Tarzan’s Keen, Cold, Steel-Gray Eyes
by Alan Hanson
“His eyes and his muscles trained by a lifetime of necessity
moved with the rapidity of light and his brain functioned with an uncanny
celerity that suggested nothing less than prescience.” (Tarzan
the Terrible)
Tarzan of the Apes was a super hero. However, he had no
unique super powers, at least not in the sense of basic abilities normal
human beings do not possess. Instead, his “super power” was that
he, in facing nature at her most basic level, developed all of his human
abilities and senses to the maximum degree possible. From sensory perception
to physical strength to agility to courage and reason, he had no weaknesses.
The building blocks of his super human capabilities were
his extraordinarily enhanced senses. Edgar Rice Burroughs laid that foundation
in his first Tarzan story.
“Man’s survival does not hinge so greatly upon the
perfection of his senses. His power to reason has relieved them of many
of their duties, and so they have, to some extent, atrophied, as have the
muscles which move the ears and scalp, merely from disuse … Not so with
Tarzan of the Apes. From early infancy his survival had depended upon acuteness
of eyesight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste far more than upon the more
slowly developed organ of reason.”
Burroughs provided many examples in his Tarzan saga of
the ape-man using his senses — especially eyesight, smell, and hearing
— in unison. “His eyes, his ears and his keen nostrils were ever on
the alert,” the author noted in Jungle Tales of Tarzan.
In that same volume, Burroughs asserted that Tarzan’s sight was the least
useful of those three senses. As the ape-boy traveled through the jungle,
he depended “even more upon his ears and nose than upon his eyes for
information.” His hearing and sense of smell could reach out far beyond
the visible scene. In particular, Burroughs often stressed the importance
of Tarzan’s sense of smell. “Keener than his keen eyes was that marvelously
trained sense of scent that had first been developed in him during infancy.”
(Tarzan the Terrible)
Ultimately, however, Burroughs acknowledged that sight
was, in fact, Tarzan’s dominant sense. While the ape-man gathered initial
information through scent and sound, he depended on sight for confirmation.
At times, such as in the opening scene of Tarzan and the City of
Gold, the ape-man’s nose and ears were rendered useless. In that
situation, when a band of shiftas approached Tarzan from down wind, he
was unable to smell or hear them. It was only when he turned and saw them,
that he was able to assess his danger. As Burroughs admitted about his
hero in Tarzan’s Quest, “only the things that he had seen
with his own eyes was he sure of.”
Burroughs’ first reference to Tarzan’s eyesight came on
a day when the ape-boy silently dropped into the native village of Mbonga.
“For a moment he stood motionless, his quick, bright eyes scanning the
interior of the palisade.”
The first half of Tarzan of the Apes is
essentially a “coming-of-age” story, and like most adolescents,
Tarzan had issues with his appearance. When he first saw his face reflected
in a placid jungle pool, his repugnant countenance horrified him. “When
he saw his own eyes; ah, that was the final blow — a brown spot, a gray
circle and then blank whiteness. Frightful! not even the snakes had such
hideous eyes as he.” At that age, Tarzan admired the beautiful red-rimmed,
bloodshot eyes of ape playmates.
Gray Eyes with a “savage
glint”
In his Tarzan stories, Burroughs often
referred to Tarzan’s gray eye color, which he occasionally specified as
“steel-gray.” In their relaxed state, his eyes carried a “savage
glint” and a “natural expression of keen intelligence.” Crowning
his eyes was a shock of black hair, which, in his youth, he kept “rudely
bobbed with a rugged bang” in front. “For the appearance of it he
cared nothing,” Burroughs explained, “But in the matter of safety
and comfort it meant everything. A lock of hair failing in one’s eyes at
the wrong moment might mean all the difference between life and death.”
Especially in Tarzan’s youth, Burroughs stressed the natural
intelligence evident in the ape-boy’s eyes. The author drew a picture of
the young Tarzan bending over a book as he sat on a table in his father’s
beach cabin.
“His great shock of long, black hair falling about
his well shaped head and bright, intelligent eyes — Tarzan of the apes,
little primitive man, presented a picture filled, at once, with pathos
and with promise — an allegorical figure of the primordial groping through
the black night of ignorance toward the light of learning.”
Later Burroughs again made the young Tarzan’s “intelligent”
eyes a key ingredient in a physical description of his adolescent ape-man.
“With the noble poise of his handsome head upon those
broad shoulders, and the fire of life and intelligence in those fine, clear
eyes, he might readily have typified some demi-god of a wild and warlike
bygone people of his ancient forest.”
Tarzan’s bright eyes contributed prominently to the overall
majestic impression he created in the sight of others. In Tarzan
the Invincible, the Russian conspirator Zora Drinov was “impressed
by his great physical beauty, as well as by a certain marked nobility of
bearing that harmonized well with the dignity of his poise and the intelligence
of his keen gray eyes.”
As with all of his senses, the acuity of Tarzan’s eyesight
was remarkable. He could discern far-off objects and interpret distant
scenes that other human eyes could not see. “The eyes of Tarzan are
like the eyes of an eagle,” the Waziri chieftain Muviro declared in
Tarzan
the Invincible. Burroughs put those eagle eyes on display in Tarzan
the Untamed. When the vengeful ape-man approached a German battle
line from high above and behind, his ability to see from great distances
gave him an advantage. “His position gave him a bird’s eye view of the
field of battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that would
not have been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained to the
highest point of perfection as were the ape-man’s.”
The term “keen,” used in the passage above to indicate
the sharpness of Tarzan’s vision, was by far the most common modifier Burroughs
used to describe the ape-man’s eyesight. Dozens of references to Tarzan’s
“keen eyes” can be found throughout the author’s stories about the
ape-man from Tarzan of the Apes in 1912 through Tarzan
and “The Foreign Legion” in 1947.
“Nocturnal Visionary Powers”
Burroughs also gave Tarzan a greatly
enhanced ability to see in low-light situations. “He had the gift, that
some men have in common with nocturnal animals,” the author noted in
Tarzan
the Magnificent, “of being able to see in the dark better than
other men.” In Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Burroughs explained
that, “long use of his eyes in the Stygian blackness of the jungle nights
had given the ape-man something of the nocturnal visionary powers of the
wild things with which he had consorted since babyhood.”
In The Return of Tarzan, Burroughs claimed
that, “Tarzan was accustomed to using his eyes in the darkness of the
jungle night, than which there is no more utter darkness this side of the
grave.” However, several incidents in Tarzan stories indicate that
the ape-man could not see in total darkness. Confined in a cell in Opar
in Tarzan and the Golden Lion, the ape-man could see nothing
in the “inky darkness” when the door opened and someone entered
the chamber. Again confined in Opar in Tarzan the Invincible,
his inability to see in complete darkness almost cost him his life.
“He wished that his eyes might penetrate the darkness,
for if he could see the lion as it charged he might be better prepared
to meet it. In the past he had met the charges of other lions, but always
before he had been able to see their swift spring and to elude the sweep
of their might talons as they reared upon their hind legs to seize him.
Now it would be different, and for once in his life, Tarzan of the Apes
felt death was inescapable.”
Even though Tarzan had enhanced vision in the dark, his
human eyes still made him vulnerable in nighttime confrontations with the
great cats. “Tarzan was, to a greater or lesser extent, a nocturnal
beast,” Burroughs explained in Tarzan the Terrible. “It
is true he could not see by night as well as they, but that lack was largely
recompensed for by the keenness of his scent and the highly developed sensitiveness
of his other organs of perception.”
Tarzan was further limited by the time it took for his
vision to become accustomed to dark places. When, as a boy, he first opened
the door of his parents’ cabin, his eyes had to adjust to the dim light
of the interior before he entered. Years later in Pal-ul-don, he found
himself trapped in the Temple of Gryfs in A-lur. “As he stood there
his eyes slowly grew accustomed to the darkness and he became aware that
a dim light was entering the chamber through some opening, though it was
several minutes before he discovered its source.”
After his eyes adjusted to darkness, however, his vision
was as sharp as humanly possible under such conditions. In the temple,
he saw a dark opening, which allowed him to escape a charging Gryf. “Without
hesitation Tarzan plunged into it,” Burroughs noted. “Even here
his eyes, long accustomed to darkness that would have seemed total to you
or to me, saw dimly the floor and the walls within a radius of a few feet.”
Tarzan’s Eyes Snapped
Open
Although heredity must have been a
factor in Tarzan’s extraordinary vision, Burroughs never so credited it.
Instead, the author contended that the ape-man’s eyesight was “brought
to a marvelous state of development by the necessities of his early life,
where survival itself depended almost daily upon the exercise of the keenest
vigilance.” Tarzan’s musculature certainly strengthened as a result
of the environment in which he was raised, and Burroughs seemed to suggest
that an enhanced acuity of the ape-man’s vision also was a byproduct of
his primitive life.
In the following passage from Tarzan the Terrible,
notice how Tarzan’s visual perception operated much faster than that of
normal men.
“Tarzan does not awaken as you and I with the weight
of slumber still upon his eyes and brain, for did the creatures of the
wild awaken thus, their awakenings would be few. As his eyes snapped open,
clear and bright, so, clear and bright upon the nerve centers of his brain,
were registered the various perceptions of all his senses.”
Tarzan’s “keen” vision allowed him to notice and
process the minutest of details in his primitive world. In Tarzan
the Untamed, Burroughs described how a slight movement in the stem
of one leaf apprised Tarzan of a panther in hiding. “It came from pressure
at the bottom of the stem,” the author explained, “which communicates
a different movement of the leaves than does the wind passing among them,
as anyone who has lived his lifetime in the jungle well knows.”
Tarzan’s ability to detect unnatural and menacing motion
was just one aspect of his wider visual awareness of his immediate surroundings.
As Burroughs explained in the opening pages of Tarzan and the City
of Gold, the ape-man’s eyes were continually active.
“He knew every possible avenue of escape within the
radius of his vision for every danger that might reasonably be expected
to confront him here, for it is the business of the creatures of the wild
to know these things if they are to survive.”
Burroughs provided many other instances in which Tarzan’s
vision was critical to his life in the jungle. During physical combat,
for instance, the ape-man’s eyes gave him an advantage over his antagonists.
When preparing to battle a great ape, such as Akut in The Beasts
of Tarzan and Taug in Jungle Tales of Tarzan, the
ape-man’s eyes never left those of his opponent. He read there his adversary’s
plan of attack and reacted accordingly.
It was the same with charging lions. Tarzan watched for
Numa’s swift spring so that he could avoid the cat’s talons as it reared
up to grab him. If the ape-man had time to use his spear on a charging
lion, his vision again played a critical role. “He measured the distance
with a trained eye as the lion started its swift, level charge. Then, when
it was coming at full speed, his spear hand flew back and he launched the
heavy weapon.” (Tarzan and the City of Gold)
When facing beasts, Tarzan usually fought defensively.
Combat with another human in the wild was a different matter for the ape-man.
Since his enemies usually had weapons, such as firearms or arrows, Tarzan
could not approach them openly. Using his eyes and stealthy movements,
he placed himself in an advantageous position to attack, as he did in the
following scene from Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”.
“Finally he located the sentry and climbed into the
same tree in which had been built the platform on which the man was squatting.
He was poised directly over the fellow’s head. His eyes bored down through
the darkness. They picked out the form and position of the doomed man.
Then Tarzan dove for him headfirst, the knife in his hand.”
On some occasions, though, circumstances dictated that
Tarzan avoid battle altogether, and instead look for an avenue of escape.
His visual attention to detail played a critical role at such times. As
Burroughs noted, “Slow is the mind of man, slower his eyes by comparison
with the eye and the mind of the trapped beast seeking escape.”
When Tarzan found himself trapped in a thipdar nest on
top of a lofty granite rock in Pellucidar, he made a close inspection of
the spire in search of an escape route.
“Lying flat upon his belly he looked over the edge,
and thus moving slowly around the periphery of the lofty aerie he examined
the walls of the spire with minute attention to every detail. Again and
again he crept around the edge until he had catalogued within his memory
every projection and crevice and possible handhold that he could see from
above. Several times he returned to one point and then he removed the coils
of his grass rope from about his shoulders and holding the two ends in
one hand, lowered the loop over the edge of the spire. Carefully he noted
the distance that it descended from the summit.”
Spoors Plain as the Printed
Page
“Stories are not written in books
alone,” Tarzan explained to the Dutch girl Corrie Van der Meer during
their trek across the island of Sumatra. Indeed, to the ape-man the art
of tracking in his primitive environment seemed as easy as reading a book.
The spoors of beasts and men were “as plain to him as type upon a printed
page to you or me,” Burroughs noted.
Scattered throughout the Tarzan stories are many detailed
accounts of his tracking skills. As the example below from Tarzan
of the Apes shows, his keen vision was most helpful at such times,
although Burroughs noted that Tarzan also occasionally checked “his
sense of sight against his sense of smell, that he might more surely keep
on the right trail.”
“For a moment he scrutinized the ground below and the
trees above, until the ape that was in him by virtue of training and environment,
combined with the intelligence that was his by right of birth, told his
wondrous woodcraft the whole story as plainly as though he had seen the
thing happen with his own eyes.
“And then he was gone again into the swaying trees,
following the high-flung spoor which no other human eye could have detected,
much less translated.
“At boughs’ ends, where the anthropoid swings from
one tree to another, there is most to mark the trail, but least to point
the direction of the quarry, for there the pressure is downward always,
toward the small end of the branch, whether the ape be leaving or entering
a tree; but nearer the center of the tree, where the signs of passage are
fainter, the direction is plainly marked.
“Here, on this branch, a caterpillar has been crushed
by the fugitive’s great foot, and Tarzan knows instinctively where that
same foot would touch in the next stride. Here he looks to find a tiny
particle of the demolished larva, oft-times not more than a speck of moisture.
Again, a minute bit of bark has been upturned by the scraping hand, and
the direction of the break indicates the direction of the passage. Or some
great limb, or the stem of the tree itself has been brushed by the hairy
body, and a tiny shred of hair tells him by the direction from which it
is wedged beneath the bark that he is on the right trail.
“Nor does he need to check his speed to catch these
seemingly faint records of the fleeing beast. To Tarzan they stand out
boldly against all the myriad other scars and bruises and signs upon the
leafy way.”
Tarzan even had the ability to follow such trails by night,
but since he found doing so a “slow and arduous method of tracking,”
he usually waited for daylight to make the spoor clearer to his eyes.
Burroughs made several interesting statements concerning
Tarzan’s ability to identify footprints. In Tarzan and the Leopard Men,
he was able to describe four men he was tracking just by looking at impressions
of their feet — “One is old and limps; one is tall and thin; the other
two are young warriors. They step lightly, although one of them is a large
man.”
While examining some native footprints in Tarzan
and the Golden Lion, Tarzan noticed a “smaller one of a white
woman — a loved footprint that he knew as well as you know your mother’s
face.” It was Jane’s, of course.
Finally, in Tarzan the Untamed Burroughs had the
ape-man make a dubious racial observation based on sandal impressions in
the dirt. “It is evident to me,” he judged, “that the foot inside the
sandal that made these imprints was not the foot of a Negro … the impression
of the heel and ball of the foot are well marked even through the sole
of the sandal. The weight comes more nearly in the center of a Negro’s
footprint.”
As for Tarzan’s own footprints, they had a special characteristic.
Some people are said to have eyes in the back of their heads; in Tarzan
the Untamed, Burroughs implied that Tarzan had eyes in his feet.
“Apparently he took no cognizance of where he stepped, yet never a loose
stone was disturbed nor a twig broken — it was as though his feet saw.”
Judging people at first
sight
Tarzan’s eyes absorbed more than the
details of his natural surroundings. His powers of observation also focused
on people, including natives and foreigners, categorizing them as good
or evil for future reference. An affair on the ocean liner in the opening
chapter of The Return of Tarzan demonstrated Tarzan’s ability
to observe and judge people. In the ship’s salon, he noticed the image
of four men playing cards reflected in a mirror. Something suddenly caught
his attention, and from then on no further detail of the scene escaped
him. What he saw and his involvement in foiling the plans of the dastardly
villain Nicholas Rokoff made a lasting impression on Tarzan’s memory. That
enabled him later to identify Rokoff, who was traveling incognito on another
ship. “Tarzan happened to be watching the man at the time, and noticed
the awkward manner in which he handled the chair — the left wrist was stiff.
That clew was sufficient — a sudden train of associated ideas did the rest.”
While Tarzan’s visual memory quickly cataloged villains,
they also were able to make more favorable judgments of other men at first
meeting. For example, in the following passage from Tarzan at the
Earth’s Core, the ape-man assessed the character of an American
he had never seen before.
“Near the head of the column marched a young white
man, and when Tarzan’s eyes had rested upon him for a moment as he swung
along the trail they impressed their stamp of approval of the stranger
within the ape-man’s brain, for in common with many savage beasts and primitive
men Tarzan possessed an uncanny instinct in judging aright the characters
of strangers whom he met.”
The stranger was Jason
Gridley.
Another example of Tarzan judging character
by appearance occurred when he met the noble, Thudos, in Cathne, the City
of Gold. “His was a face that one might trust,” Tarzan observed,
“for integrity, loyalty, and courage had left their imprints plainly
upon it, at least for eyes as observant as those of the lord of the jungle.”
On a few occasions, Burroughs revealed that Tarzan’s eyes
were capable of more than reading spoors, friends, and enemies. The ape-man
also stopped occasionally and used his eyes to appreciate the beauty of
nature in his primeval world. While hunting Horta, the boar, in Tarzan
Triumphant, he paused to view a charming scene.
“Low trees grew in the bottom of the ravine and much underbrush,
for here the earth held its moisture longer than on the ridges that were
more exposed to Kudu’s merciless rays. It was a lovely sylvan glade, nor
did its beauties escape the appreciative eyes of the ape-man.”
Although Burroughs rarely painted such scenes of his ape-man
enjoying the aesthetic allure of nature, in the following passage in Tarzan
the Magnificent, the author revealed that appreciation of nature’s
splendor was an integral ingredient in Tarzan’s savage spirit.
“The beauty of the aspect was not lost upon the ape-man,
whose appreciation of the loveliness or grandeur of nature, undulled by
familiarity, was one of the chiefest sources of his joy of living. In contemplating
the death that he knew must come to him as to all living things his keenest
regret lay in the fact that he would never again be able to look upon the
hills and valleys and forests of his beloved Africa; and so today, as he
lay like a great lion low upon the summit of a hill, stalking his prey,
he was still sensible of the natural beauties that lay spread before him.”
When Tarzan was in Pellucidar, a momentary rapture with
the beauties of that new world nearly cost him his life. The ape-man paused
on a game trail to absorb the new wonders all around him. He marveled at
the great trees with great vines descending and at the beautiful flowers
that bloomed riotously on the ground. Suddenly, a hidden snare encircled
his body and drew him high into the air. “Tarzan of the Apes had nodded,”
explained Burroughs. “His mind occupied with the wonders of his new
world had permitted a momentary relaxation of that habitual wariness that
distinguishes creatures of the wild.”
The Blazing Eyes of a
Beast of Prey
During tranquil moments, intelligence
was the characteristic most evident in Tarzan’s eyes. However, the light
in his eyes often changed, reflecting a wide range of intense emotions
generated by life in the wild. Take, for example, how the look in Tarzan’s
eyes transformed following the passion of battle.
“Tarzan leaped to his feet. For a moment he surveyed
the surrounding warriors with the blazing eyes of a beast of prey at bay
upon its kill; then he placed a foot upon the carcass of the hunting lion,
raised his face to the heavens, and from the great chest rose the challenge
of the bull ape.”
A savage glow in Tarzan’s eyes signaled a sudden rise
in bestial emotion that dominated his psyche until the episode that caused
the regression passed. For example, in the following passage from The
Beasts of Tarzan, the ape-man’s eyes revealed how consuming his
anger could be.
“What were you doing with them — where were you taking
them?” asked Tarzan, and then, fiercely, leaping close to the fellow with
fierce eyes blazing with the passion of hate and vengeance that he had
with difficulty controlled: “What harm did you do to my wife or child?”
Another example Tarzan’s eyes exposing a primitive passion
that nearly overwhelmed his reason occurred in The Return of Tarzan.
“An ugly light gleamed in those gray eyes” as the ape-man aimed
a poisoned arrow at the back of his cousin, William Clayton, the man he
believed stood between him and the woman he loved. Fortunately for all
concerned, that light in his eyes faded before Tarzan let the arrow fly.
Perhaps the most terrible expression to enter Tarzan’s
eyes, however, came when he entered his African bungalow after a German
military raid had occurred there. “The first sight that met his eyes
set the red haze of hate and bloodlust across his vision, for there, crucified
against the wall of the living-room, was Wasimbu, giant son of the faithful
Muviro.”
When Burroughs wanted Tarzan’s eyes to reflect determination,
the author used the descriptor “cold.” The evil Bukawai “saw
death, immediate and terrible, in the cold eyes” of Tarzan, then still
in his teens. Several years later in Paris, Tarzan’s friend Paul D’Arnot
saw something in Tarzan’s “set jaw and the cold, gray eyes” that
made the Frenchman realize that his friend would have trouble adapting
to civilization’s laws. When the conspirator Michael Dorsky threatened
the bound Tarzan with a knife, the ape-man’s only reply was a cold stare.
A minute later, Dorsky was dead. In Tarzan the Magnificent,
the ape-man told the Athnean dictator Phoros, “Quiet, or I kill.”
Looking into those “cold grey eyes” convinced Phoros to start begging
for his life. Finally, when Tarzan found the American adventurer Colin
Randolph, the man who had usurped his name in Tarzan and the Madman,
the ape-man approached the imposter with a cold stare that portended the
American’s immediate death. (He received a last minute reprieve.)
When circumstances caused Tarzan’s anger to mount, his
eyelids often narrowed, indicating that he was assessing the situation
prior to acting. For instance, when Robert Canler insisted that Jane marry
him immediately at the Porter home in Wisconsin, Tarzan “glanced out
of half-closed eyes at Jane Porter, but he did not move.” When the
impatient Canler grabbed Jane’s arm, Tarzan acted, and within seconds Canler
released Jane from her promise to marry him.
Other troubling situations in his later life caused Tarzan’s
eyes to narrow in ire. When police officers in Paris told Tarzan he had
to accompany them to their station, “it was a wild beast that looked
upon them through those narrowed lids and steel-gray eyes.” In Pal-ul-don,
Tarzan’s eyes “narrowed angrily” at the sight of the corpse of new-born
baby that had been sacrificed in the temple of A-lur. When he later came
upon the camp of the conspirators in Tarzan and the Golden Lion,
his eyes narrowed as he demanded to know, “Who are you who dare thus
invade the country of the Waziri, the land of Tarzan?” And when he
was later placed in the arena of Cathne, the City of Gold, to fight for
the amusement of Queen Nemone, he was unafraid but annoyed. “Crowds
irritated his nerves … Through narrowed lids he surveyed the scene. If
ever a wild beast looked upon its enemies it was then.”
While anger was the most common passion to light Tarzan’s
eyes, other, more compassionate emotions were reflected there as well from
time to time. When Meriem first met Tarzan, she noticed a benevolent sentiment
in her savior’s gaze. “Meriem looked straight into the keen gray eyes.
She must have found there an unquestionable assurance of the honorableness
of their owner.” In Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, the
sound of Tantor’s approach in the distance, “brought a sudden light
of hope to Tarzan’s eyes,” and when Janette Laon cut the bonds from
Tarzan’s discolored and swollen wrists in The Quest of Tarzan,
the mute ape-man “said nothing, but his eyes seemed to thank her.”
Although it was an unusual occurrence in Tarzan’s grim
existence, his eyes occasionally “smiled.” When Tarzan realized
that members of a Hollywood film company had mistaken him for one of their
actors, “the shadow of a smile was momentarily reflected by his grey
eyes.” Later, when Tarzan crossed paths in Los Angles with the movie
star Balza, previously a wild girl he had encountered in Africa, a “suspicion
of a smile” appeared in Tarzan’s eyes.
With a Wink and a Stare
On a couple of occasions, Burroughs
had Tarzan employ a “wink” to communicate silently with another
person. Both came late in the Tarzan series, when the author began to exercise
his ape-man’s sense of humor. The first occurred in Tarzan and the
City of Gold during a recreational hunt in which trained Cathnean
lions were to track down a slave who had been released as quarry. His sense
of fair play incensed, Tarzan, unbeknown to the hunt organizers, had helped
the slave escape. Before the lions were to be set loose, their owners offered
to take bets on the results of the hunt. Tarzan suggested that his friend
Gemnon bet 1,000 drachmas that the slave would escape. Knowing the bet
was a sure thing, Tarzan turned his head toward his friend and “slowly
closed one eye.” Noting Tarzan’s silent assurance, Gemnon made the
bet.
The other instance of the ape-man utilizing a wink to
convey a silent message came in The Quest of Tarzan. Believing
him to be a bestial wild man, Tarzan’s captor had confined him in a cage
along with a young woman captive, expecting that the ape-man would violently
attack her. Instead, Tarzan and the woman conspired to play a joke on their
fellow captives who expected to witness a brutal scene.
“Tarzan looked up at Janette Laon, with a shadowy smile
just touching his lips, and winked. ‘Do you find the captain palatable,’
she asked in English loudly enough to be heard in the adjoining cage.
‘He is not as good as the Swede they gave me last week,’
replied Tarzan.”
Although Tarzan seldom used a wink to communicate, he
got his message across often with a silent, menacing stare. Invariably,
all those upon whom the ape-man fixed his cold eyes withered under his
fierce, implacable gaze. The vile Michael Dorsky was daunted by Tarzan’s
stare, even though the ape-man’s hands were bound. When the Russian addressed
Tarzan, “the captive made no reply, but his eyes never left the other’s
face. So steady was the unblinking gaze that Dorsky became uneasy beneath
it.” And when Phobeg, the Cathnean strongman, threatened to thrash
Tarzan in their cell, “Tarzan turned toward the angry man, his level
gaze fixed upon the other’s eyes, and waited. He said nothing, but his
attitude was an open book that even the stupid Phobeg could read. And Phobeg
hesitated.”
Tarzan’s relentless stare also subdued the fierce Sumatran
native leader, Iskandar, in “Foreign Legion”. When Tarzan
ordered him and his nine warriors to raise their hands in surrender before
he counted to ten, Iskandar gave in at the count of five. “He had looked
into the gray eyes of the giant standing above him and he was afraid …
They are not the eyes of a man, he thought. They are the eyes of a tiger.”
While others often could read Tarzan’s intentions and
emotions in his eyes, the ape-man searched in the eyes of others for clues
to their temperament. This was especially true when he encountered women
during his adventures. Tarzan, in common with most men, often found it
more difficult to understand women than men. In Tarzan and the Ant
Men, the ape-man sought to read what was written in the eyes of
Princess Janzara.
“Tarzan looked into her eyes. They were gray, but the
shadows of her heavy lashes made them appear much darker than they were.
He sought there an index to her character, for here was the young woman
whom his friend, Komodoflorensal, hoped someday to espouse and make queen
of Trohanadalmakus, and for this reason was the ape-man interested.”
It was in Tarzan’s volatile relationship with Queen Nemone
of Cathne, however, that the eyes of both parties played a key role. Both
were watchful when they first met in the City of Gold.
“She kept her eyes upon him as she crossed the room
slowly, and Tarzan did not drop his own from hers. There was neither boldness
nor rudeness in his gaze, perhaps there was not even interest—it was the
noncommittal, cautious appraisal of the wild beast that watches a creature
which it neither fears nor desires.”
Nemone fascinated him, but whether for her beauty or her
malevolence, he did not know at first. On further observation, he decided
it was the former. “Tarzan neither spoke nor moved nor took his eyes
from the eyes of Nemone. Though he had thought her beautiful before, he
realized now that she was even more gorgeous than he had believed it possible
for any woman to be.”
For her part, Nemone was not used to a man who so brazenly
stared her in the eye. It both angered and attracted her. “A hard look
flashed in the Queen’s eyes … Tarzan’s eyes did not leave hers; she saw
amusement in them. ‘Oh, why do I endure it!’ she cried, and with the query
her anger melted.”
When a romantic encounter between the two was interrupted,
Tarzan had to shake himself to break Nemone’s spell. “He drew a palm
across his eyes as one whose vision has been clouded by a mist; then he
drew a deep sigh and moved toward the doorway.”
Tarzan Nearly Lost His
Eyesight
Before closing this study of Tarzan’s
eyes, there are a couple of interesting incidents concerning them that
deserve mention. The first occurred while the young Tarzan was stalking
an enemy in the jungle. While crouching motionless with his eyes on his
prey, a poisonous insect landed on Tarzan’s face. A sting would mean “days
of anguish” to the boy, but he did not move, exercising super-human
restraint
“His glittering eyes remained fixed upon Rabba Kega
after acknowledging the presence of the winged torture by a single glance.
He heard and followed the movements of the insect with his keen ears, and
then he felt it alight upon his forehead. No muscle twitched, for the muscles
of such as he are the servants of the brain. Down across his face crept
the horrid thing — over nose and lips and chin. Upon his throat it paused,
and turning, retraced its steps. Tarzan watched Rabba Kega. Now not even
his eyes moved. So motionless he crouched that only death might counterpart
his movelessness. The insect crawled upward over the nut-brown cheek and
stopped with its antennae brushing the lashes of his lower lid. You or
I would have started back, closing our eyes and striking at the thing;
but you and I are the slaves, not the masters of our nerves. Had the thing
crawled upon the eyeball of the ape-man, it is believable that he could
yet have remained wide-eyed and rigid; but it did not. For a moment it
loitered there close to the lower lid, then it rose and buzzed away.”
On two occasions, Tarzan came close to losing his precious
eyesight. The first came at the hands of the witch doctor Khamis in Tarzan
and the Ant Men. After capturing and binding the hands of Tarzan,
Khamis used a small fire to heat up a couple of irons as he questioned
Tarzan about the disappearance of his daughter, Uhha. When the ape-man
did not respond, the witch doctor seized a red-hot iron, intending to burn
out Tarzan’s right eye. The danger caused the ape-man to exert “terrific
physical force” to snap the bonds on his wrists and save his vision.
Tarzan came much closer to having his eyes burned out
when Woora, the powerful witch doctor of the Zuli tribe in Tarzan
the Magnificent, entrapped him in cord mesh.
“He looked to the iron, muttering and mumbling to himself.
It had grown hot; the point glowed. ‘Take a last look, my guest,’ cackled
Woora, ‘for after a moment you will never again see anything.’ He withdrew
the iron from the coals and approached his prisoner.
“The strands of the net closed snugly about the ape-man,
confining his arms; so that though he could move them, he could move them
neither quickly nor far. He would have difficulty in defending himself
against the glowing point of the iron rod.
“Woora came close and raised the red-hot iron to the
level of Tarzan’s eyes; then he jabbed suddenly at one of them. The victim
warded off the searing point from its intended target. Only his hand was
burned. Again and again Woora jabbed; but always Tarzan succeeded in saving
his eyes, yet at the expense of his hands and forearms.
“‘You pretend that you are not afraid,’ he screamed,
‘but I’ll make you shriek for mercy yet. First the right eye!’ And he came
forward again, holding the red point on a level with the ape-man’s eyes.”
Tarzan was not able to free himself from the mesh, and
Woora probably would have accomplished his goal eventually, had not a friend
of the ape-man entered the room to kill Woora and release the Tarzan.
In All That He Saw, He
Read a Story
An array of emotions shone in the eyes
of Tarzan of the Apes during his life, as recorded by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Only on one occasion, however, did the author allow his ape-man to feel
emotion so deep that it brought tears to his eyes. It happened when Tarzan
and Jane witnessed William Clayton die of jungle fever near the end of
The
Return of Tarzan.
“For a moment they remained kneeling there, the girl’s
lips moving in silent prayer, and as they rose and stood at either side
of the now peaceful form, tears came to the ape-man’s eyes, for through
the anguish that his own heart had suffered he had learned compassion for
the suffering of others.”
Never again in the ape-man’s saga would he shed a tear,
not even when he gazed down at the charred, dead body he believed to be
his wife in Tarzan the Untamed. “No tear dimmed the eye
of the ape-man,” the author declared, “but the God who made him
alone could know the thoughts that passed through that still half-savage
brain.” The violent exigencies of his primitive existence and a life-long
acceptance of fate left precious little room for self-pity in the heart
or eyes of Tarzan.
Tarzan of the Apes had super-human vision in the sense
that his eyesight and how he processed what he saw were developed to the
absolute maximum possible. In Tarzan Triumphant, when his
American companion failed to see the spoor Tarzan was following, the ape-man
responded, “Nothing that you can see perhaps, but then, though you may
not know it, you so-called civilized men are almost blind.” Later in
Sumatra, Tarzan explained to an American airman that vision and other senses
of civilized men had been “dulled by generations of soft living, of
having laws and police and soldiers to surround you with safeguards.”
In Tarzan’s case, however, his eyes worked in unison with
his other senses, not only to ensure his survival, but also to illuminate
a much more interesting life than civilization had to offer.
“In all that he saw or heard or smelled he read a story;
for to him this savage world was an open book, sometimes a thrilling, always
an interesting narrative of love, of hate, of life, of death.” (Tarzan
the Magnificent)
—the end—
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