THE BARBARIC BOMBADIL This is a very interesting analysis. Tom Bombadil is not one of the most hated characters of the LOTR to me, quite the opposite in my case, he is obviously the most ancient and very likely the strongest and most dangerous single character. And the author of this article did an excellent job of dissecting his environment and his wife, and on those points I agree. When I first read the LOTR as a teen the first thing that struck me about Tom Bombadil was that he was in effect somehow in command or control of the barrow-wights and dead men. They both feared and submitted to him. It also struck me that he was somehow hidden or camouflaged from most everyone else, Elves included. But I do not draw the same conclusion as the author of this piece about Tom at all because of other clues about Bombadil, and what is both said about him and what is not said or known about him. Gandalf obviously knew more about him than anyone else and there is a reason for that, Gandalf was of that ancient order of spirits who understood the Creation itself. I do not think that Tom Bombadil is confined to the forest as the author of this link thinks he is. Tom is described as the “oldest and fatherless.” Tom is the old forest and may indeed be either Life Itself, or First Life Itself. Hence the very close connection to nature and plant life. Which long precedes animal life. He is whatever was first alive, long before animals and mammals and elves and dwarves and men. So he is a natural shape-shifter and incredibly dangerous because like the Ents he is “not for anyone, and no one is for him.” But he long predates the Ents and trees too I suspect. Whatever was first alive that is Tom. Tom Bombadil is an ancient pagan power. He is the pagan element in the LOTR. (He even engages in a pagan feast of sorts.) Gandalf knows him and to some degree understands him because although Gandalf is Wotan Gandalf is also Merlin. Gandalf like Merlin can not only speak to and understand men and elves and spirits and the Valar and ultimately communicates even with God. (He is after all physically resurrected and reamed into something new, like Christ – and only God has that kind of magic – miracle magic: the power over life and death God does not share with others). So Gandalf stands at the crossroads and his Wanderings have brought him across Bombadil. And Bombadil is old. As such Bombadil is very, very dangerous indeed, and he is closely linked to Death and the Barrow Wights because he is what comes before death and he is the first Life. He is right on the line between life and death. Between non-existence and existence. Tom Bombadil is, if you ask me, the single most fascinating character in the LOTR short of Gandalf (who is a living bridge between the ancient world and the coming world) because Tom Bombadil is First Life and the ancient paganism that sprung up around that Frist Life. But he isn’t necessarily evil. However like Life itself and ancient paganism he is extremely dangerous. As dangerous as they come. Yet he can seem all green and happy and jolly. But that’s just one side of Life. The other is that Life feeds on Life, it rips and tears and drinks blood and grows death and barrow-wights. This is a natural consequence of a corrupted world, how Life operates when it is imperfect. And Tom doesn’t lie, he misdirects. He provides only partial information. He obscures, and he cloaks and conceals and shape-shifts. Just like Life itself. This is why above all the ring could not go to Tom Bombadil. Tom would have torn the world apart, not for the sake of evil and power, but just because Life tears at Life. Mercilessly and ruthlessly and brutally and with a natural sort of butchery. It’s just the way it is. Just because Bombadil is not evil doesn’t make him not every bit as dangerous as Creeping, remorseless death. Life survives and expands, thats pretty much the entire agenda. Tom is amoral Life, not immoral evil. But do not mistake amoral for being any less dangerous than the immoral. In many ways it is far more dangerous. The author is reading Tom Bombadil as if from a modern perspective. Deceit is a lie instead of a camouflage, danger is evil rather than terrible and aweful (filled with awe), but Tolkien was immersed in the ancient and the pagan through his work and philology. Life itself is not moral or immoral. God is moral. Evil is immoral. Life is amoral. Man is supposed to choose which he will be. Tolkien was a Christian and a devout one, but he knew and understood the ancient and the pagan and the Old Myths too. The LOTR is essentially a negative Christian myth, it is a myth of salvation without a direct Savior (rather you have a bunch of indirect saviors playing far more minor and limited parts, Frodo, Aragorn, the Fellowship, and especially Gandalf and Samwise) and not of the birth of God into the world and the coming Kingdom of Heaven, but of the destruction of the old and lingering evil and the coming of the New Age of Men. Tolkien took the Christian myth and inverted it. It is not about the coming of the power to Save but the killing of the power to enslave and destroy. It is not about New and Eternal Life, but about the unmaking of the corruption of life. The Ring is not a Holy Grael, the Ring is the Relic of Desolation and Enslavement, it is the opposite of the Saving Thing. The LOTR is a story of the deathknell of an ancient evil but it is not the replacement of that evil with a New Life, just a New Age. But just like the real Christian myth there still lingers in the story the powers of ancient paganism and the Old or First Life. In others words the LOTR is a Christian myth told as a pagan story. So it had to be inverted. Christ never shows, he seeps in. And Bombadil is that ancient paganism, and it seems very likely to me he is far older than that. That is why his natural Realm is the Old Forest. He’s always fascinated me and if you ask me Tolkien did a superb job of laying clues without actually describing much about the man. Because if he is First Life then you can’t really describe him. He’s undifferentiated, and yet everything too. But above all he’s just freakin dangerous. As dangerous as it gets. And you just can’t cut a character like that loose in your story. He’s way too big to be cut loose. Absolute evil you can control, you can fight against, you can kill, and you can overcome. Life itself, and the outright barbarity and bloodiness and butchery of it (and it is, youre just shielded from it most of the time), good luck with that one. You’re sure as hell gonna need it.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 19:48:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015