Tarzan is a fictitious character who was nurtured in the African forest by the Mangani giant apes as an ideal feral child; he eventually encountered civilization, but rejected it and returned to the wild as a heroic adventurer. The character has been portrayed as a noble primitive with limited language abilities, as in the original novels, and as an eloquent and sophisticated character, as in the films starring Johnny Weissmuller. Tarzan was created by Edgar Rice Burroughs and first appeared in the novel Tarzan of the Apes (magazine release 1912, book publishing 1914), followed by 23 sequels, several books by Burroughs and other authors, and a slew of other works in both approved and unofficial media. Tarzan is the son of a British lord and lady who were stranded by mutineers on the coast of Angola. Tarzan’s mother died when he was a baby, and his father was killed by Kerchak, the head of the ape tribe Tarzan was adopted by. Tarzan became a feral youngster soon after his parents died, and his ape clan is known as the Mangani, huge apes of an unknown kind. His ape mother is Kala. In his sixth Tarzan book, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Burroughs included stories set during Tarzan’s adolescence.
