Tarzan as a cultural prism: Ideological Associations in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes

More than any other of Burroughs’ many creations, Tarzan has become a staple of popular culture. The character functions as a cultural prism, in which the concerns, anxieties, desires, and tastes of particular times and places are encapsulated in such a way to make us look at that context in a different perspective. Burroughs’ original Tarzan embodies several of the aspirations, tensions, and failings of the early twentieth-century Unites States. On one hand, the novel refracts a national longing for an unspoiled nature, on another hand, the novel echoes the racism and violence directed at African Americans at this time.