Need help finding how Edgar Rice Burroughs' political and/or cultural context influenced his writings.?

Answer 1

You need to get to amazon.com to buy a cheap copy of "Tarzan Forever!" which is a biography. But it's easy to find by reading the books. First, Burroughs was impressed by British nobility. Tarzan was really Lord Greystoke.

The Tarzan books were a thought experiment about whether a human baby left in the jungle to be brought up by apes, could become a civilized man. Burroughs purposefully isolated Tarzan from black African tribesmen. If Tarzan had met black Africans, they might have taught him everything. The thought experiment would have been spoiled. Burroughs arranged an abandoned hut filled with children's picture and primer books. Tarzan taught himself written English, but he could not speak. Later, Tarzan cared for an injured French officer. The Frenchman taught Tarzan how to speak French. So he could read and write English, but he could olnly speak in French.

Burroughs also admired the Germans. When the U.S. and Britain went to war against Germany in WWI, Tarzan did also. There was a nasty German officer in one novel whom Tarzan left up a tree at the end, with a lion prowling beneath. When Tarzan returned months later, there was no one in the tree, and the lion was lying beneath.

In a novel about the land that time forgot (think dinosaurs), the hero was a German submaine captain who did not really like to sink ships, but who guided the passengers from a ship that he sank to the land.

Burroughs really did not trust Russians. Before 1914, his villains were the Tsarist secret police. But after 1918, they were the same persons, same names, but they were with the Soviet secret police. In one Tarzan novel of 1931, Stalin tells one of the agents from before the revolution, "Remember! Red Russia does not tolerate failure!"

In Burroughs Martian novels, he tries to express his admiration and distaste for certain races. The dominant, heroic race is red. There are a few black people, and they are truly heroic (Thurid the Dator). The whites are an evil race who are priests of an ancient eligion, preying on others. The green men are savage giants. I think that it is from Burroughs that people get the idea, "green men on Mars."