Cirdan’s essay at
http://tolkien.cro.net/else/bbeier.html seems to me to be totally nonsense, typical of the many enthusiastic essays I have read which all provide contradictory explanations of Tom and all of which disagree with one another.
Tolkien himself explains that Tom is intentionally an enigma. Cirdan takes this to mean that Tolkien had an explanation for him, which Tolkien purposely did not state and not one of the many commentators before Cirdan has figured out. Cirdan explains that “an intentional enigma is nothing other than a riddle …” which is not necessarily true.
Cirdan then explains, “Indeed, in this letter he seemed to be hinting that there was an answer to the riddle of Bombadil. Could he have been challenging his readers to find it?” I see no hint at all. Where does Cirdan get this idea from? Where does Cirdan get the idea that Tolkien is challenging the reader to find the answer to a riddle which Tolkien does not state and Cirdan only postulates.
Cirdan provides a series of facts about Tom which supposedly proves his theory that Tom represents the reader, but most of which are not true of most if not all readers. Most readers are not
the Master. No reader is old as Tom. Most readers do not know Farmer Maggot. And so on.
Cirdan states,“Treebeard
can be the oldest living thing while Tom is truly ‘oldest and fatherless,’ but only if Tom is not alive.” This is quite true of Tom, and Goldberry, but also true of Gandalf, Sauron, Saruman, and Radagast and true of all the Valar and Maiar. There are also the nameless things gnawing away beneath the ground of which Gandalf claims, “Sauron knows them not for they are older than him.”
Cirdan works by asking questions which have, for him, the assumed answer of “yes” but which to a critical reader can be just as well answered “no” or “no answer given”. He has the trick of using the word
we, to mean
you and I, never considering that this means that he is telling the reader what they think, when perhaps the reader doesn’t think or feel what Cirdan claims.
That Tom was a Maia (which is not Cirdan’s idea) runs afoul of Tolkien’s claim that Tom is an enigma.
That Tom is the physical manifestation of the Music of the Valar doesn’t fit with the idea that the music was corrupted by the interfering music of Sauron and his followers from the beginning.
Tom is a character in fiction written by J. R. R. Tolkien and Tolkien’s clear statement that Tom is an enigma should take priority over anyone’s theories.