The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan: Book Review

(Book Review--History)

Started: November 09, 2022

Finished: December 28, 2022

(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.) 

Background Information

Background Information on The Peloponnesian War Generally

The Peloponnesian War is the name for a long period of conflict between Athens and Sparta from 460 to 404 B.C.  It's similar to the Napoleonic Wars in that it's actually a series of conflicts--there were periods of peace intermixed with renewed war. But, like the Napoleonic Wars, historians also view it as one continuous conflict.

The Peloponnesian War is (potentially) interesting for a number of reasons (I'll get around to discussing those down below), but it's chiefly historically important because:

1) It occurred right smack during the golden age of ancient Greek civilization, and it so influenced a lot of the literature and philosophy produced during that time.  (Literature and philosophy that would later go on to become the foundation of Western Civilization.)

2) It exhausted Athens and Sparta, and consequently marked the end of the Greek City state era, and thus paved the way for the armies of Alexander the Great to march in and conquer Greece.  

The Peloponnesian War is infamous for confusing and frustrating students.  (I don't think the Peloponnesian War is currently being taught anywhere in secondary schools anymore, but it still has a notorious reputation in the cultural memory--a lingering cultural hangover from the days when classical education was still part of the school curriculum.) It's a long and confusing conflict that involved the whole Greek world, and also had different cities switching sides back and forth during different stages of the war.  

It also was a conflict that went all over the map--the conflict went all up and down the Greek Peninsula and all over Aegean Sea.  The war even reached as far as Italy and Sicily.  All the Greek city states were involved, plus other nations (like Persia, Egypt, Macedonia and Carthage) got sucked in at one point or another.

For this reason, people often refer to the Peloponnesian War as the World War of the ancient world.

Our information on The Peloponnesian War comes from a number of different sources, but it's chiefly associated with the classic History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (W).  But that's not the book I'm reviewing today.  I'm reviewing Donald Kagan's synopsis of Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

Background Information on this Specific Book: The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

Donald Kagan is a professor at Yale University, and considered an expert on the Peloponnesian War.  He had previously written a 4 volume history of the Peloponnesian War for scholarly audiences, but was convinced by one of his colleagues that there was a market for a one volume history of the war for general readers.  The book was very successful.  As Donald Kagan says HERE: 

I wrote a one-volume history of the Peloponnesian War and it sold 50,000 copies of the damn thing. I was truly amazed; so was my publisher. But I think I shouldn't have been amazed, because for maybe a century now people have been studying Thucydides and the war, or when they have not been studying, they've been hearing about it; references have been made to it by distinguished people. General Marshall referred to it in a famous quotation when he was Secretary of State and people keep talking about it, and so the curiosity I think rather than the familiarity--curiosity about what is this all about--may account for this...

I mentioned above that this was a "synopsis of Thucydides", but Donald Kagan actually draws on several other ancient historians (Plutarch, Xenophon, etc) to complete his picture of the Peloponnesian War.  At the same time, however, it's obvious to even an uniformed reader like myself that Donald Kagan is only giving a brief summary of a much more complex history. 

Why I Read This Book (a.k.a. how I became interested in the Peloponnesian War)

I've repeated this story a few - times - now, but back when I was in middle school, I was interested in Greek and Roman history.  By high school, I had gravitated to an interest exclusively in Roman history (for all the reasons I mentioned HERE), and so consequently never really read up on Greek history or the Peloponnesian War.

I started college as a classics major, but by sophomore year I decided that I was more interested in modern history--I was fascinated by the drama of the revolutionary period of the 19th Century, and the ideology of the enlightenment.  So I switched majors to a general history degree.

But ever since then, I've been getting hints that I may have been too quick to disregard the ancient world--some of the ideology that so attracted me to the 19th century actually had analogues in the ancient world.  

In particular, in 2006 I was at the public library, and I was flipping through The Cartoon History of the Universe (W), and I came across these panels discussing the conflict between Athens and Sparta as a conflict of ideology.

Taken from: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/hoy83tAHGK9USjMqNj5VIuJDfl9b3xOXS47wf0iu2_MIdXh4xuSr7g-g8iclCkDa39-1d3G2AR7HrmHPP0ooyMoamKg44PVAk3SyNlN5YDXM6QTdLDxwCZisqFEarPJq21MHcA=s1600

So, obviously the "joke" here is that the comic is using the language of the enlightenment to describe the ideology of the ancient world:

...but it got me thinking.  These type of conversations must have taken place in ancient Greece, right?

I had, of course, known that Athens was a democracy.  Every schoolboy learns that.  But my secondary education had given me the impression that Athens just happened to be a democracy in the same way that Persia just happened to be an empire.  There was no discussion about how Athens became a democracy, or what the ideological struggles in ancient Greece were.  But obviously in the ancient world, democracy was not the norm.  So it must have been considered a radical idea.  There must have been heated debates, discussions and arguments about democracy in ancient Greece just as there were in the 19th century.

Before this, I had the view of the Peloponnesian War that I think a lot of people had--a long series of pointless battles between two neighboring cities.  After this, I had the idea that there might be an interesting ideological component to the Peloponnesian War.

2006 was nearly 20 years ago now.  So admittedly it's taken me a long time to finally work my way around to actually reading about the Peloponnesian War.

Well, what can I say?  Now that I'm middle aged, there are actually a lot of things I've been meaning to read about for the past 20 or 30 years that I'm only getting around to now.  (You may have noticed I've been making this - same - apology a lot recently.)  I wish I was a better reader, but that's about all I can say.

....other than to add that, in my defense, the fact that I've been living - in - Asia for the last 20 years has made it hard to pursue niche interests.  There were no English books on the Peloponnesian War in the bookstores of Japan or Vietnam.

Although in 2008, I did pick up A People's History of the World by Chris Harman from a bookstore in Japan, in no small part because I was hoping that Chris Harman would connect the ideological struggles of the ancient world to the modern revolutions.  And I was subsequently disappointed when he completely dropped the ball on this.  As I wrote in my review at the time: 

The pity is, the historical record is a lot richer than Harman’s book acknowledges. We know a surprising amount about the class struggles in the ancient world. Although ancient historical sources can sometimes mix truth with legend, they have left us with a wealth of material. We know, for example, a lot about the ideological battles between the warring Greek city states.

("We" in that quote refers to the shared cultural knowledge of the collective "we".  I personally only had a vague idea about this history.)

The interest in the  ideology of the Greek world popped up again when I read the Alexander the Great trilogy by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, and I was intrigued again by how Alexander (at least in Manfredi's description) viewed himself as restoring democracy to the Greek city states under Persian domination.  It was yet another connection of democratic ideology with Greek history and culture.

And, in my review of Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault, I wrote about how Mary Renault wove in details about the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War into her story about the rise of Alexander the Great.  And this further intrigued me.

As for Donald Kagan's book, I first heard of it when I read a review by Blogging the Canon (a blogger I discovered when doing my review of Kim, and who I've continued reading ever since).  Blogging the Canon did a post on his experience reading Thucydides, and in that post he mentions how useful he found Donald Kagan's book as a supplement to Thucydides.  To quote from his review: 

As I was reading Thucydides, I also read Donald Kagan's book "The Peloponnesian War" at the same time.  Kagan is a scholar of Greek history and of Thucydides, and his account both summarizes Thucydides and, perhaps more importantly for me, gives an analysis of Thucydides; specifically an analysis of the events he describes, and what other ancient writers wrote about the war.  Kagan's book greatly enriched my understanding of just what the hell Thucydides was talking about at certain points, and made a great companion to Thucydides book.  Plus he tells what happens after Thucydides' history breaks off.

It was based on this recommendation that in 2016 I listened to the Open Yale Courses Ancient Greek History with Donald Kagan and reviewed it on this blog.  As I wrote in my review, I found it fascinating stuff.

When I was back home in the US for Christmas during 2019, I finally picked up a copy of Donald Kagan's book.  (It was still popular enough that it was readily available on the bookshelves at my local bookstore.  I didn't have to special order a copy or anything.)

And I've been waiting to get around to it ever since then.  (I wanted to finish Herodotus first, since Herodotus's histories come first chronologically.  But after finishing Herodotus, it was finally time to get into the Peloponnesian War.) 

Of course, Blogging the Canon read Donald Kagan's book alongside of Thucydides, as a companion and supplement to Thucydides.  And I think this is a fairly common usage of Donald Kagan's book.  My fellow booktuber Revenant Reads also discussed reading the two as a set in his video from October 2021 here. Although, I left a brief comment: 

I've got Donald Kagan's book on my shelf next.  I'm planning on reading Donald Kagan's book before I attempt Thucydides, based on Steve Donoghue's philosophy of starting with the more accessible reading and then working your way up to the difficult stuff.

You see, the great Steve Donoghue, in one of his youtube videos, once made a point that when you're starting on a new area of interest, you don't get any points for plunging into the most difficult material first.  Instead, start with the easiest, most accessible material, and gradually work your way up to the difficult stuff.

Thucydides has a reputation for being a bit difficult and confusing, so I figured I would start with Donald Kagan's popular history first, and then (possibly) move on to Thucydides after I had finished Kagan's book.

I should also note that while reading Donald Kagan, I supplemented my reading by going back and re-listening to some  of the relevant lectures from his Yale Open Courses lectures.

To further supplement, I started listening to the relevant episodes from The History of Ancient Greece Podcast by Ryan Stitt (available on Google podcasts HERE).

I also found both of these sources useful in filling in my knowledge on the 50 year period between the end of the Herodotus and the beginning of the Persian War (W).

[Um... Since I brought up Ryan Stitt, I feel like I have to mention that 2 years ago Ryan Stitt got called out for allegedly harassing women in the classics department.  See a blogpost about that HERE.  I really don't want to get sidetracked by talking about that controversy though.  This book review is way too long already as it is.  All I'll say for now is that I don't believe the sexual harassment allegations affect the informational content of his podcasts--so I thought his podcasts would still contain useful information for me whether or not he's a sex creep.  But you'll have to make up your own mind about how you feel about listening to his podcasts.]

Other Reasons That the Peloponnesian War Might Be Interesting

It strikes me that in the above narrative, I left out several other reasons why the Peloponnesian War might (potentially) be interesting.  So let me add a few of those here.

I should, of course, acknowledge that part of the reason I'm writing all this is that I fully know there are a lot of reasons why the Peloponnesian War is not interesting--it's a long confusing war that just goes on and on and on.  So I should perhaps give a few more reasons why I thought it was worth my time to read about (and why it potentially might be worth your time as well.)

For starters, the Peloponnesian War occurred right during the middle of ancient Greek's golden age--when ancient Greece was right in the middle of turning out all the literature and philosophy that would go on to define the Western World.

It's a funny thing when you think of "golden ages" in history.  After all, history is thousands and thousands of years long, and covers all the human civilizations on the globe.  And yet, human creativity and ingenuity does not seem to have been equally distributed across this domain of time and space--the literature and ideas that we still remember and talk about today come from just a few golden ages--small pockets of geographical areas in a very compressed time frame: The Italian Renaissance, The Augustan Age, etc.  And, of course, Ancient Athens.

The Golden Age of ancient Athens was only about 100 years, and that 100 years included the Peloponnesian Wars. (Or it was ended by the Peloponnesian Wars, depending on who you ask.  But either way it was right around the Peloponnesian Wars.)  Therefore, so much of the philosophy and literature of golden age Greece was shaped by the Peloponnesian Wars.

For example, Socrates himself actually took part in the Peloponnesian Wars--he fought in some of the key battles, and played a key political part in one of the major political controversies of the war (W).  Other prominent politicians during this time were friends or students of Socrates.  And some of them show up in Plato's dialogues (see, for example, here).  (And speaking of Plato, his formative years were also shaped by the Peloponnesian Wars.)

Also a lot of surviving Greek plays are commentaries on the Peloponnesian Wars.

For example, Lysistrata (W)--a famous antiwar play in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex with their husbands until their husbands agree to end the war.

(I actually saw Lysistrata when I was in high school.  Calvin College theater company was putting on a production of it, and my mother thought I'd be interested since I was interested in ancient Greece.  However, I had no idea at the time that it was about the Peloponnesian Wars specifically.  I just thought it was some sort of generic antiwar play.  It was only after I started learning about the Peloponnesian Wars that I started appreciating the historical context of that play.)

Or The Trojan Women by Eurpides (W), which is supposedly a commentary on the brutality of the Peloponnesian War.

Or the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (W), which, according to Ryan Stitt, is possibly a commentary on Greek politician Pericles during the Peloponnesian War.  (The playwrights Eurpides and Sophocles also both fought in the Peloponnesian War themselves.)

Etc, etc, etc.  There were tons of Greek plays and philosophical treatises written during the Peloponnesian War period.

Despite my slow reading progress over the years, I still have this wild dream of someday going back to the classics and reading the foundations of Western Civilization.  (This was, as I mentioned, the impetus for my read-the-Bible project).  And it occurs to me that if I ever tried to follow through on this, I would want to understand the Peloponnesian War so that I could understand all the Greek literature and philosophy written around it.

Plus, as some of the works listed above illustrate, a lot of the plays produced during the Peloponnesian War period was antiwar.  So this would tie in nicely with my interest in - antiwar - literature - through - the  - ages.

 And then there is the fact that the Peloponnesian War coincided with the period of most radical democracy in Athens.  So studying the politics of Athens during the Peloponnesian War is studying how a direct democracy functions during war.  

I've mentioned before how anarchists sometimes look to the direct democracy of ancient Greece as a model for true democracy, and so this period ties in with my interest in anarchism as well.  

However, this period also presents a problem for small "d" democrats or anarchists.  That is, democratic Athens behaved as an imperial power during this time, and also committed a number of wartime atrocities.  

And this is a point Noam Chomsky has made before.  It is often pointed out to Chomsky that he is very critical of US foreign policy, despite the fact that the US is one of the freest countries in the world.  Chomsky points out that Athens was the freest city in the ancient world, but Athens still behaved as an imperial power.  In the movie Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky says here:

..it ends up being a very free society which does a lot of rotten things in the world. Okay? There's no contradiction there. I mean, you know, Greece was a free society by the standards of Athens, you know, it's also a vicious society from the point of view of its imperial behavior.  There's virtually no correlation, maybe none, between the internal freedom of a society and its external behavior.

So the Peloponnesian War is worth studying to examine the problems of democracy and empire. 

And finally, in the 20th century, the Peloponnesian War was studied as an analogue to the Cold War. Donald Kagan mentions in the clip I linked to above that it's been studied for years in military academies.  And Whisky Prajer also chimed in in the comments a few weeks ago to let me know that Thucydides history of the Peloponnesian Wars was required reading for his college course on the Cold War:

In the mid 80s if you wanted to take A History Of The Cold War in university you were expected to read A History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. So I'm just glad when someone else reads it.

The reasons so many people saw an analogy to the Cold War are (I think): Athens and Sparta were both the superpowers of the ancient world, just like the USA and the USSR were to the 20th Century.  Because they were both equally strong, a war between them would be devastating for both of them.  And yet, they both sought to dominate the Greek world, so sooner or later they were bound to come into conflict.  Because a war would be so disastrous, the objective of diplomacy on both sides was to press as hard as they could to secure a peace that would be most advantageous for themselves, but without actually pressing too hard so that they fell into a war.  (In his book, Donald Kagan reveals step-by-step all the diplomatic maneuverings that both sides used to try to preserve their geopolitical interests without actually falling into war--until they eventually did fall into the war.)

Both Athens and Sparta relied on a huge network of allies for their mutual security.  There appears to have been an ideaological component to these alliances (most of Sparta's allies were oligarchic societies, many of Athens allies were democracies.)  But the ideological component was not the sole consideration--Athens occasionally made war on fellow democracies if it suited their larger strategic aims.  All of this is, of course, analogous to NATO and the Warsaw Pact.  

But, as Donald Kagan also points out in his book, controlling these allies became a problem for both sides.  There were numerous times when either Sparta's or Athen's hand was forced because of overly aggressive allies that they could not fully control.  (Although war never broke out between the US and the USSR, I believe there are numerous analogues in the Cold War for mini-crises that resulted because of allies who tried to act independently--HERE, for example.)

So, those are all the reasons why I think this subject could be potentially interesting.

Now, Donald Kagan himself doesn't touch on all these subjects.  (He's definitely more interested in some themes than in others.)  But I think his book provides useful background for anyone who would want to go further into any of these subjects on their own. And on that basis, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

But before I get any further into the review, maybe this would be a good point to highlight which of these themes Donald Kagan actually is interested in:

What Themes Donald Kagan is Interested In

I should make clear that Donald Kagan has written a history book here, not a philosophy book.  Much of the book is just a chronicle of which battles happened in which order.  He's got a lot of history to get through in just 500 pages, so he doesn't often pause to moralize on the lessons.

But he does get a bit more philosophical in his Open Yale Course Lectures, and so it's a bit easier to pull out themes from there.  (If you're going to read this book, I really recommend you listen to Donald Kagan's lectures as a supplement.  They complement each other really nicely.)

In those lectures, Donald Kagan seems very interested in the lessons of The Peloponnesian War for the study of modern international relationships.  The dilemmas of war and peace faced in modern politics Donald Kagan believes has analogues in the Peloponnesian War.

I should note that Donald Kagan is not a pacifist.  He believes that war sometimes is necessary, and that if war is going to be inevitable, it's sometimes better to start the war when you're in a strong position rather than delay the war until you're in a weaker position.  But the central dilemma is trying to predict when the war is inevitable, and that's what he finds so interesting about the Peloponnesian War.

Also, in the book, there are various times when Athens has the opportunity to negotiate a peace.  During these times, Donald Kagan explains that there is a pro-war faction in Athens, and a pro-peace faction.  From Donald Kagan's book, I definitely got the impression that he was not sympathetic to the pro-peace faction.  Donald Kagan believes that once you get into a war, it's important that you don't negotiate a peace that will just restore the status quo, because that means that you will just return to the original conditions--the conditions that were responsible for bringing about the war in the first place.  Once you're in the war, you want to try to hold out for a victory that will establish you in a stronger position than the original status quo.  For this reason, Donald Kagan seems critical of the peace faction in Athens for wanting to negotiate peace too early on the basis of restoring the status quo.  Donald Kagan believes that they were giving into war-weariness, which he seems to view as a weakness of character, rather than having a valid ideological viewpoint.  

[Although in his lecture series, he at one point implies that Athenian hubris probably caused Athens to miss some good opportunities to negotiate a settled peace.  So, like I said, the lectures and the book complement each other nicely.]

Consequently, Donald Kagan's not really interested in talking about the various antiwar plays that were being produced in Athens during this period.  (He mentions briefly one antiwar play, Peace by Aristophanes (W), but only to criticize the contents of it.)  So if you're looking for a history that seriously examines the antiwar movement in Athens, you're going to have to look elsewhere.

As for my personal views, I have for years now considered myself a pacifist. But now that I'm middle-age, I'm trying to be less ideologically rigid about any of my accepted positions--that is, I try to always consider the possibility that I might be wrong about the things I believe.  So I tried to read Donald Kagan's book with an open mind.

Donald Kagan is also much more politically conservative than I am--this is something that was evident from listening to his lectures (as I noted in my review at the time), as well as something that is clearly stated on his Wikipedia bio.  

But this doesn't mean that Donald Kagan is so conservative as to be anti-democratic.  On the contrary,  Donald Kagan is a defender of the idea of democracy, and here I am much more in sympathy with him.

As Donald Kagan notes in his book, for many Greeks the failure of Athens during the Peloponnesian War was taken as a failure of democracy.  And the historian Thucydides apparently blamed a lot of the poor decisions that Athens made during the war on the problem of democracy--the tendency of the gullible masses to be easily mislead by unscrupulous politicians.

Donald Kagan, however, tries to rehabilitate democracy in his retelling of the Peloponnesian War.  He points out that a lot of the decisions that the voters in Athens made weren't actually as stupid as Thucydides thinks they were.  He explains that there may actually have been some sound logic behind these decisions.  And in cases were democratic Athens actually does do terrible or stupid things, Donald Kagan points out that although these actions were horrific, they did not occur because of democracy.  Rather, these are the types of wartime atrocities or blunders that have occurred throughout history regardless of the type of government.

The Reading Experience

While I was carrying this book around with me, people would occasionally ask me how it was.  "It's both really fascinating and really boring at the same time," I would say. "If that makes any sense."

I'll deal with the boring stuff first. 

At its worst, this book can read like a long list of battles in a war that just goes on and on and on.

I found this side of things very tedious.  And this is, unfortunately, a major part of the reading experience of the book.

Because there are so many military engagements to get through in 30 years of war, Donald Kagan doesn't get bogged down in the details of anyone battle.  And occasionally the book can seem like just a list of which towns the battles were fought at instead of any descriptions.  But occasionally he gets a little bit into the troop deployments, and the various military tactics that caused these battles to be won or lost.

I found it all very boring.

I should note here that this is just a personal preference.

When I was a history major back in college, a number of my classmates were obsessed with military history.  You know, the kind of guys who love talking about maps, and troop movements, and flanking maneuvers, and cavalry deployment, etc.  Those kind of guys would love this book.  (And if you're one of those guys, be sure to check this book out.)

Me, personally, I'm more interested in the ideological battles than in the military history.  

Although, as I was reading this book, I told myself that I really shouldn't dismiss the military aspect of history.  Quite often, ideological realities are dictated by military outcomes.  As I wrote in my review of The Civil Wars by Appian of Alexandria:

One also gets the impression from Appian that military might, not ideas, ultimately causes the change in history.  The reason Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire is not because Antony and Octavian had the better ideas for government, but just because they had the superior military tactical skills.

Donald Kagan makes a very similar point in his book:

The defeat of Athens in the war was also a blow to the prospects for democracy in other Greek cities.  The influence of political systems on people outside them is closely connected with their success in war. The democratic constitution of a powerful and successful Athens was a magnet and a model for others, even in the heart of the Peloponnesus. Athens' loss in the war against Sparta was taken as proof of the inadequacy of its political system; Athenian failures were seized upon as democratic errors; ordinary human mistakes and misfortunes were judged to be the peculiar consequences of democracy.  (p.488-489)

So, I don't get to skip the military stuff just because I find it boring (I told myself).  This is stuff I need to pay attention to.

But... I'm not sure how much of it I really absorbed into my long term memory.  I mean, I dutifully slogged through all the battles when I was reading this book, and I told myself that I was educating myself.  But am I going to be able to remember all these military battles 5 years from now?  I'm already starting to forget all about the various battles.  (When I got to the end of this book, I realized that I could only vaguely remember the battles that occurred at the beginning.)

 The thing that really fascinated me about this book was all the dramatic personalities.  There was the conservative Athenian statesman Cimon, and the demagogue Pericles (who was paradoxically both a radical democrat, and a sort of populist autocrat), and the flamboyant, but completely amoral, Alcibiades, etc.  All of these figures fascinated me, and here I really wished the book were longer, because I wanted to hear more about them.  But Donald Kagan has so much material to get through that these personalities are only mentioned very briefly.  

Also, this book isn't all military.  There is some interesting political stuff that comes into this book.  Just when I was beginning to get sick of all the war stuff, there's an oligarchic coup that happens in Athens.  And Donald Kagan takes a bit of a detour to talk about the ideological conflict in ancient Athens  between oligarchs and democrats.  And then as the coup plays out, the story then shifts to a kind of civil war within Athens, in which the democrats struggled to overthrow the oligarchic regime, and how this whole thing affected the moral of the soldiers, etc.  I found that whole section of the story to be utterly fascinating.

So, yeah, there is definitely some interesting stuff in this book if you're willing to slog through the uninteresting stuff to get to it.

On the whole, I'm glad I read it.

Extended Quotation

[For this extended quotation, I decided to be nice and quote from one of the more interesting sections of the book.  I could easily have quoted from a less-interesting section--talking about siege wars or cavalry deployments--but what fun is that?  Better to show what the book has to offer when it's getting into the good stuff.  So this is from the section on the oligarchic coup.  It's Donald Kagan setting up the anti-democratic ideology that had always existed in the background among the aristocratic elite in democratic Athens.]

Some aristocrats, however, never abandoned their contempt for popular rule--a prejudice that had strong roots in Greek tradition.  In the Homeric epics it was the nobles who made decisions and gave orders, while the commoners knew their place and obeyed them.  In the sixth century the poet Theognis of Megara wrote bitterly as an aristocrat whose world was overthrown by political and social changes, and his ideas had a powerful influence on enemies of democracy well into the fourth century.  Theognis divided mankind into two types based on birth: the good and noble, the bad and base.  Because the noble alone possesses judgment (gnome) and reverence (aidos), he alone is capable of moderation, restraint and justice.  The mass of the people lack these virtues and are, therefore, shameless and arrogant.  The good qualities, moreover, cannot be taught; “It is easier to beget and rear a man than to put good sense into him.  No one has ever discovered a way to make a fool wise or a bad man good. … If thought could be made and put into a man, the son of a good man would never become bad since he would obey good counsel.  But you will never make the bad man good by teaching” (Theognis 429-438).

The views of the Theban poet Pindar, who lived past the middle of the fifth century, were also highly esteemed by the Athenian upper classes.  His message mirrored that of Theognis: the nobly bon were inherently superior to the mass of people intellectually and morally, and the difference could not be erased by education.

The splendor running in the blood has much weight.

A man can learn and yet see darkly, blow one way,

then another, walking ever

on uncertain feet, his mind unfinished and

fed with scraps of a thousand virtues.

(Nemea 3.40-42).

Only the natively wise can understand:

There are many sharp shafts

in the quiver

under the crook of my arm.

They speak to the understanding; most men need interpreters.

The wise man knows many things in his blood; the vulgar are taught.

They will say anything. They clatter vainly like crows against the sacred bird of Zeus.

(Olympia 2.83-88)

To minds shaped by such ideas, democracy was foolish, at best, and could become unfair and immoral, as well.  The Constitution of the Athenians--a pamphlet written in the 420s by an unknown author often called “The Old Oligarch”--reveals the discontent that some in Athens felt during the war: “As for the constitution of the Athenians, I do not praise them for having chosen it, because in choosing it they have given the better of it to the vulgar people (poneroi) rather than to the good (chrestoi)” (1.1) They use lots for positions that are safe and pay a salary but leave the dangerous jobs of generals and commanders of the cavalry to election and the “best qualified men” (Constitution of the Athenians 1.3)

 

***END QUOTE. p.362-363. The ellipsis in the Theognis quote is from the original.***

Other Notes

* I've complained in the past a - lot - about - endnotes in books, but fortunately Donald Kagan doesn't use them.  There are a couple footnotes (at the bottom of the page), but no flipping to the back of the book to find the endnote.  So that's another point for this book.  And the maps are integrated into the main text (rather than being buried at the back of the book), so for the most part, there's not too much trouble flipping around with the maps. I mean, occasionally you might have to flip back and forth a couple pages to find the map you're looking for, but for the most part the publishers do a very good job of putting the maps right where you need them in the main text.

Plans for Further Reading

Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutarch (W)

I've mentioned that I'm much more interested in the biographies of the personalities behind this war rather than the military history itself.  Which means I really need to get around to reading Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.  Many of the Greek lives in Plutarch are actually from the Peloponnesian War: Pericles, Alcibiades, Cimon, Nicias, Lysander, etc.

As always finding books in Vietnam is difficult, but Plutarch is actually available on Project Gutenberg, and I bought a kindle last year precisely for this kind of thing.  So I hope to read it this year.

(I mentioned back in 2018 that I wanted to read Plutarch, but I was worried that I didn't have the background to understand the Greek half of his biographies.  But now that I've read Herodotus, and I've read about the Peloponnesian War, I think I've got enough background to tackle Plutarch.)

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (W)

Alright, so now that I've finished this book, I guess there's no excuse not to tackle Thucydides next.  Except unlike Plutarch, I'm not going to try to read Thucydides off of Project Gutenberg.  I get the impression this is a book that you really need to have a proper edition with the maps and the footnotes and everything.  So I'm probably going to have to wait around until I'm back in the United States before I can track down a copy.  And who knows when that will next be?  But whenever that happens, Thucydides is on the list.  I will buy a copy when I'm next back in the U.S.

Re-read: The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

When I do get around to Thucydides, whenever that ends up being, I suspect I'll want to re-read this book. People say it's a really good companion book to read while you're reading Thucydides, and it will no doubt have faded in my mind in a couple years.  So I'm either going to have to save my copy, or else track down another copy in the future.

Lysistrata by Aristophanes (W) and The Trojan Women by Euripides (W)

There are, as I indicated above, any number of Greek plays that are directly or indirectly about The Peloponnesian War.  But these two are the ones I'm most interested in.  And then maybe I'll get around to reading others after that.  

Podcasts: A History of Greece by Ryan Stitt (Link)

So far I've only listened to a few episodes regarding the Peloponnesian War.  But it's good enough that I think I want to listen to the whole thing.  At some point.  (It'll be a while before I finish Revolutions podcast obviously.)  And I guess I'll just take the position that the allegations of harassments against Ryan Stitt don't affect the contents of the podcast.

The Cartoon History of the Universe (W)

I mentioned above that this was the comic book that got me into this whole time period to begin with.  But I never actually read it cover-to-cover.  I just flipped through it in the library one day.  Now that I've started reading and reviewing comic books on this blog, I should really read this one day.

Who knows when I'll ever be able to track down a copy.  But someday I'll get around to it.

Links

Steve Donoghue selected this as one of his 10 best non-fiction books for 2003.  To quote Steve:

The fifth-century BC war between Athens and Sparta is one of those conflicts that’s always ripe for retelling, but it’s big and daunting and there’s always new research to take into account (and for all his faults, Thucydides is a bit of a tough act to follow). In other words, there’s a grave potential when reading a new history of the Peloponnesian War to hit icebergs of boredom calved off glaciers of caution, but that doesn’t happen in Kagan’s fantastic account: he keeps the story’s several parallel theaters active and interesting, and he manages to write about the whole conflict with tremendous freshness.

Rating:

It's tough to rate a book like this.  I feel like Donald Kagan did the best he could with the material that he had.  So maybe I should give him 10 out of 10 on effort.  On the other hand, I give these ratings out on how enjoyable the book was for me personally to read.  And parts of this book did feel like a slog at times going through all the different military campaigns.  So maybe 7 out of 10?

But then, even when it was slogging through the military history, it was always readable.  The prose was clear.  The maps were easy to follow.  Final verdict: 8 out of 10

Weekly Reading Vlogs:

November 13, 2022 The Peloponnesian War p.1-96 

November 20, 2022 The Peloponnesian War p.96-162

November 27, 2022 The Peloponnesian War p.162-172

December 4, 2022 The Peloponnesian War p.172-224

December 11, 2022 The Peloponnesian War p.224-292

December 18, 2022 The Peloponnesian War p.292-352

December 23, 2022 The Peloponnesian War p.352-396

January 1, 2023 The Peloponnesian War p.396-494

Video Review (Playlist HERE)

The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan: Book Review

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Book Review

(Book Review--Classics, Pulp Fiction Classics, Children's Literature)

Started: October 7, 2022

Finished: November 9, 2022

(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.) 

Background Information

I was reading this book at work a couple weeks ago, and a co-worker commented, "Tarzan?  I didn't know there were books as well!"

I suppose Tarzan has become so well-known as a movie icon that perhaps there are people out there who don't know that he started out life as a series of books.  But he did--a series of 24 books, of which this book is the first one.

Tarzan of the Apes was originally serialized in pulp magazines in 1912, and then released as a novel in 1914.

Author Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific pulp writer (in addition to the Tarzan series, he also wrote the John Carter of Mars series.) 

In writing Tarzan, Burroughs was reportedly influenced by the African adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.  But whereas H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling both knew intimately the terrains about which they wrote (H. Rider Haggard had spent years in South Africa, Kipling spent years in India), Edgar Rice Burroughs had famously never left the United States.  So the African jungle in the Tarzan novels is one that's completely from Burroughs' imagination, and is consequently completely fantastical.  So while this novel gets no points for realism, it is fun to visit the lush, dense, deadly tropical jungle of Burroughs' imagination.

My History with Tarzan

I was never a huge Tarzan fan as a kid.  Although I was curious about him.

Growing up in the 1980s, I had managed to pick up from cultural osmosis that Tarzan had once been a huge pop-cultural phenomenon in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and then had subsequently gone out of style.  (In the old days before the Internet and Wikipedia, it was difficult to get information on pop-cultural phenomenons from before your birth, but you picked up little things through overheard conversations, or references on TV shows, etc.)

As a kid, I was more interested in the phenomenon itself than in Tarzan--that is, I was fascinated by how something could be such a huge part of 1950s pop culture, but then be so unfashionable by the 1980s.  What exactly separated us from the kids of the 1950s?  How had humanity changed in the intervening years to make Tarzan unmarketable?

As for the Tarzan movies themselves, my memory is that they were hard to come by in the 1980s.  I don't remember them being available at the local video store.  I don't remember them being on cable TV.  (I don't know, what are your memories of the 1980s like?  Was I missing something, or was it just hard to find this stuff back then?)

If Tarzan had been more widely available, I totally would have watched all of those old movies.  (As a kid, I loved that old cheesy retro stuff.)

As it was, though, the only Tarzan movie I came across as a kid was the 1932 movie Tarzan the Ape Man (W). I think I was in 4th grade.  We were on a family vacation somewhere in the mid-west, and while staying at a hotel, I was scanning through the television listings, and saw that Tarzan the Ape Man was playing.

My parents were very strict about what I watched back in those days, so everything was a negotiation.  My mother eventually decided that since the movie was from 1932, it couldn't be that violent, and agreed to let me watch it.

Then, when we all watched it together that evening, the movie was more intense than my mother was expecting, and I remember during a few scenes of the movie, my mother would turn to my father and remark in surprise, "1932!"  (The intonation in her voice conveying the meaning of: Imagine that this is from a 1932 movie.)

(Upon consulting Wikipedia, it looks like 1932 was actually pre-code Hollywood (W), which probably explains why it was more intense than my mother was expecting.  But I haven't seen the movie since then, so at this point my memories of it are foggy and scattered.  But I do have a vague memory of Jane and her father travelling into the jungle with a group of African guides.  They encounter numerous jungle dangers along the way, and at each danger point one or two of the African guides will die.  When I was reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean 3, I used this as an analogy to talk about how the Chinese crew were used.)

Also, in 2016, I saw The Legend of Tarzan when it was playing in theaters (and reviewed it on this blog).

Why I Read This Book

I’ve been slowly working my way through the pulp fiction classics on this blog.  So it was only a matter of time before I eventually worked my way around to Tarzan.

I did read some of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s other series, John Carter of Mars, way back in 2006, and wasn’t particularly impressed with it.  (I gave it a mostly negative review).  I suppose that experience didn’t make me overly eager to rush into Tarzan.

Confession time: Back in 2006, I actually bought a copy of Tarzan, and just never got around to reading it.  It was a copy from Signet Classics that combined Tarzan with The Prisoner of Zenda (available on Amazon HERE).  It contained an introduction by Gore Vidal.  At the time, I read the Gore Vidal essay, but never got around to never got around to reading the actual book.  (Again, I think my experience with John Carter or Mars had dampened my enthusiasm).  Then, when I went back to Japan in 2007, this was one of the many books I just had to get rid of without reading.    

Despite, I've still been meaning to get around to it someday.

More recently, this past August there was also some increased chatter about the Tarzan series on booktube for Garbaugust, which pushed this series toward the top of my mind.

And so, when I saw a copy of Tarzan in SC Vivo City here in Vietnam, I snatched up a copy.  

(I don’t think I’m going to have any luck finding any of the rest of the series out here in Vietnam, but the bookstores were at least selling the first book.)

Links

* The introduction by Gore Vidal that I mentioned above (the one that Signet Classics used for their 2006 edition) actually comes from a 1963 essay that Gore Vidal did for Esquire Magazine called Tarzan Revisited.  It's available online HERE, and is worth reading for a couple of different reasons--both for Gore Vidal's dissection of Burroughs' plot and prose, but also for Gore Vidal's musings on how common it is for people to maintain a running adventure stories in their heads.

As someone who all through childhood was always imagining adventure stories in my head, I found Gore Vidal's musings on this subject to be of personal interest.  But my personal thoughts on all this are another whole subject for a different post some other day.  

* I've been linking to Mari Ness's reviews on Tor.com throughout my reviews of The Land of Oz.  But Mari Ness also has an excellent review of Tarzan on Tor.com, entitled: Heredity, Environment, and a Few Dead Lions: Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes.  This is worth reading in its entirety--Mari Ness is a very insightful, but also humorous reviewer.  She's a lot of fun.  I'll just quote a paragraph to give some of the flavor:

Fortunately, before he can suffer too much from his responsibilities, a number of people—not ape people, human people—start randomly arriving, including, in no particular order: two easily distracted scholars; Tarzan’s cousin Clayton, under the understandable impression that he is the real Lord Greystoke; various evil sailors (Tarzan doesn’t like them); a black woman named Esmerelda, who, after seeing the various skeletons, wild apes, and so on, really wants to return to Baltimore (she has a point); various Frenchmen; and oh, yes, Jane. She’s the daughter of one of the two scholars. Esmeralda appears to have come along as her chaperone, although a remarkably ineffective one. Various encounters and near-encounters occur, then lions appear, all eventually leading to this:

"He took his woman in his arms and carried her into the jungle."

I have more than a few things to say about this—notably, uh, Tarzan, I get the whole raised by apes thing, but just a few seconds ago, Jane was striking Tarzan’s giant breast with her tiny hands (it’s that sort of book) protesting Tarzan’s burning kisses (as said, it’s that sort of book) and repulsing him, so what is this “his woman” stuff? Anyway, off to the jungle they go, where, after a night of gift giving including fruit and a golden locket Jane falls headlong in love with him. (Did I mention it’s that sort of book?)

Plot Summary and Commentary ***SPOILERS***

In my 2006 review of the first 3 books in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Martian series, I wrote:

From a literary standpoint however these books are pretty awful. I doubt they could even get published today. Burrough’s doesn’t pause for any description at all. The whole book is one long fight scene. It reads like something a 12 year might write:

“So there I was, stuck on Mars. All of a sudden all these green men attacked me. I fought bravely, and I had almost beaten them all, when all of a sudden a giant spider came out of the ground and attacked us. I battled the spider until these giant birds descended on us and tried to eat me....”

I exaggerate, but not by much. 

I was expecting to find the same thing in Tarzan, and was therefore surprised to find out that Tarzan of the Apes is actually pretty well written.

(I may have been too harsh in my 2006 review of The Martian Tales Trilogy.  I don’t know.  I’m going to have to go back and re-read those books one of these days.)

But in contrast to my memories of The Martian Tales Trilogy, Tarzan is not simply a mad-rush from one fight to another.  It actually has decent pacing and development.  The story is told in sufficient detail, and the scenery and characters are also fully described.

This is clear right from the beginning, when we are still on Tarzan’s backstory.  I expected Tarzan’s parents to be killed off very quickly, but we actually spend 35 pages with them before they finally die and Tarzan gets adopted by the apes. 

Chapter 1 opens with the premise of a narrator who is reconstructing the history from various documents and eyewitnesses:

I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.

When my convivial host discovered that he had told me so much, and that I was prone to doubtfulness, his foolish pride assumed the task the old vintage had commenced, and so he unearthed written evidence in the form of musty manuscript, and dry official records of the British Colonial Office to support many of the salient features of his remarkable narrative.

I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it may be true.

The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a man long dead, and the records of the Colonial Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly pieced it out from these several various agencies.

If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting.

From the records of the Colonial Office and from the dead man’s diary we learn that a certain young English nobleman, whom we shall call John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, was commissioned to make a peculiarly delicate investigation of conditions in a British West Coast African Colony from whose simple native inhabitants another European power was known to be recruiting soldiers for its native army, which it used solely for the forcible collection of rubber and ivory from the savage tribes along the Congo and the Aruwimi. The natives of the British Colony complained that many of their young men were enticed away through the medium of fair and glowing promises, but that few if any ever returned to their families…. (and so forth)

But this conceit is not continued beyond the first chapter.  From the second chapter onwards, the story continues with the standard 3rd person omniscient narrator. (Ordinarily one imagines these kind of inconsistencies would be fixed in the drafting process, but because this novel was originally serialized in the pulps, I suppose redrafting earlier chapters wasn’t possible.) 

As you can see from the above quotation, it turns out that the reason Tarzan’s parents end up in the African jungle in the first place is because they are sent by the British government to investigate the abuses of Belgians in the Congo, but then while en route there’s a mutiny on their ship, and they end up getting marooned on the coast of the jungle by the mutineers.

(In the first two chapters, we get the whole story of how the mutiny came about.  As it turns out, the captain of the ship seems to do everything he can to provoke a mutiny in a way that remind me of the captain from Mutiny on the Bounty).

What happens next is so well-established in pop-culture that I think everyone knows it whether they’ve seen a Tarzan movie or not.  Tarzan’s parents die in the jungle, and Tarzan is raised in the jungle by the apes.

I suppose I should pause here and talk about the jungle.

In my review of King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard, I wrote:

I didn’t know much about this book before I started, and I confess that it was quite different from what I had expected.

I was expecting much more of a jungle adventure story--men hacking their way through thick green jungle foliage, boating down a jungle river, battling crocodiles and piranhas and tigers.

Instead, this is much more of an African savannah story. They cross through the great plains, there is a bit of elephant hunting, and then the real meat of the journey takes place crossing a desert.

H. Rider Haggard spent years living in Africa, so he knew the terrain he was writing about.  And this got me thinking: are there actually tropical jungles in Africa, or is Africa mostly deserts and savannahs?  When I think about lush thick tropical jungles, am I imagining Africa? Or am I actually imagining South America or India? I don’t know--I’ve never been to Africa.  

Edgar Rice Burroughs has also never been to Africa, and so he creates the African jungle of his imagination--it’s described as being thick with green plants and vines, and Burroughs uses the adjective "impenetrable" frequently when describing the jungle foliage.  This thick foliage also offers a complete camouflage for all the deadly animals that live within.  (In chapter 8, when describing Tarzan’s encounter with a lion, Burroughs writes “For a moment the two eyed each other in silence, and then the great cat turned into the jungle, which swallowed her as the ocean engulfs a tossed pebble.”).

Suffice it to say, Tarzan of the Apes gives me exactly the jungle adventure atmosphere that I had felt cheated out of in King Solomon's Mines.

There’s about 100 pages of Tarzan’s adventures in the jungle before Jane arrives.  During these pages, Tarzan fights for leadership in the ape hierarchy, learns how to fight against the other animals, and also fights against the black tribe in the jungle.  

The Tarzan described in these pages is a savage. He’s been raised in the jungle, and knows only the jungle laws. He both kills other gorillas in his battles for dominance, and he kills and terrorizes the black tribe that live in his area of the jungle.

  For example, one of the black warriors kills Tarzan’s adopted gorilla mother, and in revenge Tarzan stalks him for a couple days before garroting and stabbing him to death.  (You can understand Tarzan was upset that his gorilla mother was killed, but this poor black warrior thought he was just hunting an ordinary gorilla.)

Tarzan later goes on to regularly terrorize this black village, regularly killing the black warriors in order to take their weapons and jewellery.  From Chapter 12:

 …he [Tarzan] commenced picking up solitary hunters with his long, deadly noose, stripping them of weapons and ornaments and dropping their bodies from a high tree into the village street during the still watches of the night. 

 These sections of the book reminded me of the flavor of Conan the Barbarian. Just like Conan, Tarzan is portrayed as a savage and brutal barbarian.  You are rooting for him, because he is the protagonist, but you’re also chilled by his level of casual cruelty and violence.  But also, as with Conan, the target audience for these books (12 year old boys) no doubt also get a little thrill from the dark savagery.  (These are the pulps, after all, so the chilling savage violence is part of the appeal.)  

But this angle of Tarzan the barbarian is dropped once Jane and her family arrive in the jungle.  From this point on, Tarzan is portrayed as a perfect gentleman and protector.

The in story explanation for this is because Tarzan recognizes Jane and her family as being white just like himself, and thus he feels an affinity for them that he did not feel for the black Africans, and that causes him to act much more chivalrous around them than he did with the black tribesman.  But I also felt like there was a rather sudden change in Tarzan’s character at this point in the story from brutal to noble, and I’m not entirely sure the in-story explanation was sufficient to account for it.  (Or did I miss something?) 

Accompanying Jane is her father Professor Archimedes Q. Porter and his best friend Samuel T. Philander.

Professor Archimedes Q. Porter is portrayed as the quintessential comically absent minded professor.  In our first introduction to him, he and Mr. Philander get lost in the African jungle, but instead of worrying about how they are going to find safety, they are arguing about the 15th century conquest of Spain:

Several miles south of the cabin, upon a strip of sandy beach, stood two old men, arguing.

Before them stretched the broad Atlantic. At their backs was the Dark Continent. Close around them loomed the impenetrable blackness of the jungle.

Savage beasts roared and growled; noises, hideous and weird, assailed their ears. They had wandered for miles in search of their camp, but always in the wrong direction. They were as hopelessly lost as though they suddenly had been transported to another world.

At such a time, indeed, every fiber of their combined intellects must have been concentrated upon the vital question of the minute—the life-and-death question to them of retracing their steps to camp.

Samuel T. Philander was speaking.

“But, my dear professor,” he was saying, “I still maintain that but for the victories of Ferdinand and Isabella over the fifteenth-century Moors in Spain the world would be today a thousand years in advance of where we now find ourselves. The Moors were essentially a tolerant, broad-minded, liberal race of agriculturists, artisans and merchants—the very type of people that has made possible such civilization as we find today in America and Europe—while the Spaniards—”

“Tut, tut, dear Mr. Philander,” interrupted Professor Porter; “their religion positively precluded the possibilities you suggest. Moslemism was, is, and always will be, a blight on that scientific progress which has marked—”

“Bless me! Professor,” interjected Mr. Philander, who had turned his gaze toward the jungle, “there seems to be someone approaching.”

Professor Archimedes Q. Porter turned in the direction indicated by the nearsighted Mr. Philander.

“Tut, tut, Mr. Philander,” he chided. “How often must I urge you to seek that absolute concentration of your mental faculties which alone may permit you to bring to bear the highest powers of intellectuality upon the momentous problems which naturally fall to the lot of great minds? And now I find you guilty of a most flagrant breach of courtesy in interrupting my learned discourse to call attention to a mere quadruped of the genus Felis. As I was saying, Mr.—”

“Heavens, Professor, a lion?” cried Mr. Philander, straining his weak eyes toward the dim figure outlined against the dark tropical underbrush.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Philander, if you insist upon employing slang in your discourse, a ‘lion.’ But as I was saying—”

“Bless me, Professor,” again interrupted Mr. Philander; “permit me to suggest that doubtless the Moors who were conquered in the fifteenth century will continue in that most regrettable condition for the time being at least, even though we postpone discussion of that world calamity until we may attain the enchanting view of yon Felis carnivora which distance proverbially is credited with lending.” (from chapter 16)

Okay, yes, the oblivious intellectual is a cliche comic stereotype.  But this is pulp fiction after all, so we’re going with the easy comic stereotypes.  And even though it’s not particularly inventive, it works.  These scenes get the laughs that they’re designed to get. (At least in my opinion.)

Also accompanying Jane and her father is Jane's admirer, the gallant young English Lord Greystoke (real name William Clayton).  Once Tarzan meets Jane (and the two immediately fall in love), this will of course set off a love triangle, where Jane will have to choose between the well-mannered young English aristocrat, and the savage virile manly jungle man.

But it gets even crazier, because as it happens, Lord Greystoke is actually Tarzan's cousin.  (This is, of course, an incredible coincidence, but these are the pulps, so incredible coincidences are all part of the genre.)  Tarzan is actually the real Lord Greystroke, but because Tarzan and his parents disappeared in the jungle 21 years ago, Clayton now has inherited the lordship that should belong to Tarzan.

But aside from creating a family soap opera, Edgar Rice Burroughs is using the contrast between Tarzan and Lord Greystoke to explore the themes of heredity and environment.  Tarzan and Lord Greystoke both have the same genes, but Tarzan's jungle upbringing has turned him into a superhuman, whereas Lord Greystoke's aristocratic upbringing has made him sort.

Sidenote: I'm indebted to Mari Ness's review of Tarzan for pointing out this theme. I didn't actually catch what Burroughs was trying to do on my own reading.  Although I should have.  Because now that I think about it, it was pretty obvious all throughout the book. There were several passages that go out of their way to contrast Tarzan's jungle life with the life of his uncle and cousin.  Take, for instance, this passage from chapter 9:

But, be that as it may, Tarzan would not ruin good meat in any such foolish manner, so he gobbled down a great quantity of the raw flesh, burying the balance of the carcass beside the trail where he could find it upon his return.

And then Lord Greystoke wiped his greasy fingers upon his naked thighs and took up the trail of Kulonga, the son of Mbonga, the king; while in far-off London another Lord Greystoke, the younger brother of the real Lord Greystoke’s father, sent back his chops to the club’s chef because they were underdone, and when he had finished his repast he dipped his finger-ends into a silver bowl of scented water and dried them upon a piece of snowy damask.

So anyway, a love triangle is set-up.  Of course, we all know that Jane is destined to end up with Tarzan.  That's just common pop culture knowledge.  But the thing is, William Clayton (the pretender Greystoke) isn't actually a bad guy.  He's got a good heart.  

In one of my weekly reading vlogs, I wondered what William Clayton's character arc would end up being.  I mean, he's portrayed as a likeable character, but obviously he's not going to end up with Jane, so what was going to be his arc?

Oh, how naive I was.  I had no idea how the story would actually end.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Back to the jungle.

Jane and her family are rescued by the French Navy, and sail back to America.  Tarzan gets left behind, because he's stuck in the jungle nursing one of the French officers back to health.

The French officer and Tarzan then journey together into civilization.  Tarzan learns how to speak French, and then eventually English.  The French officer also discovers who Tarzan really is, and discovers that Tarzan is the real Lord Greystoke.

[By the way, here's an interesting little bit of pop culture trivia for you--there's actually no "Me Tarzan, You Jane" dialogue in either the book or the movies.  That's actually one of those famous misquotes (see article HERE).  When Jane and her family are in the jungle, Tarzan communicates with them only by writing.  (Tarzan had actually learned to read and write by studying the books left behind by his dead parents--I know, I know, but just go with it.  As Mari Ness would say, it's that sort of book.)]

Back in America, Jane is being forced into marriage by an evil rich man.  (Did I mention this was pulp fiction?)  But Tarzan shows up, now speaking fluent English, and saves Jane from the marriage.

Jane is now free to marry whom she chooses, but she once again finds herself between the gentlemanly William Clayton and the virile Tarzan.  After some agonizing indecision, she chooses Clayton.

Tarzan accepts her choice.  He gives her and Clayton the money that he got from the buried treasure.  (Did I mention that there was a buried treasure in this book as well?  No?  Well you can't expect me to cover everything in a short summary.  As Gore Vidal says in his essay, there is actually a lot of plot in this short little book.)

And then Tarzan leaves.  Tarzan also keeps secret that he is the true Lord Greystoke, allowing Clayton to keep the title, and the money, and Jane.

Wait, what?

Jane ends up with Clayton, and not Tarzan?  That can't be right, can it?

Oh, wait.  I forgot there are 23 other books left in this series.  If I want to see how Tarzan and Jane eventually get together, I suppose I need to go read the next book.

The Reading Experience

In his essay on Tarzan, Gore Vidal explicitly links it to childhood reading, and says that although James Bond and Mike Hammer have adult appeal, Tarzan is strictly for the kids.

And this seems pretty much in line with everything else I've read on Tarzan.  By all accounts, this stuff was considered something strictly for the young boys back in its day.  (What do you suppose was the target audience for these books back in the day?  11 and 12?  Or possibly 8 and 9?)

To me, however, the prose style doesn't read like something written for children.  The sentences seem a little bit too complex, and the vocabulary seems a bit too high for an 11 year old.

I think this is just another example of how popular prose style has gotten simplified over time.

I've made the same observation in my reviews of other classic boys adventure books Treasure Island and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.  It's interesting to compare these books with modern children's literature like The Animorphs and see how different the prose style is.

I'll quote a bit of Tarzan of the Apes below, and you can make up your own mind.

Extended Quotation

Tarzan of the Apes lived on in his wild, jungle existence with little change for several years, only that he grew stronger and wiser, and learned from his books more and more of the strange worlds which lay somewhere outside his primeval forest.

To him life was never monotonous or stale. There was always Pisah, the fish, to be caught in the many streams and the little lakes, and Sabor, with her ferocious cousins to keep one ever on the alert and give zest to every instant that one spent upon the ground.

Often they hunted him, and more often he hunted them, but though they never quite reached him with those cruel, sharp claws of theirs, yet there were times when one could scarce have passed a thick leaf between their talons and his smooth hide.

Quick was Sabor, the lioness, and quick were Numa and Sheeta, but Tarzan of the Apes was lightning.

With Tantor, the elephant, he made friends. How? Ask not. But this is known to the denizens of the jungle, that on many moonlight nights Tarzan of the Apes and Tantor, the elephant, walked together, and where the way was clear Tarzan rode, perched high upon Tantor’s mighty back.

Many days during these years he spent in the cabin of his father, where still lay, untouched, the bones of his parents and the skeleton of Kala’s baby. At eighteen he read fluently and understood nearly all he read in the many and varied volumes on the shelves.

Also could he write, with printed letters, rapidly and plainly, but script he had not mastered, for though there were several copy books among his treasure, there was so little written English in the cabin that he saw no use for bothering with this other form of writing, though he could read it, laboriously.

Thus, at eighteen, we find him, an English lordling, who could speak no English, and yet who could read and write his native language. Never had he seen a human being other than himself, for the little area traversed by his tribe was watered by no greater river to bring down the savage natives of the interior.

High hills shut it off on three sides, the ocean on the fourth. It was alive with lions and leopards and poisonous snakes. Its untouched mazes of matted jungle had as yet invited no hardy pioneer from the human beasts beyond its frontier.

But as Tarzan of the Apes sat one day in the cabin of his father delving into the mysteries of a new book, the ancient security of his jungle was broken forever.

At the far eastern confine a strange cavalcade strung, in single file, over the brow of a low hill.

In advance were fifty black warriors armed with slender wooden spears with ends hard baked over slow fires, and long bows and poisoned arrows. On their backs were oval shields, in their noses huge rings, while from the kinky wool of their heads protruded tufts of gay feathers.

Across their foreheads were tattooed three parallel lines of color, and on each breast three concentric circles. Their yellow teeth were filed to sharp points, and their great protruding lips added still further to the low and bestial brutishness of their appearance.

Following them were several hundred women and children, the former bearing upon their heads great burdens of cooking pots, household utensils and ivory. In the rear were a hundred warriors, similar in all respects to the advance guard.

That they more greatly feared an attack from the rear than whatever unknown enemies lurked in their advance was evidenced by the formation of the column; and such was the fact, for they were fleeing from the white man’s soldiers who had so harassed them for rubber and ivory that they had turned upon their conquerors one day and massacred a white officer and a small detachment of his black troops.

(***ENDQUOTE*** From the beginning of chapter 9.  It goes on, but you get the idea hopefully).

Connections With Other Books I've Read

A few years ago I read and reviewed The Scramble for Africa: 1876-1912 by Thomas Pakenham.  (One of my favorite books of all time, by the way.  Highly recommended if you ever come across a copy.)  In that book, Thomas Pakenham talks at length about the horrible atrocities committed by the Belgians in the Congo.  It was very depressing reading.  But then another whole part of the book was about the international campaign to try to stop the Belgian atrocities in the Congo.  British and American humanitarians organized a huge campaign to try to raise public awareness of what was happening in the Congo, and pressure the Belgian government.  (For more information see, for example, the Wikipedia article on the Congo Reform Association.)  

Edgar Rice Burroughs must have been influenced by this public awareness campaign, because throughout Tarzan of the Apes he repeatedly references the Belgian atrocities in the Congo.

For whatever reason, in the first few chapters, Burroughs seems reluctant to name Belgium directly.  I'm not sure if he was concerned about his liability, or what, but he simply talks about reports that "another European power" or "a friendly European power" were up to questionable things in the Congo region.

But then, halfway through the book, Burroughs drops all coyness, and starts calling out King Leopold II and the Belgians directly.  

For example, in chapter 21, when describing how a savage African tribe had been made even more savage because of what the Belgians did to them, Burroughs says:

To add to the fiendishness of their cruel savagery was the poignant memory of still crueler barbarities practiced upon them and theirs by the white officers of that arch hypocrite, Leopold II of Belgium, because of whose atrocities they had fled the Congo Free State—a pitiful remnant of what once had been a mighty tribe.

In my 2016 review of The Legend of Tarzan, I praised the movie for integrating historical details about the real Scramble for Africa and the Belgian Congo into the Tarzan legend.  But as it turns out, I was overly generous in crediting the movie with that innovation.  That historical background is baked right into the source material.

 

********************

In my review of The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, I mentioned that:

The idea that an adversary can be hidden somewhere in the room, unseen and unseeable, and can jump out to attack us at any moment is something that definitely triggers our primitive panic impulses.  (I suppose their must be an evolutionary fear trigger here--the fear of unseen predators lurking in the bushes.)

Burroughs is of the same opinion as me.  Hidden predators in the jungle definitely tap into our fear centers--as described perfectly by one of the characters on page 185 of Chapter 24:

“I don’t know about that,” said Lieutenant Charpentier. “I never thought much about fear and that sort of thing—never tried to determine whether I was a coward or brave man; but the other night as we lay in the jungle there after poor D’Arnot was taken, and those jungle noises rose and fell around us I began to think that I was a coward indeed. It was not the roaring and growling of the big beasts that affected me so much as it was the stealthy noises—the ones that you heard suddenly close by and then listened vainly for a repetition of—the unaccountable sounds as of a great body moving almost noiselessly, and the knowledge that you didn’t KNOW how close it was, or whether it were creeping closer after you ceased to hear it? It was those noises—and the eyes.

Other Odds and Ends

* If you've been reading everything in this review so far, no doubt you've noticed that the portrayal of native Africans is a bit problematic.  

I don't want to spend too much time on this, because as far as criticisms go, this is low-hanging fruit.  (I don't expect anyone to give me a reward for recognizing that a pulp fiction adventure book from 1912 is politically incorrect.) But I guess it should at least be noted for the record.

But then, it should also be noted that, as Mari Ness puts it in in her review:

But for all his racism, Burroughs also spends a significant amount of time critiquing white colonialism, blaming it for most of Africa’s problems. He specifically calls out whites for exploiting black labor and workers, and slams Leopold II, King of the Belgians, calling him that “arch hypocrite,” accusing him of approving torture and blaming him for the destruction of the Congo Free State and a proud culture. That culture is black, and if Burroughs does not exactly see it as equal to the glories of America (nothing, to Burroughs, is equal to the glories of America) he strongly disapproves of its destruction.

* I'm not sure if I'm going to continue with the other books in the Tarzan series or not.  I don't think I'd find any of the other books out here in Vietnam, but some of the sequels are available on Project Gutenberg.  (Not all, but some of them.)  And I did order a Kindle for precisely the purpose of trying to make use of all the free stuff on Project Gutenberg.  Maybe I'll try out some of the other books.  I'm not sure yet.

* Digging around on the Internet for background information on this book, I'm starting to get contradictory information about whether or not it was serialized.  Some websites say it was, some websites say it wasn't.  Some people say that although it was originally published in the pulps in 1912, it was published as a whole story, and not serialized.  Wikipedia, as of  this writing, says "serialized".

Tarzan of the Apes is a 1912 story by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the first in the Tarzan series. It was first serialized in the pulp magazine The All-Story beginning October 1912 before being released as a novel in June 1914.^[1]

 I don't know. But if you do, let me know in the comments.

Rating: 

8 out of 10 Stars.  Keep in mind, of course, that all books are rated against their genres, and not against any objective standards of good.  It's a cheesy pulp fiction book, but as a cheesy pulp fiction book, I'd rate it about 8 out of 10 against the other books in the same category.

Weekly Reading Vlogs:

October 9, 2022 Tarzan of the Apes p.1-20

October 16, 2022 Tarzan of the Apes p.20-102

October 23, 2022 Tarzan of the Apes p.102-116

October 30, 2022 Tarzan of the Apes p.116-162

November 6, 2022 Tarzan of the Apes p.162-170

November 13, 2022 Tarzan of the Apes p.170-224

Video Review (Playlist HERE)

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Book Review