Tom Bombadil

Who exactly is tom bombadil?

[Iarwain]

Perhaps you should reopen this thread in the Novices Forum. However, I'll answer it anyway.

Tom Bombadil is an entity who lives in the Old Forest during the War of the Ring. According to other accounts: Elrond, Gildor, Gandalf; Tom has apparently always been around. His existence can be traced to the creation of Middle-Earth, or at least the awakening of the firstborn. Many people have debated the nature of Tom's spirit, whether he was Man, Maia, Eru incarnate, or Tolkien himself embodied in his works. You may choose any of these (or others) to believe, though there is more evidence to look at. Tom also has strange powers, or is an exceptance to certain bonds that are felt by the rest of Middle-Earth. For instance, Tom, who limits himself to wandering within certain bounds, is seemingly omnipotent within his land. Also, the ring has no power over Tom, and he is not subject to its temptation, nor its deciet. Tom is according to Elrond "Eldest and Fatherless" (thus his name Iarwain Ben-Adar), and none can trace the point in time where he came into the world. This seems to leave us with two choices for the kind of person which Tom is. He could either be Eru incarnate, and thus be omnipotent and ageless and not subject to others' power. Or Tom could be Tolkien's idea of himself as a character in Middle Earth. Thus, he would be omniscient (being the inventor of Middle-Earth), and not be subject to the deciet which the ring presents others. Personally, I hold to the idea that he is Eru incarnate, because it fits more with Tom's character than him being Tolkien, but that is me.

Rambling on about Myself,
Iarwain

[Legolas]

In other words, Tom is just Tom. He is unexplained, and intentionally so. An engima. Tolkien said so.

[-Imrahil-]

Yes, Tom is Tom. A great character. I too hold with the theory he is Eru Reincarnate.

[MLD-Grounds-Keeper-Willie]

He's a mystery, simply put.

[Deathwail]

Just so odd a being as old as the world its self would have a plain jane name like " Tom ", kinda like having a big mean Troll then naming him William. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

[Legolas]

Imrahil:

I too hold with the theory he is Eru Reincarnate.

I think you meant 'incarnate' - it couldn't be Eru reincarnate - that would mean Eru had already been to Middle-earth in another form.

Anyway, Tolkien explicitly denied this in Letter No. 181 (twice!):

There is no embodiment of the One, of God, who indeed remains remote, outside the World, and only directly accessible to the Valar or Rulers.

There is no 'embodiment' of the Creator anywhere in this story or mythology.

[ January 12, 2003: Message edited by: Legalos ]

[Silmarien]

Tom doesn't seem to fit anywhere. But he definitely saves the 4 hobbits twice in their escape from the shire. Sorry that's a bit off the topic

[Pallando B.C]

As Legalos said, enigma is the best way of describing him. Look here for more interesting infomation, Balrog.

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

A Tom Bombadil thread?

[LePetitChoux]

Tom is.

[aragornreborn]

I think I remember reading somewhere that Tolkien said that Tom was simply a mystery and that in mythology (which LOTR was supposed to be) not everything has an explanantion.

[ January 16, 2003: Message edited by: aragornreborn ]

[Iarwain]

I so love it when people talk about me!


I believe Legolas quotes that refrence above, Aragornreborn.

[Legolas]

Actually, I didn't, but I can!

Letter No. 144

And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).

Tom Bombadil is not an important person – to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a 'comment'. I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in the Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function. I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control, but if you have, as it were taken 'a vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war. But the view of Rivendell seems to be that it is an excellent thing to have represented, but that there are in fact things with which it cannot cope; and upon which its existence nonetheless depends. Ultimately only the victory of the West will allow Bombadil to continue, or even to survive. Nothing would be left for him in the world of Sauron.

Letter No. 153

As for Tom Bombadil, I really do think you are being too serious, besides missing the point. (Again the words used are by Goldberry and Tom not me as a commentator). You rather remind me of a Protestant relation who to me objected to the (modern) Catholic habit of calling priests Father, because the name father belonged only to the First Person, citing last Sunday's Epistle – inappositely since that says ex quo. Lots of other characters are called Master; and if 'in time' Tom was primeval he was Eldest in Time. But Goldberry and Tom are referring to the mystery of names.

You may be able to conceive of your unique relation to the Creator without a name – can you: for in such a relation pronouns become proper nouns? But as soon as you are in a world of other finites with a similar, if each unique and different, relation to Prime Being, who are you? Frodo has asked not 'what is Tom Bombadil' but 'Who is he'. We and he no doubt often laxly confuse the questions. Goldberry gives what I think is the correct answer. We need not go into the sublimities of 'I am that am' – which is quite different from he is. She adds as a concession a statement of pan of the 'what'. He is master in a peculiar way: he has no fear, and no desire of possession or domination at all. He merely knows and understands about such things as concern him in his natural little realm. He hardly even judges, and as far as can be seen makes no effort to reform or remove even the Willow.

I don't think Tom needs philosophizing about, and is not improved by it. But many have found him an odd or indeed discordant ingredient. In historical fact I put him in because I had already 'invented' him independently (he first appeared in the Oxford Magazine) and wanted an 'adventure' on the way. But I kept him in, and as he was, because he represents certain things otherwise left out. I do not mean him to be an allegory – or I should not have given him so particular, individual, and ridiculous a name – but 'allegory' is the only mode of exhibiting certain functions: he is then an 'allegory', or an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are 'other' and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with 'doing' anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture. [...] Also T.B. exhibits another point in his attitude to the Ring, and its failure to affect him. You must concentrate on some pan, probably relatively small, of the World (Universe), whether to tell a tale, however long, or to learn anything however fundamental – and therefore much will from that 'point of view' be left out, distorted on the circumference, or seem a discordant oddity. The power of the Ring over all concerned, even the Wizards or Emissaries, is not a delusion – but it is not the whole picture, even of the then state and content of that pan of the Universe.

Goldberry does it best though, really.

Tom is.

[Calavanya]

I must admit Tom is my favourite character. Funny as he is, he takes things very seriously and behind his singing and merriness there is a brooding mind, thinking of the troubles outside his realm. Anyway, he can't help being as he is. It's like, anything may happen, but the world still turns, and so he continues with his song. Of course, unless the world is ruined. Does this make any sense?