Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar · Chapter
On the Road to Opar explained
Tarzan decides to return to Opar to replenish his lost fortune after a financial disaster, despite Jane's fears.
What happens
Tarzan decides to return to Opar to replenish his lost fortune after a financial disaster, despite Jane's fears. Meanwhile, the Belgian officer Albert Werper, posing as a French gentleman named Jules Frecoult, ingratiates himself at the Greystoke estate, overhears Tarzan's plan, and begins to plot his own scheme to follow Tarzan and steal the treasure. Werper fakes illness, dismisses his Waziri guide, and sets out to shadow Tarzan's expedition, while also sending word to the bandit Achmet Zek.
Themes in this chapter
Civilization vs. Primitivism
Tarzan sheds his civilized clothes and embraces his primal instincts, contrasting the hypocrisy of civilization with the raw authenticity of the jungle.
Greed and Betrayal
Werper's greed drives him to betray Tarzan's hospitality, plotting to steal the Opar treasure and conspiring with the bandit Achmet Zek.
Characters to notice
- Tarzan
Peels off his civilized veneer and leads a party of Waziri toward Opar to retrieve gold, relishing the return to his savage nature.
- Jane Clayton
Pleads with Tarzan not to risk returning to Opar, fearing the dangers of the dead city.
- Albert Werper
Disguised as M. Jules Frecoult, he spies on Tarzan and Jane, overhears the plan to go to Opar, and decides to follow Tarzan to steal the treasure.
- Achmet Zek
Receives a letter from Werper and rides southward toward the Greystoke farm with his followers.
Key passages
“There is no other way half so easy to obtain another fortune, as to go to the treasure vaults of Opar and bring it away”
Tarzan insists that returning to Opar for gold is the simplest way to rebuild their lost wealth.
Tarzan's pragmatic but risky decision drives the plot.
“His civilization was at best but an outward veneer which he gladly peeled off with his uncomfortable European clothes whenever any reasonable pretext presented itself.”
Tarzan's civilized behavior is only a thin surface; he eagerly abandons it for his natural jungle ways.
Highlights the central theme of civilization versus primal nature.
“Show me the fat, opulent coward, whoever originated a beautiful ideal. In the clash of arms, in the battle for survival, amid hunger and death and danger, in the face of God as manifested in the display of Nature's most terrific forces, is born all that is fine stand best in the human heart and mind.”
Tarzan argues that true beauty and virtue arise from struggle and danger, not from comfortable, cowardly civilization.
Tarzan's philosophy justifying his return to the jungle.