If you’re a 90’s kid, or even a kid born in the 2000s, you definitely know about Tarzan, the king of the jungle, and the tale of how he came to be known as such. We may have seen the movie, and some of us may know that it was based on a novel by the writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. He wrote a series of novels based on his character – Tarzan of the apes. Disney adapted the novel and made quite a few changes to the material. Some of it remains somewhat accurate but a lot of other things were drastically changed. This article will explore some of the differences between the source material and the movie.
1. His Name
The Disney movie simply showed two humans being stranded in a jungle after the ship they were in caught fire. They then made a home for themselves there and did the best they could with the little they had. They had their infant with them, but would unfortunately never get to see him grow, as they were killed in the film’s opening scenes. They were not named, and we never saw anything that indicated their true identities. In the novels, the source material, they were both named. They were John and Alice Clayton, Viscount and Lady Greystoke from England. That’s right. As their titles imply, they were a wealthy family from Europe. Their child’s name was revealed to be John Clayton II. The ape that adopted him did not know of this name when she found him, and gave him the name Tarzan.
2. How his Parents Died
The movie shows that Tarzan’s parents were making a home for themselves in the jungle and were adapting slowly but surely there. They had already set up their home and had enough to keep their baby comfortable. Unfortunately, they managed to keep him safe, but not themselves, leaving him to the terrors of the wild, when a leopard killed them. The leopard entered their home and killed them, but not before they managed to keep their son safe. In the novel, it’s a bit different. In the novel, his mother died first. She died when Tarzan was one year old. (In the novel, he was born in the jungle, whereas in the movie, he ended up in the jungle as a baby). His father died shortly after, when he was attacked by Kerchak, the king ape. In the movie, Kerchak was Kala’s husband, and Tarzan’s distant adoptive father. It turns out, in the original story, he was the one who killed Tarzan’s father.
3. Who Raised Him
The movie showed us that after finding Tarzan in the ruined home, Kala took him in and raised him as her own. She was the queen of the gorilla tribe. She is not so different from what the source material says about her. The difference is a major one for those who like the littlest details. Kala in the novel is not a gorilla. She is a chimpanzee. The tribe that Tarzan grows up with is a tribe of chimpanzees, not gorillas.
4. How he Learned to Read
This one is a bit interesting, because it takes a deep dive into human development and comprehension skills. In the movie, Tarzan only learns to read after meeting Jane, Archimedes and Clayton. Jane and Archimedes teach him as much as they can about human behaviour, and he learns to read from that. In the novel, he finds the cabin his parents built and goes there on his own from time to time. After looking through some books and making sense of the pictures in them, he learns to read English but not speak it. Yes, that happens.
5. His First Human Contact
In the movie, his first contact with other humans was when Archimedes, Jane and Clayton went to the jungle in order to study gorillas. Clayton had other interests. He wanted to capture gorillas and take them back to England. Jane and Archimedes were fascinated with them and wanted to study their way of life, which is what made her initial interest in Tarzan make sense. She was curious about his behaviour and how a man could behave the way he did. In the novels, it was very different. While his movie counterpart had a good first contact with humans, his novel counterpart did not. The first humans he ever came across were settlers from an African tribe, and they killed Kala. Tarzan has his revenge on the killer and antagonizes the tribe for years, playing pranks on them and stealing their weapons, and they even regard him as an evil spirit.
6. Jane Porter
“Me Tarzan. You Jane.” That is a classic line Tarzan fans know and love. The relationship between the two is nothing short of beautiful. It really is developed well in the movie. They spend a lot of time together and he grows romantically interested in her throughout their experiences. She is shown to be of British descent in the movie. However, that is not the case in the source material. In the source material, she is actually American, and he is the British one.
7. The Ending
The movie showed us a beautiful and fulfilling ending to the story of Tarzan. In typical Disney movie fashion (at least back in the golden age), he saved her, saved the day and got the girl, and they lived happily ever after. The novel goes in a bit of a different direction with this one. In the novel, he meets Jane, William Cecil Clayton and a Frenchman called D’Arnot. Despite all the adventures that were had in the jungle with Tarzan, Jane leaves for America, and Tarzan leaves the jungle with D’Arnot in order to learn how to be more civilized and reconnect with the rest of humanity. He does this in an attempt to win Jane over. He goes to Europe with D’Arnot, and after learning how to speak English properly, he sets for America. D’Arnot, after putting together clues he found in Tarzan’s parents’ cabin, finds out that Tarzan is John Clayton II and true heir to the fortune which William Cecil Clayton (Tarzan’s cousin) has inherited. Clayton was the bad guy in the Tarzan movie. Tarzan goes to Wisconsin, America, and finds Jane there. After he rescues her from a fire, he realizes that she is engaged to William, and decides not to interfere, seeing that she would be happy with the life that she had chosen. He also chose to renounce the fortune and his heritage for the same reason. That is how the story that the movie is based on ends. There are sequels, of course, but that is where the story that the movie borrowed from ends.
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