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Volume 8086

The Soul of Number 13
(REF: The Monster Men by ERB)

By Alan Hanson

The course of events in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1913 novel, The Monster Men — various characters scurrying around a remote landscape, periodically intersecting with each other — was a backdrop that Burroughs often used in his stories. However, over-shadowing the romance element in The Monster Men is a far more interesting theme explored by ERB. A basic theme word —“soul” — appears early and often in the story. In fact, by my count, forms of that word (“soul,” “souls,” and “soulless) appear in the novel 66 times. The title of Chapter 8 is The Soul of Number 13.

I believe that ERB occasionally revealed his personal beliefs and values in his stories. I think he did so in The Monster Men when he addressed the mystical question, “What is a soul?” Along the way, he also probed related questions, including, “Who has a soul?” “How is a soul attained?” and “How does a soul reveal itself?”

All of the major characters — Professor Arthur Maxon, Virginia Maxon, Dr. Carl von Horn, and Bulan (aka “Jack” and “Number 13”) — addressed the topic in words and actions. The logical one to consult first is Professor Maxon, whose laboratory experiments created the baseline for the “soul” debate played out by the other characters. At first, the professor was unconcerned about the philosophical concept of a “soul.” Prior to the story’s opening, through a series of “daring experiments” in his New York laboratory, the professor had “reproduced by chemical means” the secret of life. His initial effort to create a replica of a human being in the lab left him discouraged.

“He saw the thing which he had created gasp once or twice with the feeble spark of life with which he had endowed it, and expire — leaving upon his hands the corpse of what was, to all intents and purpose, a human being, albeit a most grotesque and misshapen thing.”

Hoping to forget the horrible nightmare, the professor packed up his notes, daughter, and entourage, and moved to a remote group of Pacific Islands. There, though, he did not forget, but rather was reinvigorated. “The future of the world will be assured when once we have demonstrated the possibility of the chemical production of a perfect race,” he declared. After months of failed efforts, the obviously “mad professor” regained his sanity, and abandoned the “insane obsession” which “overpowered his reason.”

During all his work to create human-like beings in his lab, there was no indication that Professor Maxon ever considered the idea that his creatures had “souls.” That only came to him when he believed his thirteenth creation had abducted his daughter. He told Von Horn, his assistant, “We shall need all our energies if we are to save my poor, dear girl, from the clutches of that horrid, soulless thing.”

While Professor Maxon ultimately declared that his creations were “soulless,” ERB didn’t have him comment on the meaning of having or not having a soul. For more specifics on that question, we move on to another character, Dr. Carl von Horn.

Early and often, Von Horn made known his intense hatred of the professor’s creations. Their lack of souls seemed always to be at the heart of his animosity. “They are things,” he told the professor. “They are not human — they are not even beast. They are terrible, soulless creatures. You have no right to permit them to live longer than to substantiate your theory.”

Von Horn made sure the professor’s creations understood that they were not human. “You are but the accident of a laboratory experiment,” he told Bulan, the professor’s final creation. “You have no soul, and the soul is all that raises man above the beasts … you are not a human being — you are not even a beast … (you’re) a horrible monstrosity far lower in the scale of creation than the lowest order of beasts.”

Through continued degrading remarks and physical abuse, Von Horn implanted fear, envy, jealousy, and hatred in the minds of the professor’s creatures. In doing so, ERB began revealing to readers something about the nature of a “soul.” Although possessing a human “soul,” Von Horn’s cruelty indicated that a human soul is not necessarily compassionate by nature.

His efforts to woo Virginia Maxon further put his evil nature on display. Burroughs later revealed that it was the possession of her father’s treasure chest that inspired Von Horn’s desire for Virginia. When she ultimately developed affection for Bulan, Von Horn told her, “No god created that. He was one of the creatures of your father’s mad experiments — the soulless thing for whose arms his insane obsession doomed you.”

The shooting of Bulan was among the last of Dr. Carl von Horn’s evil deeds. He lost his head along with his soul, presumably, at story’s end when the former relic is seen swaying from the roof a Borneo headhunter’s hut. If all humans have souls, ERB’s portrayal of Von Horn revealed how evil they could be in some people.

It was Bulan, though, who was the central figure in ERB’s analysis of “soul.” When he first appeared, Bulan had no memory. He believed it when the professor and Von Horn assured him that he was only the professor’s ultimate physically and mentally perfect chemical creation of a human male.

Von Horn missed no opportunity to remind Bulan that he was merely a byproduct of the professor’s evil work.

“You are not as other men. You are but the accident of a laboratory experiment. You have no soul, and the soul is all that raises man above the beasts. Jack, poor boy, you are not a human being — you are not even a beast. The world, and Miss Maxon is of the world, will look upon you as a terrible creature to be shunned — a horrible monstrosity far lower in the scale of creation than the lowest order of brutes.”

Bulan’s attraction to Virginia Maxon was hampered by his depressed feeling of self-worth, even though he was the only one of the professor’s 13 creatures who “saw the beauties that surrounded them or felt the strange, mysterious influence of the untracked world they trod.” Although believing Von Horn’s assertions that he was not a man, Bulan aspired to be one. “If I am not now a human being,” he declared, “I intend to be one, and so I shall act as a human being should act.” And soon Bulan made a giant leap forward. Although still believing he was not born a human, he nevertheless declared. “I am not a soulless thing. I am a man, and within me is as fine and pure a soul as any man may own.”

ERB then put Bulan’s self-proclaimed soul to the test. After saving Virginia from native headhunters, he considered a future in which he and the girl would live alone together away from mankind on the remote island. The girl, however, dashed his hopes. “It would be terrible,” she cried. “I should die of misery and fright and loneliness in this awful jungle.”

Burroughs then revealed that, although his readers still believed (at least the naïve ones) that he had been created in a laboratory, Bulan was yet capable of self-sacrificing love for a human woman.

“That she would hate a soulless creature he accepted as a foregone conclusion. He desired her respect, and that fact helped him to his final decision, but the thing that decided him was born of the truly chivalrous nature he possessed — he wanted Virginia Maxon to be happy; it mattered not at what cost to him.”

Through the words and actions of Virginia, ERB then began to reveal the answers to all the questions he had raised about the concept of a “soul” in the story. Early on, before she knew of her father’s experiments, Virginia spoke of Nature as the great creator in the world. “What a marvelous thing is creation,” she declared. “How insignificant is man’s greatest achievement beside the least of Nature’s works.” Thus, she was horrified when Von Horn told her what her father had done in his laboratory. “Do you mean to say that my father in a mad attempt to usurp the functions of God created that awful thing? And that there are others like it upon the island?”

Burroughs then brought Bulan and Virginia close together after he saved her from the headhunters who had captured her. As noted earlier, while Bulan had fallen in love with her, he wanted the best for her, which he realized would not include a future with him once she learned of how he was created by her father. Still he probed her beliefs on the concept of a “soul,” hoping there was a chance she would accept him. Their conversation started drawing the strands of the story together and began to resolve the conflict surrounding the concept of “soul” in The Monster Men.

Bulan: “Why do you loathe them so? Is it because they are hideous, or because they are soulless?”

Virginia: “Either fact were enough to make them repulsive, but it is the fact that they were without souls that made them totally impossible — one easily overlooks physical deformity, but the moral depravity that must be inherent in a creature without a soul must forever cut him off from intercourse with human beings?”

Bulan: “And you think that regardless of their physical appearance the fact that they were without souls would have been apparent?”

Virginia: “I would know the moment I set my eyes upon a creature without a soul.”

Bulan: “Just how do you distinguish the possessor of a soul? How then am I to know what attributes denote the possession of the immortal spark? How am I to know whether or no I possess a soul?”

Virginia: “You are courageous and honorable and chivalrous — those are enough to warrant the belief that you have a soul, were it not apparent from your countenance that you are of the higher type of mankind.“

Bulan: “I hope that you will never change your opinion of me, Virginia.”

Nevertheless, Bulan, still believing he was one of her father’s creations, declared his love for Virginia. Later, after Virginia learned his true origin for the first time, she responded:

“You have given me the right to say it, Bulan, and I do say it now again, before them all — I love you, and that is all there is that makes any difference … It makes no difference to me what you are. You have told me that you love me. You have demonstrated a love that is high, and noble, and self-sacrificing. More than that no girl needs to know.”

At that point, Burroughs had answered the basic questions concerning the topic of “soul” in The Monster Men. The author demonstrated that “soul” was the inner force that reveals itself through experience, imagination, and emotion. All creatures of higher intelligence have one, regardless of their sense of how they were created. It’s revealed through thoughts, desires, passions, and interactions with others.

In the end, The Monster Men would have been a much more powerful story had Burroughs concluded the story at that point and sent Bulan and Virginia back to civilization to live out their lives always believing he was created in a laboratory.  However, Burroughs’ one-and-done stories usually came to definitive conclusions, and so ERB revealed that Bulan was actually a human who had lost his memory for a while. It was both a happy and a disappointing ending to an otherwise provocative story.

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