I started on this response yesterday and finished it only today, so it might seem a little disjointed. Also, I started it before any of the major Letters and HoME (and the like) quotage, so it's all my speculation...and I'm going back to good ol' Tom.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Mithadan
LoTR? Written by Frodo. More wordly and better educated. But still a Hobbit and subject to the flaws of a Hobbit's interpetation of matters beyond his experience.
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And so Frodo's description of Tom Bombadil is from his experience, and can be nothing more. From the way he is described we can tell that Frodo had the utmost reverence for Tom, and was obviously mystified by him. So I suppose he would not bother even speculating who/what Tom was: likely he thought it unnecessary.
But is it just Frodo who thought it unnecessary, or did Tolkien see it as such, as well? I expect he probably did.
I think Tolkien really wanted to keep people from getting too settled into Middle-earth. He wanted it to be entertainingly fantastical, and not stop tugging at the strings of our imagination. First he gets us all settled in with this idea of Hobbits. Then he throws in things like Elves, 'moving trees,' a magical Ring, a Dark Lord... We start off 'being with' Hobbits, which are really rather familiar to us, and we learn about all these things that are far from really familiar to us through them. Next thing, we experience the first meeting of the Ringwraiths with Frodo. We experience Elves for the first time.
But with all of this dark stuff: the Ringwraiths, the Ring, a Dark Lord, a scary forest, one very nasty tree, and overall a very unfortunate situation for Frodo, there seems to be very little light. All of the power seems to be on the side of all the dark stuff, while on the side of light there are just a few Hobbits - even the Wizard is nowhere to be found. Tom Bombadil shows up at such a perfect moment, and shows us the power of good in Middle-earth just as blatantly as Sauron and the Ring show us the power of evil. Just when the Hobbits are pretty much literally swallowed up, by darkness you could say, this mysterious Tom enters.