CXC English A: Example of a summary exercise 1

Original passage:

Selection from Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan.

Aside from his efforts to explain the origins of the Tarzan idea, Ed was at times drawn into a discussion of the theories or philosophies he was trying to develop in his story, or those that others believed were inherent in the story. In relation to this, the question was also asked, “what does Tarzan, as a human in an animal environment, represent or symbolize?”

The philosophic themes that were generally associated with Tarzan of the Apes may be listed as follows: the conflict of heredity and environment; the lone man pitted against the forces of nature; the search for individual freedom; escapism—flight from the boring routines of daily life; a destructive civilization, with man, its representative, displaying all its vices, as opposed to the simple virtues of nature’s creatures.

Regarding the basic scientific controversy of heredity vs. environment, Ed stated, “I liked to speculate as to the relative values of heredity, environment, and training in mental, moral, and physical development in such a child, and so in Tarzan I was playing with this idea.”

At present, environment is viewed as the decisive force in shaping or conditioning the individual. Possibly without being aware of it, Ed, in Tarzan of the Apes, created a unique situation in which heredity, within a civilized setting the lesser influence, now emerged as the greater. Clearly, heredity’s victory in the conflict was inevitable. Tarzan, even the infant Tarzan, could not repress his human attributes, his intelligence. These led to his curiosity about his surroundings and about his parents, his observation of differences between the apes and him, his discovery of weapons, his motivation to learn to read, and eventually his rejection of jungle life and a return to civilization. The outcome might be interpreted in another way: Tarzan and his circumstances represent abnormality; within this strange situation nature’s irresistible pressure for a righting, a balance, forces heredity to assume is proper place.