“The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.”
–Psalm 14:2 –

While Tarzan of the Apes is perhaps not the first literary character one would associate with theological questions, one of the stories Edgar Rice Burroughs penned about the jungle hero deals explicitly with Tarzan’s search for the divine. “The God of Tarzan” is one of twelve stories comprising Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1919), the sixth Tarzan book in order of publication, which revisits the scenes of his early life.

The setting for these tales is of course first provided in Tarzan of the Apes (1912), where we learn of the tragic demise of Lord John Clayton and his wife, Lady Alice, on a remote African coast, leaving their infant boy alone and vulnerable.  Adopted by Kala, the she-ape, after the death of her own child, the boy grows up in a far different world than the one he would have known, a world where he struggles to find his place. Many of his struggles revolve around his nature being unsuited to his environment. Physically, he is different from the members of his adoptive clan. He is hairless, and is thus named Tarzan by the apes, meaning “White-Skin.” He is comparatively small and weak, especially as a child. Indeed, it is only Kala’s love that prevents the other apes from destroying or discarding him as a burden. But he very quickly far exceeds the strength and agility attainable by civilized man. Of far greater importance is the difference in his intellect: “His higher intelligence resulted in a quickness of mental action far beyond the powers of the apes.” Tarzan uses his cleverness to aid the apes in the continuous battle for survival. Eventually, it will propel him to leadership over the tribe.

The Idea of God

Tarzan is curious. He desires to know not only the “what” but the “why” of the world around him. In his early wanderings he uncovers a vast treasure-store of knowledge, the coastal hut in which he was born, which still contains the books belonging to his father. His native intelligence, combined with determined labor and great patience, reveals to him the purpose of the letters on the pages, which he calls “bugs,” that in various combinations form a silent language describing objects and concepts.

Of all the many unfamiliar concepts before the eyes of the young Tarzan, some exert a more powerful beckoning pull: “There were, of course, certain words which aroused his curiosity to a greater extent than others, words which, for one reason or another, excited his imagination. There was one, for example, the meaning of which was rather difficult to grasp. It was the word GOD.” He is first attracted to the word because of the number of “he-bugs” (upper-case letters) that figure in its definition—“Supreme Deity, Creator or Upholder of the Universe”—indicating its importance. 

After many months of consideration, Tarzan comes to think of God as a mighty chieftain, the king of all the Mangani (great apes). But unlike other things described in the books, he finds no picture of God. He does find pictures of places dedicated to His worship, strengthening the idea of God’s power and influence. The idea occurs to him that God might be of a different form altogether, and Tarzan resolves to set out in search of Him.

The Search for God

First, he goes to the wise and experienced. He questions Mumga, “who was very old and had seen many strange things in her long life.” But she is consumed by the trivial. The small dramas of everyday life make more impression upon her than “all the innumerable manifestations of the greatness of God which she had witnessed, and which, of course, she had not understood.” Overhearing, an old he-ape called Numgo, advances a theory. He posits that lightning and rain and thunder come from Goro, the moon, and that Tarzan might begin his investigation there.

That night, Tarzan climbs the tallest tree in the jungle to investigate Goro, but he finds the moon allusive and far away. Nonetheless, Tarzan poses his questions: “‘Tell me,’ he continued, ‘if you be the great king who sends Ara, the lightning; who makes the great noise and the mighty winds, and sends the waters down upon the jungle people when the days are dark and it is cold. Tell me, Goro, are you God?’” Receiving no answer, Tarzan concludes that Goro is afraid and cannot be God.

This apparent cowing of the moon increases Tarzan’s sense of self-importance and power. He returns to Numgo to boast of his victory. But this mood does not last long, it was but the manifestation of the rule of the jungle, which beats its chest, bares its fangs, and seeks to prove its strength. When Numgo bids him go away and let him sleep, Tarzan almost desperately presses his question: “‘But where shall I find God?’ insisted Tarzan. ‘You are very old; if there is a God you must have seen Him. What does He look like? Where does He live?’”

Exasperated by Tarzan’s insistence, and never having had any true interest in the investigation, Numgo answers flippantly: “I am God,” replied Numgo. “Now sleep and disturb me no more.” When Tarzan shakes and nearly strangles the ape, demanding to know if Numgo will indeed claim divinity, Numgo quickly realizes he must send this earnest seeker on another path. He tells Tarzan to ask the humans where God is: “They are hairless like yourself and very wise, too. They should know.”

Though his relations with the natives in the nearby village have not been friendly, Tarzan decides to follow this advice. Watching from the branches of an overhanging tree, Tarzan witnesses a ceremony full of religious spectacle and awe, the initiation of young warriors into adulthood. Presiding over this ritual is the village witchdoctor, dressed in all the fantastic habiliments of his arcane art and endeavoring through every strange and grotesque motion to instill awe in his devotees.

The longer Tarzan watches the more he is convinced that he is looking upon God.  Determined to have words with the Deity, he leaps down into the middle of the village, much to the terror of the spectators, and confronts the witchdoctor with a direct question: “Are you God?” The natives flee in terror, leaving the witchdoctor alone to confront this terrible apparition.

Though the witchdoctor does not understand Tarzan’s speech, he understands clearly enough that his professional position, and likely his life, are at stake. He does his best to intimidate Tarzan with every dramatic effect of speech and action aimed at creating religious dread. Unmoved, Tarzan continues to advance until the witchdoctor, realizing his failure, flees. Mystified by this reaction, Tarzan tries to reassure the hastily retreating figure: “Come back, God, I will not harm you.” A scuffle follows, in which the buffalo-hide vestments and fearsome visage of the witchdoctor are torn from him, revealing a terrified and merely mortal man. Tarzan is disgusted: “So you are God!” he cried. “‘If you be God, then Tarzan is greater than God.’” His belligerence has returned: “‘Tarzan is greater than God. See!’ and with a sudden wrench he twisted the black’s neck until the fellow shrieked in pain and then slumped to the earth in a swoon.” After voicing the terrible victory cry of the bull ape, Tarzan departs.

Finding God

Despite his claim of victory over God, it is clear from his subsequent continuing search for the Deity that, like his overawing of the moon, the episode of the witchdoctor has not convinced him that he has truly met the divine. Yet, as the remainder of the tale reveals, the search has affected him, has begun to change him.

His search for the truth of God has also excited opposition and danger. The village chief, Mbonga, having witnessed the defeat of the witchdoctor, is determined to destroy the “forest demon” and stalks him with raised spear. A large part of his motivation is to save the reputation of the theological arm of his governance. “…as a chief he was well convinced of the power of the witch-doctor as an arm of government, and often it was that Mbonga used the superstitious fears of his people to his own ends through the medium of the medicine-man.” Mbonga underestimates the bestial prowess of his prey and is overcome.

But as he stands over his prostate foe with drawn knife, “Tarzan the Killer,” as he has described himself, hesitates to kill. “Something stayed the ape-man’s hand for an instant. He wondered why it was that he hesitated to make the kill; never before had he thus delayed.” Tarzan really sees the chief for the first time. He sees the terror in his eyes and the appeal for mercy upon his face. He feels something new: “It was pity—pity for a poor, frightened, old man.” He grants mercy; he does not kill.

As he travels back to the jungle home of his tribe, Tarzan meditates upon these events. What power had stayed his hand to prevent him from slaying his enemy? It was as if a power greater than himself had commanded him to spare the man’s life. This puzzles him “for he could conceive of nothing, or no one, with the authority to dictate to him what he should do, or what he should refrain from doing.”

But the next morning even more internal changes are apparent in Tarzan. He begins to see the world around him in a new way. As he awakens in his leafy bower, he is struck by the beauty of an orchid opening to the sun. This process, which he had witnessed a thousand times before, had never sparked the questions that now occur to him. “Where and how, anyway, did they all come from—the trees, the flowers, the insects, the countless creatures of the jungle?” From the contemplation of the wonders of nature springs the idea of the Creator: “Quite unexpectedly an idea popped into Tarzan’s head. In following out the many ramifications of the dictionary definition of GOD he had come upon the word CREATE—”to cause to come into existence; to form out of nothing.”

These reflections are interrupted by a scream of terror. Rushing to the sound, Tarzan sees the balu (baby) of Teeka, the she-ape, enfolded in the coils of Histah, the snake. In wonderment, he sees Teeka hurl herself upon the serpent in an attempt to save her child, though he knows her tremendous dread of the snake, only to become herself entrapped in its deadly embrace. Tarzan feels the same dread, but he hesitates no more than Teeka to leap upon the foe. After a fierce struggle, Tarzan drives his hunting knife into the serpent’s brain.

The battle won, Tarzan once again falls into meditation. Why had he done what he did? Teeka did not belong to him. Her child was no special concern of his. He concludes that some power compelled him to act: “It must be that God made me do these things, for I never did them by myself…. I cannot see Him; but I know that it must be God who does these things.”

The definition of the word GOD he had discovered included the descriptor “all-powerful.” This Tarzan comes to understand as being able to do what no one else can do: creation out of nothing of the world with all its beauty and provision and the instilling of compelling laws of moral action. He had found God—not as a physical presence as he had originally imagined, but as a spiritual presence and the source of all good things.