Article #551-1 | Gutenberg Articles

Excerpt

Excerpt from The Land That Time Forgot, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

As Nobs and I approached the recumbent figure farther up the beach, I was
appraised by my nose that whether man or not, the thing had once been organic
and alive, but that for some time it had been dead. Nobs halted, sniffed and
growled. A little later he sat down upon his haunches, raised his muzzle to the
heavens and bayed forth a most dismal howl. I shied a small stone at him and
bade him shut up—his uncanny noise made me nervous. When I had come quite close
to the thing, I still could not say whether it had been man or beast. The
carcass was badly swollen and partly decomposed. There was no sign of clothing
upon or about it. A fine, brownish hair covered the chest and abdomen, and the
face, the palms of the hands, the feet, the shoulders and back were practically
hairless. The creature must have been about the height of a fair sized man; its
features were similar to those of a man; yet had it been a man?

I could not say, for it resembled an ape no more than it did a man. Its large
toes protruded laterally as do those of the semiarboreal peoples of Borneo, the
Philippines and other remote regions where low types still persist. The
countenance might have been that of a cross between Pithecanthropus, the
Java ape-man, and a daughter of the Piltdown race of prehistoric Sussex. A
wooden cudgel lay beside the corpse.

Now this fact set me thinking. There was no wood of any description in sight.
There was nothing about the beach to suggest a wrecked mariner. There was
absolutely nothing about the body to suggest that it might possibly in life
have known a maritime experience. It was the body of a low type of man or a
high type of beast. In neither instance would it have been of a seafaring race.
Therefore I deduced that it was native to Caprona—that it lived inland, and
that it had fallen or been hurled from the cliffs above. Such being the case,
Caprona was inhabitable, if not inhabited, by man; but how to reach the
inhabitable interior! That was the question. A closer view of the cliffs than
had been afforded me from the deck of the U-33 only confirmed my
conviction that no mortal man could scale those perpendicular heights; there
was not a finger-hold, not a toe-hold, upon them. I turned away baffled.

Explanation

**Detailed Explanation of the Excerpt from The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs**

Context of the Source

The Land That Time Forgot (1918) is a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known as the creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. The story is part of the Caprona trilogy (alongside The People That Time Forgot and Out of Time’s Abyss), a series of adventure novels blending lost-world fiction, prehistoric survival, and speculative evolution. The narrative follows Bowen Tyler, an American survivor of a German U-boat attack, who becomes stranded on Caprona, a mysterious island where time seems to have stood still—hosting prehistoric creatures, primitive humans, and bizarre evolutionary experiments.

This excerpt occurs early in the novel, as Tyler and his dog, Nobs, explore the island’s coastline after their shipwreck. The discovery of a strange corpse sets the tone for the novel’s exploration of human origins, survival, and the blurred line between man and beast.

Themes in the Excerpt

The Blurring of Human and Animal
- The corpse defies easy classification—it is neither fully human nor fully ape. This ambiguity reflects Burroughs’ fascination with Darwinian evolution and the missing link between primates and humans.
- The narrator’s uncertainty ("Had it been a man?") mirrors 19th- and early 20th-century scientific debates about human ancestry, particularly after discoveries like Java Man (Pithecanthropus erectus, now Homo erectus) and the Piltdown Man hoax (a fraudulent "missing link" later debunked).
- The wooden cudgel suggests tool use, a trait associated with early humans, yet the creature’s physical traits (lateral toes, hair distribution) align it with primitive or "savage" races in colonial-era anthropology.
Isolation and the Unknown
- Caprona is a lost world, cut off from civilization, where natural laws seem suspended. The absence of wood, wreckage, or maritime signs reinforces the island’s mystery and inaccessibility.
- The narrator’s frustration at the cliffs’ impassability ("no mortal man could scale those heights") underscores the isolation of the interior, hinting at a hidden world beyond human reach.
Colonial and Racial Undertones
- Burroughs’ description of the corpse as a "low type of man or a high type of beast" reflects Social Darwinism and racial hierarchies common in early 20th-century adventure fiction.
- References to "semiarboreal peoples of Borneo and the Philippines" invoke colonial stereotypes of "primitive" indigenous groups, framing them as closer to apes than "civilized" Europeans.
- The Piltdown Man reference is particularly telling—this fraudulent fossil was used to "prove" European superiority in evolution, and Burroughs’ inclusion of it (even ironically) ties into the era’s pseudo-scientific racism.
Survival and the Struggle for Knowledge
- The narrator’s deductive reasoning (e.g., concluding the creature is native to Caprona) shows a scientific, exploratory mindset, a hallmark of Burroughs’ protagonists.
- The unanswered question—how to reach the interior?—drives the plot forward, emphasizing the human urge to conquer the unknown, even in the face of impossible odds.

Literary Devices

Uncertainty and Ambiguity
- The narrator’s repetitive questioning ("Had it been a man?") creates suspense and forces the reader to engage with the mystery of the creature’s identity.
- The lack of clear answers mirrors the novel’s broader theme of evolutionary ambiguity—Caprona is a place where definitions break down.
Sensory Imagery
- Olfactory (smell): "appraised by my nose that... it had been dead" – The stench of decay immerses the reader in the scene, making the discovery visceral.
- Auditory (sound): Nobs’ "dismal howl" and the narrator’s irritation ("made me nervous") add tension, suggesting the unnaturalness of the corpse.
- Visual (sight): The detailed physical description (hair distribution, toe structure, facial features) paints a grotesque yet fascinating picture, blending human and animal traits.
Foreshadowing
- The wooden cudgel hints at tool-using inhabitants, suggesting that Caprona’s interior may host primitive societies.
- The impassable cliffs foreshadow later struggles for survival and the eventual revelation of the island’s secrets.
Juxtaposition
- The civilized narrator (a shipwrecked American) vs. the primitive corpse highlights the clash between modernity and prehistory.
- Nobs’ animalistic reaction (growling, howling) contrasts with the narrator’s rational analysis, reinforcing the human vs. beast dichotomy.
Allusion
- References to Pithecanthropus (Java Man) and Piltdown Man ground the story in real (or pseudo-real) science, lending credibility to the fantasy.
- The mention of "semiarboreal peoples" ties the creature to anthropological theories of the time, which often classified non-European peoples as "less evolved."

Significance of the Passage

Establishing the Lost World Trope
- This scene introduces Caprona as a prehistoric survival zone, a common theme in Burroughs’ work and a staple of adventure fiction (e.g., The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle).
- The mystery of the corpse serves as a gateway into the island’s deeper secrets, inviting exploration.
Challenging Human Exceptionalism
- By presenting a creature that defies classification, Burroughs questions the boundaries between human and animal, a radical idea in an era when racial and evolutionary hierarchies were often taken as fact.
- The narrator’s discomfort with the corpse reflects Victorian/Edwardian anxieties about human origins and the fragility of civilization.
Setting Up the Adventure
- The unscalable cliffs create an immediate obstacle, forcing the protagonist (and reader) to seek alternative ways into the unknown.
- The cudgel suggests intelligent life, hinting at future encounters with primitive tribes or evolved beasts.
Reflecting Early 20th-Century Science and Prejudice
- The passage is a time capsule of pre-WWI scientific thought, blending real discoveries (Java Man) with racist pseudoscience (Piltdown Man, "low types").
- Burroughs’ uncritical use of colonial anthropology reveals the limitations of his era’s worldview, even as he imagines a world beyond it.

Close Reading of Key Lines

"I was appraised by my nose that... it had been dead."
- The passive phrasing ("appraised by my nose") distances the narrator from the grotesque reality, a defense mechanism against the horror of decay.
- The sense of smell is primal, connecting the narrator (and reader) to the animalistic side of human nature.
"The creature must have been about the height of a fair sized man; its features were similar to those of a man; yet had it been a man?"
- The repetition of "man" emphasizes the struggle to categorize the creature, reinforcing the ambiguity of human identity.
- The rhetorical question invites the reader to share the narrator’s confusion, making the mystery personal.
"A wooden cudgel lay beside the corpse."
- The simplicity of the tool suggests early human or ape-like intelligence, yet its presence is puzzling—why is there no wood nearby?
- This detail deepens the mystery, implying that the creature (or others like it) traveled from inland, where resources exist.
"There was not a finger-hold, not a toe-hold, upon them."
- The absolute negation ("not a") underscores the hopelessness of scaling the cliffs, raising the stakes for the protagonist’s survival.
- The physical imagery makes the obstacle tangible, heightening the frustration and desperation of the situation.

Conclusion: Why This Passage Matters

This excerpt is more than just a description of a corpse—it is a microcosm of the novel’s central themes:

The blurring of human and animal in an evolutionary crucible.
The tension between science and mystery in an unexplored world.
The colonial-era fascination (and fear) of the "primitive."

Burroughs uses vivid sensory details, scientific allusions, and unanswered questions to draw the reader into Caprona’s enigma, setting the stage for a journey into the unknown. The passage also reveals the biases of its time, making it a fascinating artifact of early 20th-century adventure literature—both thrilling and problematic in its portrayal of human origins.

Ultimately, the real horror isn’t the decomposed body, but the realization that humanity’s past (and perhaps future) is far stranger—and more bestial—than we imagine.

Questions

Question 1

The narrator’s reaction to Nobs’ howling—"I shied a small stone at him and bade him shut up—his uncanny noise made me nervous"—primarily serves to:

A. establish the narrator’s pragmatic, no-nonsense attitude toward survival in hostile environments.
B. contrast the dog’s instinctual fear with the narrator’s rational detachment from the corpse.
C. reveal the narrator’s suppressed anxiety about the corpse’s ambiguous humanity and its implications.
D. underscore the narrator’s frustration with the limitations of his canine companion in a scientific inquiry.
E. foreshadow the narrator’s later rejection of emotional responses in favor of cold, empirical analysis.

Question 2

The description of the corpse’s toes as "protruded laterally as do those of the semiarboreal peoples of Borneo, the Philippines and other remote regions where low types still persist" is most effectively read as:

A. an invocation of contemporaneous anthropological pseudoscience to frame the creature as both primitive and geographically isolated.
B. a neutral observation that aligns the corpse with known ethnographic examples of human adaptation to arboreal environments.
C. a critique of colonial classifications by highlighting the absurdity of categorizing humans as "low types."
D. an attempt to distance the narrator from the corpse by emphasizing its physical divergence from "civilized" human norms.
E. a subtle indictment of the narrator’s own prejudices, exposed through his uncritical adoption of racial hierarchies.

Question 3

The wooden cudgel’s significance in the passage is most profoundly tied to its role as:

A. a red herring, distracting the narrator from the more pressing question of the corpse’s origins.
B. evidence of the creature’s capacity for tool use, thereby elevating it above mere animality.
C. a narrative device to introduce the theme of human ingenuity in resource-scarce environments.
D. an anomaly that contradicts the narrator’s deduction about the corpse’s inland origins.
E. a symbol of the unresolved tension between the creature’s apparent primitivism and its ambiguous humanity.

Question 4

The narrator’s deduction that the corpse "lived inland, and that it had fallen or been hurled from the cliffs above" is structurally analogous to:

A. a scientific hypothesis, tested against observable evidence and revised as new data emerges.
B. a detective’s reconstruction of a crime scene, piecing together motive and opportunity from limited clues.
C. a colonial explorer’s assumption of superiority, projecting familiar frameworks onto an unfamiliar landscape.
D. a philosophical argument, wherein the absence of contrary evidence is mistaken for proof of a proposition.
E. a survivalist’s pragmatic assessment, prioritizing immediate action over speculative inquiry.

Question 5

The passage’s closing line—"I turned away baffled"—is most thematically resonant with which of the following ideas?

A. The limits of empirical reasoning when confronted with phenomena that defy existing categorical frameworks.
B. The inevitability of human curiosity overcoming physical obstacles, as foreshadowed by the narrator’s persistence.
C. The narrator’s subconscious recognition that the corpse represents a future version of himself, degraded by isolation.
D. A rejection of the scientific method in favor of intuitive or emotional responses to the unknown.
E. The cyclical nature of exploration, where each answered question generates new, more inscrutable mysteries.

Solutions and Explanations

1) Correct answer: C

Why C is most correct: The narrator’s visceral reaction to Nobs’ howling—throwing a stone to silence him—betrays an unconscious discomfort with the corpse’s ambiguous status as neither fully human nor fully beast. The howling acts as an auditory manifestation of the uncanny, disrupting the narrator’s attempt to maintain rational detachment. His nervousness stems not from the dog’s noise per se, but from what the noise symbolizes: the collapse of clear boundaries between man and animal, civilized and primitive. This aligns with the passage’s broader preoccupation with evolutionary liminality and the anxiety it provokes.