[littlemanpoet]

davem:

I just wonder whether, as a Maiar, bound forever within the circles of the world, he envied Men's freedom.

I used to conclude that Tom Bombadil must be a Maiar too, but now I'm not so sure that TB doesn't simply defy definition (which doesn't contradict my sense that aspects of the Trickster are discernible in him, by the way). As Child says, TB seems more like some kind of being at home and at one with nature, or at least his little corner of Middle Earth.

Child:

...the Trickster.... is a character who poses challenges that can't always be answered in moral terms (good or evil) but rather must be met with cleverness, wit, and sheer chance.

Given that the Trickster is the first, and most primitive archetype, it doesn't really come as a surprise that s/he is the most morally ambiguous. Neolithic man's greatest concern was survival, around which all the qualities of the Trickster seem most apt. By comparison, humanity seems most in need of a good moral compass (and has seemed so for the last six or so millenia), such that later archetypes are less morally ambiguous.

Given also that the 20th century was an era in which moral ambiguity made a repeat performance, as it were, it is fascinating to me that the most popular written work of that century (LotR) is NOT morally ambiguous, and that its figures with any discernible Trickster attributes are recast in the persons of Tom Bombadil who, as Child said, needs the good, in order to be free to be what he is; or in the person of Smeagol, enslaved to that Ring that renders its servants ontologically ambiguous (I think that's what I mean).

At the end of the tale, when the moral combat has ended at least temporarily, Gandalf feels compelled to go visit Bombadil, presumably because of something he can find there that he can get nowhere else. This has to be telling us something about ourselves and perhaps about archetypes or the natural world, but I can't quite lay my finger on it. Any help out there?

I don't know if I can help, but maybe this question can spur some more thought for you, Child: Is being a stone that rolls as compared to someone that stays in one place, the only, or even the most significant, difference between Gandalf and Tom Bombadil? I wonder.

It occurs to me that Gandalf, finally free of his quest, may now actually enjoy the life he has from Eru, and this is as good as any way to express that, not to mention quite ready to hand.

Could this possibly be one reason that Tolkien calls Celtic myth "gross" in his Letters and confesses that they fail to have that cool and high air he is seeking? Is morality a requiremen opf that high air?

I never took this notion of "gross" versus "high" as having to do with "immoral" versus "moral". Tolkien's myth strikes me as more Northern than the Mabinogion. Colder. More pristine. Purged; but not in a moral sense so much as (and here all kinds of terms come to mind only to be tossed out, such as Victorian; Edwardian; Christian, etc.), well, of the gross element. Not much help, I suppose, eh? Well, I'm thinking that it's really a matter of aesthetics more than anything else. No flattulence (sp?), for example; none of that stuff that is, well, low-brow in terms of taste.