The Talkative Tarzan
by Alan Hanson
“Tarzan but nodded his head. He was a man of few words.”
(The Return of Tarzan)
Certainly, from the very beginning of the Tarzan series,
Edgar Rice Burroughs created the impression that his ape-man was a quiet
man who communicated more through deeds than through words. Burroughs reinforced
Tarzan’s dislike of human speech in many of the Tarzan stories he wrote
through the years. For instance, in he wrote of a meeting with the
strongman Phobeg. “Tarzan made no reply. There seemed nothing to say;
and Tarzan seldom speaks, even when others have much to say.” Again, in
Tarzan’s Quest, Burroughs explained, “The ape-man seldom spoke unless that
which he had to say warranted expression. Ordinarily he kept his thoughts
to himself, especially in the presence of men.”
However, those who have read through the Tarzan series
know that Burroughs often seemed to counter his own contention that Tarzan
disliked and avoided human speech. For a man who supposedly disliked human
language, Tarzan learned to speak many of them. Also, a number of times
in the Tarzan stories, the ape-man spoke with great eloquence and emotion,
and there are other examples of the supposed reticent Tarzan speaking at
relatively great length. So in the personality of Tarzan, Burroughs created
a seeming contradiction — a dislike of human speech on one hand, and a
great talent and ability to use human speech on the other.
The explanation for how these opposing values could coexist
in one person can be found in the environment of Tarzan’s early years.
Burroughs referred to Tarzan, as “naturally uncommunicative.” However,
it was his upbringing among the beasts that created his quiet side. Tarzan
may very well have grown to manhood with the same verbal habits and tendencies
of the average civilized man had his parents not been marooned on that
African shore.
The Quiet Dignity of the
Wild Beast
After the death of his English-speaking
parents when he was a year old, Tarzan was not to hear another human voice
until 18 years later, when the native tribe of Mbonga entered the country
of the great apes. It was during that period between the death of his parents
and the arrival of the natives that Tarzan developed what Burroughs referred
to as the “quiet dignity of the wild beast.” It was not that verbal
expression was meaningless to Tarzan then. He had learned to use his voice
often to do such things as issue warnings, frighten enemies, and announce
victories in battle. But they were feral sounds, not human words, and,
as noted earlier, the same is true for the crude languages he used to communicate
with the other creatures in his world.
It was not that the young Tarzan had nothing to say. On
the contrary, he had much to talk about, but he lacked both a complex language
to convey it and an able audience to appreciate it. Burroughs explained
in Tarzan the Untamed.
“His active mind was never idle, but because
his jungle mates could neither follow nor grasp the vivid train of imaginings
that his man-mind wrought, he had long since learned to keep them to himself;
and so now he found no need for confiding them in others.”
The inability to share his complex thoughts with the beasts
was not the only factor that conditioned Tarzan to restrict his use of
spoken language. The savage environment in which he was raised taught him
to value silence.
“The morning air, the sounds and smells of
his beloved jungle, filled the ape-man with exhilaration. Had he been the
creature of another environment, he might have whistled or sung or whooped
aloud like a cowboy in sheer exuberance of spirit; but the jungle-bred
are not thus. They veil their emotions; and they move noiselessly always,
for thus do they extend the span of their precarious lives.” (Tarzan’s
Quest)
In Tarzan and the Lion Man, Burroughs reinforced
the idea that, for Tarzan, learning to be quiet was basic to survival.
“For Tarzan there are times for silence and times for speech. The depths
of the night, when hunting beasts are abroad, is no time to go gabbling
through the jungle.”
Throughout his early years, Tarzan depended on all his
senses. There were some times when using his voice helped him avoid danger,
but in his primordial world the power of speech was clearly the least important
sense to Tarzan. The following passage from the second Tarzan Twins story
shows how, in times of danger, Tarzan learned to submerge his voice and
let his other senses take over.
“Now the two boys noticed that Tarzan had
grown suddenly silent. He answered their questions shortly or not at all
and there was a serious expression upon his face. Often he watched Jad-bal-ja
attentively and often he paused to sniff the air and to listen.”
The Laconic Ape-man
In Tarzan and the Forbidden City,
in answer to a question from his captors, Tarzan responded, “I do not
like useless talk, but if you like to hear it, I admit that I killed some
of your warriors.” The five-word introduction to Tarzan’s answer here
summarizes his adult attitude about talk. Because he learned in his youth
that useless speech heightened danger, he developed an ingrained reticence
that carried over into adulthood. Thus he often limited his speech in civilized,
social situations, even when danger was not a concern. Tarzan’s basic inclination
was to avoid obvious and useless talk, and to speak only when necessary,
which experience had taught him was seldom.
For instance, one common human speech pattern that Tarzan
considered useless was the simple “goodbye.” At one point in Tarzan’s
Quest, the ape-man gave instructions to a Waziri warrior, and then
— “Without further words, without useless good-byes and Godspeeds, Tarzan
swung toward the west.” And again in Tarzan the Magnificent,
Tarzan left without the expected human courtesy. “He turned and was
gone into the night. There were no farewells, long-drawn and useless.”
In some situations with other humans, Tarzan’s quiet nature
served him well, as when he and La were escaping from Opar in Tarzan
and the Golden Lion.
“The woman’s silence made no particular impression
upon Tarzan. Had he had anything to say he should have said it, and likewise
he assumed that there was no necessity for her speaking unless there was
some good reason for speaking, for those who travel far and fast have no
breath to waste upon conversation.”
However, on other occasions, minimizing his words caused
Tarzan problems. In Tarzan the Invincible, while traveling
with La, he left her sleeping in a shelter one morning to go searching
for food. When he returned to find her gone, he blamed his own quiet nature.
“It was not difficult for him to account for
her absence and for the fact that she was returning to Opar, and he reproached
himself for this thoughtlessness in having left her for so long a time
without first telling her of his purpose.”
Of course, there were times when Tarzan saw no use in speaking
at all, and so he remained silent while those around him expected and waited
for a response.
“He looked up into the savage, unfriendly
eyes of a black man; then he glanced quickly around the circle and noted
the composition of the group. He did not speak. He saw that he was outnumbered
and a captive. Under the circumstances there was nothing that he could
say that would serve him any purpose.” (Tarzan the Magnificent)
Then there was the time in The Quest of Tarzan
when an injury temporarily took away Tarzan’s ability to speak entirely.
Predictably, however, Tarzan did not feel too deprived by the temporary
loss of what he considered the least useful of his senses. “He wondered
if he would ever recover; but he was not greatly troubled because he could
not converse with human beings.”
In the jungle Tarzan combined the information from several
of his highly refined senses to give him a complete picture of what was
happening around him. Tarzan did the same thing while talking with someone.
Like the dog whose sense of smell must confirm what it sees, Tarzan depended
on his sight to confirm what he heard, “nor did he ever care much for
speech with strangers unless he could watch their eyes and the changing
expressions upon their faces, which often told him more than their words
were intended to convey.” (Tarzan and the Lion Man)
So what then did Tarzan consider “useful” talk?
As with his other senses, Tarzan used speech to gather information. But
even then he usually kept his words to a minimum. In the following passage
from Tarzan and the Lost Empire, Burroughs explained how
the ape-man effectively used his voice to gather information essential
to his future survival.
“He learned all that they could tell him about
the forthcoming triumph and games; about the military methods of their
people, their laws and their customs until he, who all his life had been
accounted taciturn, might easily have been indicted for loquacity by his
fellow prisoners, yet, though they might not realize it, he asked them
nothing without a well-defined purpose.”
Even when Tarzan chose to give information, he usually was
ungenerous with his words. Notice the short, choppy answers Tarzan gave
while being interrogated by his captors during his first visit to Cathne,
the City of Gold. “I am from a country far to the south. An accident
brought me here. I am not an enemy. I have not come to kill your Queen
or any other. Until today I did not know that your city existed.”
The Loquacious Ape-man
According to Burroughs, that was “a
long speech for Tarzan of the Apes.” However, there are many, many
instances in the Tarzan stories of the ape-man speaking at much greater
length. As just one example, consider the prolonged lecture on the value
of money that Tarzan gave Stanley Wood in Tarzan the Magnificent.
“What would that mean to you — luxuries and
power? The Kaji probably know little of luxuries; but, from what you have
told me, power is everything to them; and they believe that this other
fetish would give them unlimited power, just as you think that twenty million
dollars would give you happiness.
“Probably you are both wrong; but the fact remains
that they know quite as well the value of it as you, and at least it does
less harm here than it would out in the world among men who would steal
the pennies from the eyes of the dead.”
As the above passage shows, for a man whose ingrained nature
was to speak simply and directly, when he chose to do so, Tarzan could
speak not only at length, but also with eloquence and emotion. There is
no better example of Tarzan’s ability to speak elegantly than his plea
to Jane in the Wisconsin railroad station at the end of Tarzan of
the Apes. They were words that obviously came from deep within
his heart.
“You are free now, Jane, and I have come across
the ages out of the dim and distant past from the lair of the primeval
man to claim you — for your sake I have crossed oceans and continents —
for your sake I will be whatever you will me to be. I can make you happy,
Jane, in the life you know and love best. Will you marry me?”
We also know that the laconic Tarzan could grow loquacious
even in the midst of the useless social talk for which he openly proclaimed
disgust. Not only could he engage in social conversation, he could be the
center of it. Of this we have the eyewitness testimony of Hazel Strong,
who, in The Return of Tarzan, reminisced on her friendship
with Tarzan, the man she knew as Mr. Caldwell.
“She missed the quiet companionship of Mr.
Caldwell — there had been something about him that had made the girl like
him from the first; he had talked so entertainingly of the places he had
seen — the peoples and their customs — the wild beasts; and he had always
had a droll way of drawing striking comparisons between savage animals
and civilized men that showed a considerable knowledge of the former, and
a keen, though somewhat cynical estimate of the latter.”
A Low, Deep, Commanding
Voice
Finally, it is interesting to imagine
just how Tarzan’s voice sounded when he spoke. Burroughs gave precious
few clues about the quality of the ape-man’s voice. We know that when Tarzan
first learned English, he spoke it with a French accent, since he had learned
that latter language first. However, since no such accent is mentioned
in any Tarzan tale after The Return of Tarzan, it can be
assumed that the accent disappeared as he mastered the language of his
ancestral country. The aforementioned American, Stanley Wood, commented
on the quality of Tarzan’s voice. He described it as, “low and deep.
It questioned, but it also commanded. It was the well modulated, assured
voice of a man who was always obeyed.”
In closing this survey on the talkative Tarzan, it is
only fitting to give Edgar Rice Burroughs the final word, or words, in
this case. It is an editorial passage Burroughs inserted in the text of
Tarzan
at the Earth’s Core. I have no doubt that Edgar Rice Burroughs
believed it, but it is ironic that a man who made his living writing legions
of words would be so critical of the spoken word.
“If man spoke only when he had something worthwhile
to say and said that as quickly as possible, ninety-eight per cent of the
human race might as well be dumb, thereby establishing a heavenly harmony
from pate to tonsil.”
—The End—
|
.
.
