What is Tom Bombadil?
What is Tom Bombadil?
He is not a hobbit, neither a man, but what is he? Is he a dwarf? A wizard? A god? Something else entirely?
I can't answer what Bombadil is in the lore of LOTR, he seems to be unique in terms of entities we are shown. But I can tell you what he is at a meta level. You see, LOTR was first told as stories to Tolkiens kids, which you probably already knew, which you may not have known, is that Bombadil was a recurring character in previous stories he had told his children. So at a meta level, Bombadil is just a fun callback to a previous character for his kids to have enjoyed.
So, Hoid of a sort
This comes closest of the answers in this thread, imo. Tom Bombadil was a figurine/puppet Tolkien or his kids owned and he would devise stories around it. He included it in the main narrative as a sort of mental resting point, where both the reader and the hobbits come at peace for a brief moment. It's completely separate from the main narrative and it doesn't cleanly fit in the story. I think of it as Tom Bombadil, Goldberry and their house basically being in another dimension, which is why neither time nor the ring affect them.
If you are interested in it, Tolkien discussed the nature of Tom Bombadil in several letters and there are some decent youtube videos on the subject.
I believe he is considered the spirit of that world, not necessarily a god, but a physical incarnation of the world. It would explain why he holds an insane amount of power and even Sauron’s ring only tickled him. It also makes sense when Gandalf says if Mordor conquers the rest of the world then maybe bombadil would fall because the world would be irreparably harmed
So why didn't the eagles take him...
Just kidding! Don't want to open that can of worms.
As far as I know Tom is left as an enigmatic character and never explained. Just a strange encounter to make the world seem larger and more mysterious.
I don’t think that was the intention.
He’s Q but it’s TLOTR
That's blasphemy, but funny
Blasphemy is always funny
Do we know for sure that Star Trek and LOTR don't play in the same universe?
In Star Trek Enterprise, there’s an episode where the crew finds a planet being ravaged by disease. Bizarrely, the planet has two humanoid species: one dominant (intelligent, technologically advanced) and one less dominant (less evolved brains). The captain mentions that in every planet they’ve encountered, only one humanoid species survives the process of evolution.
Well, it turns out that the disease is genetic, it only affects the currently-dominant species, and they will go extinct in a few centuries because of it. The same evolutionary phenomenon that explorers encountered countless times before on other planets was happening right before their eyes.
Middle Earth has like at least 3 humanoid species (Man, Elf, Dwarf), more if you count Hobbits and Orcs. That’s totally incompatible with Star Trek lore!
Would say Tom is chaotic-good, while Q on the other hand might be chaotic-neutral?
He’s a merry fellow, bright blue his jacket is and his boots are yellow.
Hey dol merry dol, ring a ding a dillo
Tom represents the incomplete knowledge of mankind and our pre-modern inability to firmly grasp the natural world we live in (and to some extent our continued struggle).
The fantasy world of Middle-Earth is in most ways supernatural to our own. So how much more incomplete would our understanding and knowledge of it been?
Tolkien was a professor of language and mythology and steeped in the ancient epics of the Anglo-saxons and Norse cultures. His career was putting together what these people knew and how they saw the world, but also what they couldn't understand and how they explained their ignorance.
Others here are hinting at what Tom is, but not why he is. He's a manifestation of ignorance. That's why pinning him down is so tricky. It's like pointing at a shadow with a flashlight.
Very good analogy. Questioning Tom Bombadil's role in Middle Earth is the reason Tolkien included him, in my mind at least. The reader sees him as mysterious, mystical, alien, and seemingly detached from the world around him. And we try to fit him into the rest of the world, but not everything fits into nice little boxes. Some aspects of life will always be unknowable. The same goes for history and myth, which Tom seems to be very related to.
I like this answer. Mine would've been "spirit of nature incarnate" or similar, but this captures why I think that.
Tom Bombadil is trustworthy in that he was understood to be incorruptible by the ring. However, he wasn't a trustworthy holder of the ring because he'd probably lose it because he didn't feel the gravity of it. Tom Bombadil is good and trustworthy, but ultimately uncontrollable.
He is a character who is not connected to the main conflict in the story in any way, and is meant to show that the world of middle earth is much larger and more mysterious than what the hobbits/men/elves/orcs are fighting over. His back story was left as a mystery on purpose. The simplest explanation to accept is that you’re just not supposed to know.
There is a whole lot of fan theory and actual letters from Tolkien himself explaining (or rather not explaining) the character.
A merry fellow, of course, he says so right in his song
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow. None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the Master: His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
What is there not to get?
Some had suggested he was the spirit of "JRR Tolkien" placed into his own book
Bilbo is sort of covering for the professor too
Yes, certainly, as the writer of "There and back again"
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow. None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master: His songs are the stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
Also a linguist would of course dedicate a chapter to the pure joy of rhymes, verses, and words that feel fun to say
He's just a supremely powerful being (nameless thing, perhaps) who was created at the same time as Arda and who is just content living in a forest singing all day about how hot his wife is instead of caring about anything that happens in the world around him.
The question is, what is his wife, Goldberry? She appears to be a personification of nature, Arda, or just the Old Forest or something.
Old primordial nature spirit that is a physical manifestation of the worlds untamed wilderness and magical possibility
a nature spirit, yeah?
You got some great answers already here. I'll just say that according to Wizards of the Coast he is a God.
"Eldest, that's what I am... Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn... He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside."
I like the theory that he is Eru Iluvatar.
the Navajo had a tradition of weaving a single, intentional imperfection into the patterns on their blankets and rugs.. they said it was so that their spirit didn't get trapped inside the weave..
That is a definite threat for artists.
While you're working on your big project, the project definitely has your soul.
If the project comes out perfectly, or is close to perfect, or promises perfection, you might spend forever tweaking. Thus it has your soul forever.
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A druidic forest spirit.
Maybe he's a demi-god whose back story we don't know enough about.
Gandalf seems pretty human to start with, but then we find out that he's a superhuman/demigod. That whole circle of wizards seems superhuman.
What was Sauron?
I think CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll had a better approach of just being like "Look, anything we want can show up as part of the story."
Tolkien had to create all of these taxonomies, bloodlines, and typing, which is why we're talking about this.
Ooh I know some of this!
Sauron was a Maia (lesser primordial spirit), who along with Morgoth (a fallen spirit formally known as Melkor) was at odds with essentially every other spirit and the general concepts of peace and tranquility that were sought by the creators of the universe. After Morgoth was defeated, Sauron inherited the role of the eponymous Dark Lord and sought to rule Middle-Earth in its entirety.
The Wizards were the Istar, a group of Maiar tasked by the Valar (greater spirits) and Manwe (the king of the Valar) to travel to Middle-Earth and aid the Free People in their fight against Sauron. They took the form of elderly men and roamed the lands to counter and subvert Saurons influence. Their mandate prevented them from open conflict, which is why they took on the role of advisors and supporters instead of just fighting Sauron head on or rallying armies to fight him. Their origins were unknown to any of the Free People, but the Elves for sure new that they weren't just Men - since they lived for thousands of years and had gifts that no mortal Men possessed.
Bombadil is likely another Valar, off in Middle Earth doing his own thing - in ancient ages many of the Valar visited or lived in Middle Earth, so it could be that he didn't return to Valinor and just hung around. His complete disinterest in intervening in the conflict is one clue, and the fact that he exceeds Sauron in raw power as the One Ring is completely mundane to him, whereas Gandalf fears that it will overpower him, is another.
I always took bombadil as the father of the valar.
He's like the spirit of the world and his wife is the spirit of nature together they had some kids who got almost God like power and an intersection intrinsic link to nature.
He's old, very old
I always thought tom is the embodiment of nature itself. Basically if nature was a man.
Yes.
He's a character in the best story ever written...
My opinion: mostly obnoxious and good he was left out of the movie.
When I read about him, the first thing that came to mind is the concept of the "original man" from Manichaeism. However, the Lord of the Rings, being a trilogy that owes itself to Catholicism, would rule anything relating to Manichaeism out as a correct interpretation.
The most boring part of the book…in my opinion.
That's not Tom. That's the forest
Yeah, that’s fair.