Tarzan of the Apes

De: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Narrado por: Peter Batchelor

A classic of literature and the author's best-known work. Adapted many times for cinema. A major motion picture in summer 2016.

Public Domain (P)2016 Trout Lake Media

This could have been all that ERB did

This book could have been all that ERB wrote and it would have been enough, but he did so much more. I think the following Ray Bradbury quotation says a lot about the value of ERB's work: "Edgar Rice Burroughs never would have looked upon himself as a social mover and shaker with social obligations. But as it turns out – and I love to say it because it upsets everyone terribly – Burroughs is probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world." Bradbury continued that "By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special."

The only problem with this book is that it stops before the story is finihed.

Unexpressibly Wonderful

What an adventure. Brimming with all one could ask for in a great tale. Beautiful!

An unlikely, yet wonderful story.

A story to love for all time. So much deeper and fuller than the movies based on these stories. Edgar Rice Burroughs did not have internet resources to double check his "ape info," so just let the story take you and forget the details. This narrator, Peter Batchelor, is among my favorites.

A classic

So this is a great reading of a classic book, I love the narrator. The story is definitely from the time and is a tad bit racist, but still a great story.

great story, decent performance

the story is classic, but I felt that the narrator wasn't suited to bring it to its potential

great story. sudden ending.

this is one of those everyone thinks they know and so they never read. such a fun story. I had no idea it was "to be continued".

the most racist thing i've ever read

my exposure to tarzan as a media franchise has been largely sanitized, disney movies and early computer games, etc. so when i decided to read the original novel i was expecting some mild racism typical of the time period, at most. i did not expect tarzan to be a serial-killing psychopath bent on killing or maiming every black person he comes across (with the exception of an infantile mammy character, who he likes merely because she is associated with jane, as jane's servant/slave). i did not expect more respect given to the diversity of temperment of lions than that of the native peoples of the congo. every single black person in this book is explicitly described as cowardly, stupid, ugly, and/or cannibalistic. every sentence built around describing tarzan is to explain how innately superior he is to black people in intellect, looks, physical prowess, breeding, despite the fact that he gleefully murders more people in the book than anyone else. i am so grateful i did not read this book as a child, because i wouldnt have been able to understand what a crock of white supremacy propaganda it was. jane is also an awful person, although she is meant to be the book's moral compass, recoiling when she contemplates 'half caste' children. god damn did disney whitewash this, this is ugly on par with Birth of a Nation. There is a brutal scene of french soldiers massacreing an entire village with their guns and this is presented as heroic and just and civilized. jesus christ.

the narrator was okay. his jane voice was very bad, she sounded a little drunk, but his decisive, deep tone for tarzan perfectly matched a boisterous killer who has zero self-insight for all the judgements he makes on savagery. as narrators cant change the content of the literature they read, i'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.