Who or What is Tom Bombadil?

[davem]

The most interesting thing about Tom is that even those who dislike him don't 'disbelieve' in him. For such readers he's like a real person, but one who gets on their nerves, so they avoid him. One thing they can't deny is that, as in Goldberry's words: 'He is.'

Of course, we're all 'enigmas' - most of us even to ourselves. We can no more explain the 'madness' of TB than we can explain our own eccentricities. We are all 'silly' at times, & maybe we could divide the human race into those who can accept (even enjoy) their own silliness, those who deny it, & those attempt to explain it away, or provide some kind of 'psychological' explanation.

I suspect that the second group (the deniers of their own silliness) turn away from TB in contempt, the third group (the 'explainers) are the ones who construct elaborate 'theories' about TB (he's a Maiar, he's Eru, he's Tolkien himself, etc, etc). The first group, though, are the ones who can just accept him & follow his mad song through the Old Forest to his house, step over the threshold, find a golden light all about them and the table all laden with yellow cream, honeycomb, and white bread and butter....

As Chesterton put it 'The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; Heaven is a playground.'