LOL, isn't this a postmodern web of intertextual meanings, running back and forth between threads!
Child, I fully intend to reply to you on your thread. Just give me time. I have the feeling that this will lead us into a discussion of the nature of texts, particularly Tolkien's texts. I also want to address your metaphor of 'onion.'
lmp, it is good to see someone else interested in narrative structures! Let me bring back your question:
Quote:
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What do you suppose Tolkien meant by showing that Tom Bombadil, the spirit of the vanishing Oxford and Berkshire countryside, was immune to the effects of the Ring
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I'm not sure we can directly make this link between the English past and immunity to the Ring. Or maybe I would be more comfortable thinking that Tolkien would not make it, LOL.
That statement about Tom being the spirit of the countryside was made in a letter; it is therefore a commentary upon LOTR and tied in with the letter Tolkien is responding to. It is Tolkien's way of helping Stanley Unwin understand Tom; it is supplemental to the novel, since nowhere in LOTR is that association openly claimed.
It is a bit like the 19C novel,
Jane Eyre. The overwhelming response of many readers is to say that the setting of the novel is Brontë's Yorkshire. Yet nowhere in the novel is that expressly stated. This is very different from Brontë's other novel,
Shirley which is very definitely placed not just in Yorkshire, but in the West Riding, and during the Luddite uprising. Understanding the two novels involves recognizing this difference in setting. One is generalizable; the other is not, or at least not to the same kind and degree.
Thus, while we can try to see Tom as part of that vanishing countryside, to make any further claims about it would be dubious, I think. Certainly, I don't believe that Tolkien himself would have thought that the past held any moral superiority over the present. Arda was marred in the First Age, in the Second Age, in the Third, and will be until the Final Battle. Tom's immunity is a personal, moral strength. I don't think Tolkien, who so very much respected the moral choice of each individual, would make that kind of generalization to an entire culture or age.
I'm sure that others would want to say that Tolkien harkens back to an idyllic past which did not pursue manipulation, power politics, and destruction. I would't agree that Tolkien romanticizes the past quite that much. What would you say?
Bethberry