Tarzan of the Apes

Tarzan of the Apes is the original Tarzan novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and probably the best.  Like many fictional heroes, Tarzan has been vastly changed by other media.  This Tarzan, raised by a female ape who lost her own child, is a mostly wild, rambling hunter who follows his tribe in constant pursuit of food, dragging down live prey and eating the meat raw.  It is only upon his eventual contacts with other humans that he even realizes he is not an ape himself. 

Tarzan's first contact with humans is with a tribe of cannibals who have moved into the area.  It is then, notwithstanding skin color, that he notices he has more in common with the natives than with his own clan.  But it is when he comes in contact with his first white people that he really knows he is human, as he has seen pictures of people in books left behind by his parents, who were marooned and died where Tarzan was found by the apes.

During all of this time Tarzan has also come to dominate his tribe of apes by defeating the previous leader,  using his brains and superior quickness.  This leadership of the clan makes it even more difficult for Tarzan to choose between living as he always has and joining the white people and living as a man.  The turning point is his first sight of Jane Porter, the first time he has ever seen a white woman.  The innate attraction he has towards her trumps all.  Tarzan knows he must be with Jane, at all costs.

Tarzan's contact with Jane and the others sets him off on a path to civilization: he learns to speak French, and later English, dresses in Western clothes and drives a car.  He still has many of the traits he learned in the wild, however, and realizes he is not really the man for Jane, who has spent her whole life in civilized company.  It is a difficult decision for Tarzan to make, but he renounces his noble heritage (he is the son of Lord Greystoke) in Jane's, and his cousin's, best interests.

What I found most interesting about this book is Burroughs' treatment of how humans evolved and the differences between the natural and the acquired.  Through all of Tarzan's life in the wild, living as an ape, he still maintained his basic humanity.  Not that genetics tells all, however; those learned traits of his were just as much a part of him and in the end provided his destiny.