Professor analyzes story of Tarzan

The story of Tarzan contains themes of ethnicity, love, adoption, and progressive education that have been buried for 100 years, said a literary critic Friday afternoon on Sept.6.

Professor Christopher Benfey of Mount Holyoke College said during his lecture, delivered at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, many film renditions have overlooked these important themes in detail over a long period of time.

Tarzan’s name means “white skin” to the apes, which is somewhat an ethnic slur, and the theme of adoption was similar in this book and also that of “The Jungle Book”, said Benfey. In both stories, the adoptive mom is not human. The bond between the adoptive mother and adoptive son is still strong.

Benfey said throughout his lecture the jungle hero faces many battles of love. Tarzan struggles to love himself, knowing he is different than the apes and clashes with his love for Jane and her many suitors. Tarzan reveals his intelligence as he ages, teaching himself how to not only read and write in English but also French, said the English professor.

Tarzan is a fictional character created by the author Edgar Rice Burroughs, with his first appearance in “Tarzan of the Apes” published in 1912. Burroughs eventually wrote 23 additional novels of the jungle hero. Many film renditions of the story of Tarzan have been made over the years, including the popular 1999 Disney film. Professor Benfey said that Tarzan is a modern myth that has endured throughout time because people yearn for wildness in their lives that Tarzan presents in his own.

“We’re in love with the idea of someone who is completely in love with the wild,” said Benfey. “We’re still drawn to the idea about primitive survival and surviving the wild.”

He also said an important part of Tarzan’s story can be found in the cabin of his parents.

“The emotional core of the book, its true heart of darkness, lies in the little cabin built by Tarzan’s father,” said Benfey. “It is here in the little cabin that young Tarzan is presented with two deeply intertwined mysteries. One is his parentage; the other is the nature of human language. These are the two codes that he must crack in order to figure out who he is. The lock on the cabin door is the metaphor for these two riddles.”

The University of Texas’ Faculty Seminar for British Studies sponsored Benfey’s lecture. Holly McCarthy, assistant to the director of the British Studies Program Roger Louis, said Professor Louis saw an article in the New Republic magazine from Professor Benfey about Tarzan and became interested.

“The seminars are every Friday during the semester since 1979”, said McCarthy. “Professor Louis wrote to Professor Benfey to ask if he could reproduce it and if he would like to come speak at the seminar.”

Gregory Gonzalez, 20, public relations third year major at the University of Texas who attended the lecture, said Benfey’s interpretation of Tarzan had some intriguing angles to the story of the jungle hero.

“His lecture made me look at Tarzan a bit differently now,” said Gonzalez. “There’s much more to the story of Tarzan than what the movies portray. Professor Benfey helped us dive further into the story and understand certain aspects of Tarzan that we don’t think about in depth.”