the *   
   enlightened* and *scientific* view.  Something that was apparent even to a 16   
   year old.   
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   > > In the end I don't blame ERB for including monkeys, gorillas, apes and   
   humans of various races in a continuum of evolutionary progress.  It's both   
   appalling and quaint and, mostly, important as a lesson on scientific hubris.   
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   > You gotta know the "Great Apes" that raised Tarzan never existed.   
      
   Oh goodness, it was fiction.  I always figured he was (loosely) using   
   orangutans and mostly imagining what people would find.  There were still new   
   undiscovered species in darkest Africa... that's why various writers were so   
   enamored of it and called it    
   darkest Africa.  I'm quite certain that several (all) of the lost cities and   
   lost civilizations that Tarzan (or his son) encountered, were captured by, and   
   escaped from, were entirely and in all ways fictional, too.    
      
   What we'd consider offensively racist, however, was based on what was   
   considered enlightened genetic science of the time.   
      
   For example, the idea that criminality was heritable was a "thing".  So when   
   ERB's various shipwrecked or stranded castaways grew up in barbaric cultures   
   they still grew up noble, because of their genetics.    
      
   (FYI, he put the Zulu, IIRC, in the "noble" camp.)   
      
   -Julie   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)