If it weren't for the racism...

When it comes to prose, Tarzan of the Apes ages well. It's highly readable, reasonably entertaining, and conceptually interesting. The question of nature versus nurture and how a blank slate human being would interact with and understand society holds up to this day. Sadly, the answer the story gives to this question does not. For example, Tarzan quickly picks up the concept of race and develops the idea that he is in a superior one, arguably with more ease than he picked up the concept of species! The interactions between Tarzan and a local tribe are cringe inducing as the well-born white man without any societal programming is consistently played up as smarter and more ingenious than the entire society he interacts with. Here too, the language finally shows its age. It may be a bit unfair to judge Tarzan by standards that do not belong to its time, but as a student of science I found it interesting to observe how concepts that we often consider logical and scientific (genetics versus environment) can get tied up in our imagination with sociological ones (race, gender). Much like a Disney cartoon that long after its creation offends with its overt racism, Tarzan is interesting not because we can now perceive it as offensive but because it typifies a world view that did not.