Who do you think Tom Bombadil really was

[Gilthalion]

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Re: Who do you think Tom Bombadil really was

These are excerpts of a discussion I had once upon a time with Finduilas...

http://pub8.ezboard.com/ffinduilasst...c&amp;index=16Bombadil</a>



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I had a thought, that I'm not sure is supportable, but this is how it seems to me.

When reading LotR to my wife, and coming to the Bombadil part, a notion struck me. It is one thing to read erudite dissertations on the subject, it is another for the actor/reader to portray the role.

How do you play an enigma? I took the few clues Tolkien granted, and this was my answer, and it felt right playing it.

Tom is no master of weather, Eru surely is.

Tom is no Aule, fascinated with how things are made and work.

Tom is not Orome either. He seems to land-bound, and for a very long time, too.

I think of Tom Bombadil as a sort of unfallen Adam. What might Adam have been like if he had not fallen and remained a strong and vital being? I guess I'm saying that to me, Bombadil is like a first-created man, who never fell from purity and never tasted death. A combination of childlike delight and joy with ageless wisdom and simplicity.

Such a fellow might have very great power over all around him, and yet be finite and perishable if enough power were brought to bear against him.




(When I read him, he sounds like Santa Claus! Just comes out like that. )




The more I've thought of it, the more sense it makes to me.

It just feels right to me. One could argue that this fits with Tolkien's Christian worldview.

If an enigma has a solution, it also has a point.

Was Tolkien making a point in any case? Everything else that he did, seemed to be thought, and thought, and rethought over years. Was Bombadil an exception to this?

If not, then what was his point to having the enigma of Bombadil? We know how he used it in his plot, but beyond that, why the mystery? And would Tolkien set us an unfair mystery, one without a solution?

But I don't know that one can necessarily connect the dots and say: Bombadil is Adam Unfallen.

But he seems that way to me!




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Upon further reflection, I still like this idea, which has the virtue of being neither provable nor disprovable! (Another virtue is that I don't know that anyone else has thought of it!)

You who know more may say better, but does it fit in with the scheme of things that Bombadil was unsullied by Melkor? Thus, he might be mortal in the sense that he could be killed, but immortal in the sense that he never came under any dark curse and never needed Illuvatar's Gift...

All idle speculation, but I enjoyed it.

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