Who or What is Tom Bombadil?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

OK.

We’ve got ourselves into a flap over Balrog wings…

We’ve tried to pierce the fog that lies around the shape of Elves’ ears…

We’ve fallen out over what happened at Mount Doom…

We’ve come to blows over the question of who felled Sauron…

We’ve even asked the ungodly question of Eru’s nature…

But the time has come to ask the most difficult question of all. To confront the issue that has caused more heartache than any other on the Downs. Take courage my friends, for you are not alone...there will be others with you in the journey ahead as you ask yourself

Who or What is Tom Bombadil?

Read, and then decide…

A mystery within a mystery, involving Tom Bombadil

Tom Bombadil

bombadil being a dwarf

Bombadil as Aule?

Beleg and Bombadil

Bombadil and Gandalf

Farmer Maggot and Tom Bombadil

Bombadil and The Istari

Who/What was Tom Bombadil

I say, dear Bombadil...

Bombadil = yearning?

Did Tom Bombadil remain in Middle-Earth after the Third Age?

AGood Essay on Tom Bombadil.

Tom Bombadil - Maiar ?

What is Tom Bombadil

Tom Bombadil vs. The Ring

Bombadil in LOTR

Tom Bombadil

Re Tom Bombadil

Who do you think Tom Bombadil really was

[mormegil]

My reasoning is based on this most excellent essay found here.

Find Tom Bombadil and read.

[the phantom]

Raise your hand if you saw this poll coming.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Originally Posted by the phantom

Raise your hand if you saw this poll coming.

Should all posts be polls?

[davem]

As usual, Fordim misses the real answer out (I'm beginning to suspect this is a deliberate policy).

The answer to the question 'Who or what is Tom Bombadil' is given in the book:

'He is.'

[Bêthberry]

He is . . . Bêthberry's dad.

[Roa_Aoife]

I'll explain my answer when I don't have papers to write.

[The 1,000 Reader]

He is an enigma. Nuff' said.

[HerenIstarion]

An ëala.

Before/After Dark Lord - here

[Morsul the Dark]

ASgain Tom Bombadil is Old Man Willow's Ent Spirit one day Old Man Bombadil(for he was an ent was walking around and saw Goldberry now unlike other ents who sometimes slow down and become treeish he fell in love and became super hasty and happy so hasty that in fact the spirit was ripped from the ent body which became bitter and angry and tom went and "put on his 'A' game" for goldberry

that is also why he can control tghe forest he is a treeherder

[Gurthang]

Originally Posted by davem

The answer to the question 'Who or what is Tom Bombadil' is given in the book:

'He is'

That sounds a lot like 'I am', you know, from the Old Testament.

Which means that Tom is obviously the Judeo/Christian God.

[Roa_Aoife]

Originally Posted by Gurthang

Which means that Tom is obviously the Judeo/Christian God.

Please, not this again...

[mormegil]

I would be most interested in hearing Boromir's explination as to his vote.

[The 1,000 Reader]

Originally Posted by Gurthang

That sounds a lot like 'I am', you know, from the Old Testament.

Which means that Tom is obviously the Judeo/Christian God.

"He" was the beginning of the sentence.

[Gurthang]

Originally Posted by The 1,000 Reader

"He" was the beginning of the sentence.

I'm not seeing how that makes a difference. Care to explain?

[ManofDale]

There are things in this world Tolkien said that cannot be explained and are just simply there, Tom is the epitome of this concept.

[The 1,000 Reader]

Originally Posted by Gurthang

I'm not seeing how that makes a difference. Care to explain?

The H was capitalized because of grammar, not because Tom is God.

[Legolas]

Why is the answer not listed?

Tom is an enigma. His nature cannot be explained, nor does it need to be - that was part of his purpose.

[ManofDale]

Originally Posted by Legolas

Why is the answer not listed?

Tom is an enigma. His nature cannot be explained, nor does it need to be - that was part of his purpose.

Exactly, why debate an enigma. There doesn't have to be an answer in everything for us...I think it also has to do with a touch of innocence. Like believing in Tom was believing in Santa Clause, just because he was there and stood for something without any other symbols attached to him. I.E He is so and so reincarnated. In trying so hard to understand what Tom is we lose the intention of belief in the unknown.

[Garulf]

This poll sparked my interest in Bombadil again, prompting me to reread an old, but memorable post by burrahobbit. Kuruharan made a point (can't remember what was being argued) using this quote:

"And I shall send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World and the World shall Be..."

Now burrahobbit argued that "Tom is." (i.e. Tom is an embodiment of Ea, or more likely a spirit tied up with Ea ["Eä, meaning in Elvish 'It is' "]) a point which I am highly inclined to agree with. However, the above quote concerning the Flame Imperishable leads me to wonder whether Tom is the Flame. In this way Tom would be the eldest and come before all things, as well as being at the "...heart of the World...", a position that somehow feels right when describing Tom.

[Maerbenn]

Tolkien’s comment about Tom Bombadil being an enigma (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 144) could also be interpreted to mean that he was an enigma to other inhabitants of Middle-earth, but perhaps not to the Author himself.

[Essex]

Originally Posted by davem

As usual, Fordim misses the real answer out (I'm beginning to suspect this is a deliberate policy).

The answer to the question 'Who or what is Tom Bombadil' is given in the book:

'He is.'

I love all the debates these two simple words have given. But the answer, surely, is answered if you put the inflection on the word 'He' and imagine goldberry nodding her head towards the sound of Tom's singing.

Anyway, he's the spirit of middle-earth - i.e. Mother Nature, and therefore he helped save the day at the Pellenor Fieldds by making the 'Wind Change'..........

[Legolas]

I think it also has to do with a touch of innocence.

Certainly!

Tom was certainly an enigma to all others (save Gandalf, probably). He represented a feeling Tolkien had, but even Tolkien did not want to analyze it 'precisely.'

Here are some quotes I often use in Bombadil discussion, and they are great for understanding Tolkien's purpose for Bombadil.

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.

[Garulf]

I suppose that Tom is meant to be a mystery then. Somehow that also feels right. I'm beginning to see the uselessness of explaining each and every part of the book. Perhaps it's better to have at least a few unexplained mysteries.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Far be it from me to introduce a hint of the prosaic, but surely Tom Bombadil was a doll of which Tolkien's children were rather fond.

[HerenIstarion]

Ineed he (it?) was, but why can not a doll simultaneosly be a [insert whatever suits your palate better here]?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

A doll better suits my palate. Besides, the question is 'Who or what is Tom Bombadil?' not 'Who or what is Tom Bombadil in the context of Tolkien's fiction?'. I mean to say, how imprecise can you get?

[Bêthberry]

Squatter toys with us, HI.

Seriously though, our Man of Old English Letters reminds us of an important fact about this character. He was conceived in a different story culture. Like many an 'immigrant', Tom is not well integrated into the community or cosmology of this story. Having Gandalf refer to Tom at the end of the story represents a heroic attempt to integrate him, but one which remains I think somewhat mechanical. It is all well and good to call Tom an enigma, but by and large I think this kind of defense remains more a justification than a true explanation.

On the other hand, does the problem or enigma lie only with Tom? I find it very interesting how often people have difficulty understanding or accepting Tom, yet very few seem to ask who or what Goldberry is.

Do readers have an easier time accepting a female mythic earth character than a male one? Or is it that Frodo's infatuation with Goldberry provides an adequate and understandable explanation of her function? (Why is it that she can control rain, but not snow, for instance?)

[Morsul the Dark]

Interesting that is true Goldberry is only slightly more explained i think it has also to do with the role of women in the story(please dont hurt me) overall they are subordinate therefore almost out of wight out of mind the thing that facinates me about bombadil is the mere fact that he is unaffected by the ring. now had goldberry put on the ring and not disappeared surely we would have a dynamic duo of enigmas on our hands

[Gurthang]

I'd also turn to the fact that Tom is an enigma, but for some reason, that does not satisfy my curiosity in the slightest. Therefore, I cannot leave that to be my answer.

Goldberry. Well, I guess the reason we don't think of her much is that Tom seems more pertinent to the hobbits. Tom saves them, takes them in, tells them tales, wears the Ring in their view, gives them horses, and finally saves them again. Key among those is Tom putting on the Ring and being unaffected. I think these occurences make Tom overshadow Goldberry in a way. But it is true that her nature is about as equally unknown as Tom's.

Originally Posted by The 1,000 Reader

The H was capitalized because of grammar, not because Tom is God.

My point was not really that the 'H' was capital. I was commenting more on how strikingly similar the 'he is' sounded to 'I am'. In each case, it merely states existance, rather than being followed by a descriptor. There are very few other examples (actually none that I can think of) that make use of such a statement. Simply saying that Tom exists really reminded me of God's name, I am, that simply says that He exists. But, regardless of the fact that I think this is a debatable subject, I was saying so largely as a joke. Sort of poking at Fordim for his 'Is Eru God?' thread. Hence the .

On a completely different tangent, has anyone ever wondered if Tom was perhaps the embodiment of Tolkien himself into Middle-Earth?

[Morsul the Dark]

it is possible however its a rather boring answer isnt it? I mean hes god or hes and ent spirit or any other theory can be kind of fun. to me and im just saying my opinion not to bash yours i respect it just disagree...its like telling a kid to do something just because....also secondly real quick anyone know what tolkiens favorite colors were i mean if i wrote myself into a story i wouldnt dress myself in a silly yellow hat...would you?

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Gurthang

But it is true that her nature is about as equally unknown as Tom's.

Save that she is specifically identified as the River Woman's Daughter. Ambiguous in itself, perhaps, but at least it suggests to us more about her nature (hinting perhaps that she is a water spirit of some kind) than we are ever told about Tom's nature.

... has anyone ever wondered if Tom was perhaps the embodiment of Tolkien himself into Middle-Earth?

Yes, I have seen the theory articulated somewhere, although I can't now recall where. I also recall seeing an article setting out the theory of Tom as the embodiment of the reader. I believe that it is linked to on one of the threads for which Fordim has privided the links.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

now had goldberry put on the ring and not disappeared surely we would have a dynamic duo of enigmas on our hands

Interesting that of all the female characters only Galadriel has her moment with the Ring. I wonder if, had Goldberry been allowed to stay after dinner with the fellows, she might have provided a surprising demonstration of her powers.

Originally Posted by Gurthang

Tom saves them, takes them in, tells them tales, wears the Ring in their view, gives them horses, and finally saves them again. Key among those is Tom putting on the Ring and being unaffected. I think these occurences make Tom overshadow Goldberry in a way.

True, yet adventure and action is not all that the story is about. Goldberry's affect on Frodo is important in terms of his learning elven ways while the nature of respite and sanctuary is an important element in the story and something she specifically provides. Without her, banner-weaving Arwen is harder to understand.

[Legolas]

Even if Goldberry's nature was as unexplained as Tom, I don't think she would have attracted the amount of speculation Tom has. The point with Tom is not that he is male, but that his physical acts (and subsequent conclusions drawn about his mentality) show that he is quite an oddity - he skips about through the woods carelessly, and is completely unmoved by the Ring? He's not just an unexplained character. He's an unexplained character that leaps out and thumps the reader in the eyeball.

[daeron]

Can someone explain Merry and Pippin's dreams in Tom's house?
I mean, Frodo saw Gandalf trapped and escaping from Orthanc, so is Merry and Pippin's also significant? Note also that Sam was the only one who spent a dreamless night. Are the dreams in Tom's house similar to the Mirror of Galadriel?

[Captain Grishnahk]

I have had this discussion many times with fellow Ringers (LOTR fans) and i have come to the conclusion that he might be Iluvator. Just somthing for you to chew on.... after all; he said that he was there before the first acorn, the first raindrop and before the elves. Of course lots of people disagreed... but i dont see any other option. BTW, i'm new... so forgive me for any stupid thing i've said in the past.

Originally Posted by Garulf

This poll sparked my interest in Bombadil again, prompting me to reread an old, but memorable post by burrahobbit. Kuruharan made a point (can't remember what was being argued) using this quote:

"And I shall send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World and the World shall Be..."

Now burrahobbit argued that "Tom is." (i.e. Tom is an embodiment of Ea, or more likely a spirit tied up with Ea ["Eä, meaning in Elvish 'It is' "]) a point which I am highly inclined to agree with. However, the above quote concerning the Flame Imperishable leads me to wonder whether Tom is the Flame. In this way Tom would be the eldest and come before all things, as well as being at the "...heart of the World...", a position that somehow feels right when describing Tom.

i think this is one of the best interpretations

[Nilpaurion Felagund]

There is this interesting topic.

The Trickster's Consort by Bêthberry

Not that Tom is the Trickster, of course . . .

[Eluchíl]

Eh...Wikipedia discussion flashback.

Anyway...Tolkien said himself that Tom was meant to be undefineable. So in that sense he's whatever you want him to be. He is nothing official in the legendarium's world, but yet plays a part in it. He's just...there.

[Gil-Galad]

well i feel that Tom Bombadil is forever a mystery, just a little piece of hope that helps the hopeless regain what they need to do, almost like a final candle