[William Cloud Hicklin]

But a character doesn't have to "advance the story." There's more to fiction than mere plot! Bombadil is a comment, if you like: a conception of a truly free, especially care-free, being. It's one with this that Bombadil appears rather ridiculous, even goofy- because he just doesn't care. He's all id, no ego.

He also serves to point out that in the real world, even the imagined 'real' world, there are always Exceptions: anomalies, bits that don't fit, things that can't be shoved into pigeonholes.

But if we're looking for Bombadil's *function* in the narrative- he is there to develop Frodo's (and thus the reader's) growing awareness of Middle-earth, its strangeness and its vast weight of history. Gandalf began this process, but Bombadil reinforces and widens it: especially since he uses no names or dates or specific events, just a great sweep of Time. Tolkien after all reveals his canvas gradually; he does *not* drop the reader into a slam-bang prologue full of epic sound and fury. That can wait.


On the corruption of the Ring: not exactly. The Ring will eventually overcome anyone who *possesses* it long enough. Some especially vulnerable individuals can be corrupted simply by wanting to possess it. But those who are merely in its vicinity, and aren't tempted to claim it, are in no particular danger: neither Frodo's companions (save Boromir), nor Faramir. Gandalf feared to take it, to possess it, even to touch it: but he obviously suffered no ill-effects from merely travelling with Frodo!

And so, again, the Osgiliation was entirely unnecessary. PJ & Co would have done better, IMO, to concentrate on the differences between the two brothers' personalities, rather than their relationship with their father (which is another whole area of complaint, however). If the audience were shown that Faramir is quite a different individual from Boromir, then his resistance makes perfect sense (and Denethor's treatment of him subsequently both more understandable and more painful).