Blogging Burroughs- Tarzan of the Apes Part 2

That clip lasts for exactly three minutes and twenty seconds. It contains more heart and pathos than anything in these past three chapters of Tarzan of the Apes.Yes three. I skipped ahead one. I was going to review this one chapter at a time but other than the fact the mutiny gets underway and we finally get to africa not much happens in chapter 2. More happens in chapter 3 but it gets pretty weird and it feels irrelevant. 

 Here's a basic rundown of the events from chapter two(ten pages):

- The mutiny happens and Clayton pretty much just watches people get murdered while smoking his pipe destroying any sense of goodwill I had for him from the end of the first chapter. 

- Black Michael maroons them on an unknown African shore promising to alert the authorities of their location sometime later but doesn't want to get arrested for mutiny should they go to someplace more 'civilized'.

And for Chapter three(seven pages):

- Clayton builds a house. (I guess English nobles are master carpenters)

- They are attacked by an Ape which Alice shoots. I'm serious. She actually does something.

- For some reason Alice goes mad from the shock of the Ape attacking(I have no idea, don't ask) and dies exactly one year after the baby(Tarzan) is born. (also Clayton apparently knows how to skin large cats, weave and install hardwood flooring. Even he's surprised he apparently knows all this shit)

- Clayton just kinda slumps over after Alice dies and ignores his crying son. Man up your kid needs you!

This is an awful lot of padding about the backstories of characters who aren't particularly important to the story. John and Alice Clayton's single greatest contribution to the plot is giving birth to Tarzan and then dying so he can be raised by the apes. Heck by that logic John Clayton is completely irrelevant, all you need is Alice. Just dump her on a beach somewhere in Africa say she was marooned(possibly by Tarzan's father if you really need to know who his daddy is) have her pop out Tarzan and then fall over dead. I doubt that would take up much more than a paragraph. But no we are given three whole chapters explaining the backstories of characters no one was ever meant to give much of a damn about. And are simply not important. Disney at least knew that and handled it far better in the opening to their animated adaptation. Mutiny? Fuck that just have the ship on fire! Driven mad by an ape? Fuck that Alice helps build their home all while totting around baby Tarzan! Death by plot and later ape? Fuck that Leopard did it!