I of course heartily agree. I did feel bad that I posted initially without remembering or finding the passage about killing the hunters. It's the only mention of it in the book.

The fact that he didn't kill the other two hunters when he killed the one for clothes is indicative that his killing was not wanton, but had a rational purpose; clothes, arrows, etc. I did wonder what in the heck he was shooting at, to lose all those arrows. He must have gone through hundreds.

His behavior was clearly appropriate for his experiences, and I thought his killing was remarkably selective.

Contrast this behavior with that of the mangani themselves, who kill for dominance, and who sometimes just seem to lose control and go berserk. Such an episode resulted in Kala dropping her baby, resulting in Tarzan's life itself.

Not to spoil any reading for anyone, but as I recall, Tarzan spares a life in another book, against his better judgment, and has cause to regret it. The killing in ERB's Tarzan books is savage self-preservation and swift justice, and I think ERB was expressing some displeasure with civilized concepts of justice on more than one occasion in these books.

To me, the savagery itself was just so realistic, even for a relatively young reader, that I found it captivating. Thirty-five years later, I still do.

While I conceded he was bloodthirsty to a degree, I would never concede that this was inappropriate, or that I found it to be at all excessive. He was no more bloodthirsty, and often less so, than the other denizens, man or beast, which inhabited his world.

Man or Devil, he was what he needed to be to survive in his world.

Tarak