Tom Bombadil – An Intriguing Answer !

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Balfrog

Please take another more careful read of Ms. Seth's essay – which has been our discussion focus all along. Certainly TLotR text impresses “last” and “first” with Tom. Also documented is “night will come”. These are all aspects of Tom's allegorical role as representing the 'audience' and signifying the end of the 'show' if he is removed. Many other's have noted Tom behaves like a bystander or watcher – only interfering when called upon. Which again would be typical of an audience member and his relationship to the cast.

*Sighs*

If Tolkien had written in an allegorical sense, and had, as Ms. Seth makes the incomprehensible leap, used Tom as a stage prop to represent the audience, then why did Tolkien not ever refer to him as such? An allegory is a literary conveyance by the author to draw the reader to an inference. Tolkien never does. He does not refer to such a staged conveyance in his letters, and the reader is not drawn to make such an assumption; ergo, Ms. Seth's hypothesis fails.

Originally Posted by Balfrog

For the reader, he was meant to be unsolvable.

Hence, he is not an allegory, because the very definition of "allegory" requires a manipulation by the author so that the reader may draw a conclusion. If, as you admit directly, Tom is "unsolvable" to the reader, then he is not allegorical.

Originally Posted by Balfrog

I also do not concur with:

Tolkien refers to him on more than one occasion as an "enigma"

I only recall one occasion.

Nor do I concur with:

… an "enigma" … would preclude an allegory ...

Available dictionary definitions of an 'enigma' provide no such assertion. One typical definition is that an enigma can simply be a 'puzzle' or 'riddle'. Dictionaries do not categorically exclude the answer to the 'puzzle' or 'riddle' being allegorical based.

If Tom is enigmatic, and, as you stated, unsolvable, he is not allegorical. Because, by any measure of the definition, an allegory requires the author to manipulate the reader. Again, Tolkien conveys this as succinctly as an Oxonian professor and philologist can, "I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

The reader is allowed to make any number of assertions about Bombadil and yet come no closer to solving the enigma. We, as readers, are left to a multiplicity of guesses but no conclusions, and if I may paraphrase Baron Orczy's poem:

They seek him here,
They seek him there -
The readers seek him everywhere.
Is he o'er the stream
Or is he under hill,
That damned elusive Bombadil.

P.S. I don't believe Tolkien ever gave much consideration for his private letters one day being published. It certainly was not a concern of his while he lived. In any case, whatever inconsistencies you manage to pick through (and you are certainly digging for needles in a needle stack) should certainly not reflect Tolkien's final view on anything, since he made no effort to edit his personal letters for consistency, let alone publication. Who edits a letter after posting it? Therefore, to jump through hoops to conclude finality from Tolkien's letters, particularly when you parse and piece a pile of gobbledy-gook from one letter to another spaced years apart, is a failed exercise in divination.