Tarzan of the Apes

“I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.”

The first line of Tarzan of the Apes establishes that the story is being told through a frame narrative, creating an additional layer of distance between the audience and the events of the story. By portraying the story as being a collection of documents and oral reports, Burroughs creates a sense of verisimilitude, implying that all these events might be real, although the names have been altered or the details slightly changed.

“You have but one duty, John, and that lies in the interest of vested authority. If you do not warn the captain you are as much a party to whatever follows as though you had helped to plot and carry it out with your own head and hands.”

Alice Clayton warns her husband John that he has a duty to report the planned mutiny to the captain even though it could endanger them both. This sets up the theme of courage versus survival instinct. Alice’s dialogue uses a synecdoche, a figure of speech in which a part of a thing stands in for the whole. Her reference to the plot being carried out with John’s own head and hands indicates that a mutiny requires both intelligence and physical strength—two of the traits that Burroughs will later explore as necessary for Tarzan’s survival in the jungle.