Who or What is Tom Bombadil?

[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.

[Folwren]

Originally Posted by Gurthang

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

Means nothing of the sort.

I don't know. This question's always boggled me. Will maybe read the threads Fordim posted and then vote. . .

-- Folwren

[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.