[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

On absolutely serious note, I have been always wondering whether the choice of instrument had something to do with him being fat. You know, a drum is round, makes the sort of deep sound, so in general the connotations might sort of go together... what do you think?

It practically jumps out of the page at me. However, Esty has a better reason for it. In addition to Rateliff, Hammond and Scull point out in their reader's companion to LR (p. 208) that in Old Norse, bumba means 'drum'. Perhaps his name is related - meaning 'drummer', for example - but I haven't been able to confirm that.

This is actually one interesting thing. Since he is so fat, he must be pretty difficult to knock down. If Tolkien wanted it to be really hilarious, he might have let the hart be knocked out by knocking Bombur. But it simply ran him over - so is it actually possible that the poor animal was, in fact, even fatter than Bombur? Remember, in the utter darkness of Mirkwood, it's hard to tell how fat an animal is.

I did say "all-but knocked down". The hart clears Bombur, but the shock of it makes him lose his balance. However, it's possible that it was rather an unfit hart, which would make it slower and easier for Thorin to shoot in a hurry. This would reinforce the opinion that Tolkien objected to the obese in more general terms. It would indeed have been much funnier if the hart had run into Bombur and fallen down stunned, but then Thorin would have been less epic, which would have annoyed Aganzir and spelled doom for us all.

If we are talking about character development - Bilbo becoming braver, the Dwarves becoming more appreciative of him and so on - here is a different way of character development, Bombur becoming, not perhaps fatter (even though one might have expected that after what we've seen*), but more conscious about his fatness.

I differ from many of my contemporaries in not equating expansion with development. I think that Bombur, though a brave and undoubtedly fearsome dwarf, suffered from serious self-image problems that only manifest themselves here after a welter of snide remarks from authority figures like Gandalf and Thorin.

However, we can see that Tolkien did not let his dream disappear completely, and led it to an eucatastrophe with the remark in LotR, where Bombur, finally in the place of peace and plenty, has the room to become as fat as he can get.

Perhaps at last by the time of FR, Bombur has come to terms with himself and decided to reject society's pressure on him to conform to a slim and agile body type. I like to think that this is what happened, but I fear it could be otherwise.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Maybe they took him along as..well bait isn't quite the right word ... more a last ditch diversionary tactic

This is the best explanation so far and by far the most likely. Anything that just wanted a meal would be content with catching Bombur.