Larry Stanley

03-14-08

Conrad and Burroughs: Two of a Kind

My experience in taking this course has extended my knowledge toward understanding other cultures’ laws and the lives they lived while faced with being ruled by a higher, more developed country. I’ve learned how people have changed to meet these stranger life-styles, of Conrad’s character, Kurtz, who lived among the natives of Africa as an almost god-like figure, of the changes in Okonkwo’s tribe when the missionaries came to try and change the natives’ religious traditions, and of the British takeover of India and the unconventional ways the Indians were treated in their own country. I’ve been reading since the sixth grade, and that is a long time! In all that time, only my education in literature could have made me think about what I read. It is the introduction to Colonial and Postcolonial Literature that has strengthened my learning about other cultures, their way of thinking toward themselves and others. In researching this subject, I was surprised to find many critics think of Tarzan, my favorite character, to be somewhat of a colonist, a baby thrown into a hostile environment to fend for himself against all odds. Could it be? Then I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a book very close to Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes, and realized maybe Tarzan, like Kurtz, was also a kind of god-like figure to the natives. After all, he did try to picture himself larger than the natives and more annoying, as far as they were concerned, but a friend in need, just as England felt they were toward India. But was he a colonist, or just a man put into a position where ingenuity and strength were used to better his predicament? Does this perception of him spoil all the reading of Tarzan novels that I should take offense of Burroughs’s writings and his characters? Conrad’s Kurtz was probably in the same predicament as Tarzan, having to use his wits to keep from being killed and possibly eaten.

Burroughs, like Conrad, has been seen as being a racist, and Tarzan a colonist, as Kurtz was pictured. Whether the two were racists and the other two were colonists would probably be left to the critics to decide. But since this course is Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, I’m forced to explore the situation with whoever else is willing to argue the matter. Personally, I believe Burroughs and Conrad were writing their stories for entertainment purposes only, and applied the proper terminology used in their times. In both books that appeared at the turn of the century, the descriptions used are within the bounds of etiquette, just as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was at the time it was published. The Civil War was still on everyone’s minds, and sympathy for the Negro was still low. Chinua Achebe states, “...Conrad’s condemnation of Belgium colonization sidesteps admitting equality between white and black people, and portrays Africans as lacking the power of expression, devoid of recognizable humanity, in short, as cannibals who should stay in ‘their place.’” This statement may be the view of today’s standards, but as I said, writing etiquette was different at the turn of the century, just as customs were different. These writings are what gave the novels back then their modernistic identity.

Critics, to my way of thinking, can be very cold toward their way of perceiving a novel or other work that may insult them or possibly make fun of someone else. Many of the books we’ve read are, like Conrad and Burroughs, works written in a time much different from ours. Whether they would be called racists in their time might be a difference of opinion. I’m sure critics have their job to criticize other writers’ works, but I’ve found they can hurt the realism the author is trying to convey to the reader. I try not to take many critics’ works too literally, as they seem only to spoil the novel and ruin my enjoyment of reading.

Allen Carey-Webb explained the importance of Burroughs’s novel, stating, “Tarzan led students to fundamental questions about what literature is, who defines the canon and why. Tarzan also turned out to be a useful text for thinking about Heart of Darkness.” Whether Burroughs would agree to that statement I couldn’t say. Burroughs always said he “wrote stories to entertain, and nothing else.” This is the way I feel when I’m reading. I want to enjoy the work to where I won’t feel bad about the author and can appreciate all of his work. I realize the course is taken to analyze what the author wanted to say and the content of the novel itself, and I believe I’ve learned a lot so far. To answer my question, I’ve seen examples of racism in Burroughs’s work and Tarzan was probably a type of colonist thrown into a world, unknown to a lot of people back then, where he had to fight to survive, but, like a colonist, Tarzan tried to better the situation around him by trying to better the natives that lived in his world, something England would attempt with the Indians. Colonization, to an extent, had to be good for both the natives and the Indians, bettering the crude and uneducated world they lived in. England eventually had to let go, just as Tarzan gradually gave way to his tribe of apes. But the experience also helped the colonists learn the traditional ways of the conquered people, and keeping these traditional habits alive helps to understand other cultures.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Conrad 251-62. (underbar). Things Fall Apart. New York: Fawcett, 1969.

Carey-Webb, Allen. Heart of Darkness, Tarzan, and the ‘Third World’: Canons and Encounters in World Literature, English 109. College Literature, 00933139, October, 1 1992, Vol. 19-20, Issues 3-1.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990.

Porges, Irwin.  Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan. Vol. 1. New York: Ballantine Books, 1976.