I recently finished Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley on audiobook. I was struck by a common trait that both of them have. The stories of Tarzan and Frankenstein are engrained into our culture. Everyone seems to know about them, and has a general idea the way the story goes. But everyone is wrong.

Both of these stories--in their original novel forms--are much more complex, surprising, and just plain different than what I had always imagined. Perhaps it's because in both cases, the story has taken a back seat to the character. Frankenstein's monster is a fixture in Halloween revelry. We know exactly what he looks like (which, incidentally, is nothing like Mary Shelley imagined him looking like), and how he acts. Tarzan, likewise, is the quintissential jungle-swinger. We know what he looks like, and his general characteristics, too.

But if you were to walk up to a person on the street and ask them what Frankenstein's monster does, they probably couldn't tell you. Does he go on a killing spree? Does he serve his maker? Does he revolt against his maker? No one knows. (Well, I do, because I read the book. Turns out the first thing he does is camp out in a forest and watch a French family for a couple of years until he figures out who he is.) We might have a better idea of what Tarzan does (he meets Jane, of course!), but still our conceptions are pretty narrow.

And I guess my biggest complaint is that what Hollywood has done with these characters is 1) not the same thing as what the original authors did with them, and 2) not nearly as interesting as what the original authors did with them. I admit that I haven't seen Boris Karloff's Frankenstein movie (I should). But I can tell you that the Disney Tarzan (the most recent of many adaptations) is dead wrong and dreadfully boring in comparison. I don't mind movies changing around books when it makes the book better, or even more adaptable to the screen. I understand that Disney movies need villains--but rather than turning Tarzan's friend and Jane's boyfriend Clayton into a villian, why not just stick with the wild animal and native and mutineer villians Burroughs created?

I think I have a lot more thoughts on the parallels between Frankenstein and Tarzan, that I'll get to later. Meanwhile, go out and read these two books.