Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
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This classic adventure offers a thrilling blend of jungle survival, lost-city mystery, and psychological drama, showcasing Edgar Rice Burroughs at his most imaginative.
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Book Summary
Tarzan returns to the lost city of Opar to replenish his fortune, but a treacherous Belgian officer steals his jewels and triggers a chain of betrayal, captivity, and jungle chaos. As Tarzan loses his memory and regresses to a primal state, his wife Jane is captured by Arab raiders, leading to a desperate struggle for survival and reunion.
After a financial disaster, Tarzan journeys to Opar for gold, unaware that the disgraced Belgian officer Albert Werper follows him. An earthquake traps Tarzan in the treasure vault, leaving him with amnesia, while Werper escapes with a pouch of jewels. Werper joins the Arab raider Achmet Zek, who raids Tarzan’s estate, capturing Jane Clayton. Tarzan, now a savage amnesiac, leads apes and hunts through the jungle, slowly recovering his memory. La, the High Priestess of Opar, rescues Tarzan and professes her obsessive love, but he rejects her. Meanwhile, Jane escapes captivity, is recaptured, and is eventually rescued by Tarzan during a lion attack. Werper’s greed leads to his death, and Tarzan recovers the jewels, rebuilding his home with Jane and the loyal Waziri. The story explores Tarzan’s dual identity, the corrosive power of greed, and the triumph of primal instinct over civilized corruption.
Reading guide
Go deeper in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
- Setup
- Breaking point
- Aftermath
Tarzan
Tarzan returns to the treasure vaults of Opar not as a lord but as a Mangani, and the temple's fanatics read his indifference as blasphemy. When La offers him godhood and herself, he refuses with a shrug that costs him an army of enemies and the memory of who he is. His amnesia after a blow to the head leaves him following a Belgian traitor through his own Waziri country without recognizing a single familiar face — the jungle's greatest hunter reduced to a stranger in his own life.
Jane Clayton
Jane Clayton is not the kind of prisoner who weeps in a tent; she is the kind who walks out of one, twice, past lions and searchers, because she believes Tarzan is omnipotent in his native world. Her certainty is her strength and her exposure — she has no plan but his arrival, and the jungle is patient. Her flight across the clearing, and the eyes watching from the tree above, sets the collision between Achmet Zek's greed and Tarzan's forgotten identity that drives the middle of the book.
Albert Werper
Werper is the novel's most quietly dangerous man: a deserter, a spy, and a thief who talks Tarzan out of slaughtering the Waziri because their treasure is walking exactly where he wants it borne. He survives Opar by luck and lies, and he survives the ape-man by flattery, always calculating the distance between himself and the noose. His secret pouch of jewels — withheld from Achmet Zek and coveted by everyone — is the fuse that turns allies into hunters and makes him the pivot of the book's chase.
Achmet Zek
Achmet Zek commands a motley crew of outlaws and sells white captives into northern harems, but his real religion is the buried treasure beside the Englishman's ruined bungalow. Outwitted by an unbeliever and robbed of the gems he had already claimed in his heart, he circles south with his men to intercept Werper and reclaim what is his. His recapture of Jane in the clearing — and the ape watching from the branches — makes him the hinge between the raid on the Greystoke home and the jungle's slow, patient revenge.
La
La rules Opar's fanatic priests and its bloodstained altar, but her authority dissolves the moment the ape-man refuses her: she offers him godhood, slaves, and her love, and he pushes her aside with a sentence. Her rage summons the Guardian Priests to wash the temple in blood, and her love follows him into the jungle where she clings to his back through the treetops. A creature of contradiction — cruel and tender, vengeful and forgiving — she is the novel's engine of jealousy, and her obsession with Tarzan threatens everyone who travels with him.
Mugambi
Mugambi is Tarzan's man in the field: silent in the shadow of a great tree, reconnoitering the palisade while the Arab camp hums behind it. When he recognizes Werper emerging from the jungle and watches the gates swing open in friendly welcome, he understands in a flash that the Belgian was the spy who timed the raid on his master's home. His double hatred — for the Arabs and for the traitor — makes him the quiet instrument of justice in a story where Tarzan himself no longer remembers whom to trust.
Civilization vs. Primitivism
The book contrasts the civilized world of Lord Greystoke with the primal jungle existence of Tarzan the ape-man, exploring how Tarzan regresses to a savage state after losing his memory, finding happiness in the simple, instinctual life of the wild.
Greed and Betrayal
Characters like Albert Werper and Achmet Zek are driven by avarice for gold and jewels, leading to theft, murder, and betrayal of trust, as seen when Werper steals the gems and conspires against his host and his Arab master.
Love and Obsession
La, the High Priestess of Opar, experiences a consuming, unrequited love for Tarzan that transforms into a vengeful obsession, driving her to pursue him across the jungle and threaten his life when her affections are spurned.
Survival and Adaptation
The narrative emphasizes the harsh realities of jungle survival, where characters must rely on physical prowess, cunning, and acute senses—as Tarzan does when tracking prey or escaping danger—to endure in a hostile environment.
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