"like a mad dog"
Every writer has his own favorite go-to literary device. Irony, of course, is all the rage today, but throughout the history of prose fiction, metaphors have remained steadfastly popular. Though not quickly, it does become manifestly apparent that for Edgar Rice Burroughs, no other descriptive trick of the trade is quite as handy as a straightforward similes. Similes abound in Tarzan of the Apes. This much is true, and yet, the first real comparison using like or as does not occur until just a few pages before chapter two commences. This is not coincidence. The first dozen or so pages of the book are dedicated to straightforward descriptions and even one or two light metaphors of things fairly easily recognized by the average reader. Comparisons of the exotic to the mundane to facilitate understanding is not required. And even then, the comparison is rather tepid one with Clayton referring to an excited and agitated man as jumping at him like a mad dog. The next use of what a simile will open the floodgates to its utilization on a notably frequent basis. The next simile will not come into play for nearly 100 pages.
"Like a thing of bronze, motionless as death"
Make that the next two uses of a simile. Back to back engagements is a portent of things to come and both comparisons are engaged—probably no coincidentally—to paint a portrait of Tarzan. A few soft comparison using “as” can be found between the mad dog and the bronze thing, but this is the first really poetic construction of a simile in the book and it’s a doozy. One need never have come within a few thousand miles of Africa—like the author himself, for instance—for that image to instantly be understood. It takes a lot for a living creature to be as immobile as a something dead and the comparison to bronze also provide a pretty nifty concrete physical idea of Tarzan.
“I’d be a blooming bounder as a wild man”
Tarzan knows his place is in the jungle. Bully for him that Clayton is equally well-aware that his place is not in the jungle. To quote a famous philosopher of our time, a man’s got to now his limitations. Clayton is ruthlessly honest about his limitations while proving that Burroughs is rather adept as working his preference for similes into the body of a metaphor. Clayton’s description of himself actually is a metaphor; he is saying he literally would be a blooming bounder. But what really makes the admission work is the attached simile; he’s even aware of the limitations of his limitations. A total blooming bounder Clayton is not; he is bounder only within the construct of trying to be like Tarzan. Even critics who admire the author’s storytelling ability usually find fault with his actual writing ability, but that is one adept piece of writing right there.
A Tightrope Walker
How do you convey the uniquely singular image of a man walking among the trees with agile grace and a kind of annoyed felicity to readers who without it seeming as impossible as talking to animals or traveling to the moon? You give your readers something to compare it to that makes sense because many of them have actually seen it for themselves. It’s hard to do in a post-Tarzan movie world, but try to imagine without having seen it through the magic of movies a man actually making remarkably good time on foot on the limbs high up in the massive trees of the jungle rainforest. Pretty ridiculous when you think about it. Burroughs make a sublime choice with this simile: if tightrope walker can do it one on just one very thing suspended piece of rope, surely Tarzan actually could on the more substantial limbs of those trees.
Tarzan, Lord of the Brutes
One of the funniest lines in the entire novel not surprisingly owes its humor to Burrough’s genuine fascination with the simile. “You must not eat like a brute, Tarzan, while I am trying to make a gentleman of you. Mon dieu! Gentlemen do not thus—it is terrible!” This castigation of Tarzan’s reversion to old eating habits is more enlightening of D’Arnot the speaker than Tarzan, all things considered. The level of outrage would suggest that Tarzan is committing a host of offenses to dinner table etiquette when, in fact, the stimulus for comparing Tarzan to a brute is limited merely to tossing silverware away in frustration in favor of eating with his hands.
