I think I have a good idea of to who Tom Bombadil actually is

[SpencerC18]

I think Tom may be Tolkien's version of Father Time and his Goldberry mother nature, or maybe in a different view Tom is organic nature personified (Trees, grass, animals?) and goldberry is inorganic nature personified. (water, rivers) I don't know what do you think?

 

[ASLAN THE GREAT]

i think the same thing SpencerC18 i'm doing some researth on this topc and i will tell you wnat i frind out when i'm done

 

[ASLAN THE GREAT]

will i think you will this eassy on tom

 

[Gothmog]

ASLAN THE GREAT, is that essay by you or by someone else?

 

[SpencerC18]

Thanks for the essay. It was very enlightening!

 

[ASLAN THE GREAT]

it is by some one else that is only part of the paper i whould have posted all of it but it was to big

 

[ASLAN THE GREAT]

do you wnat me to post the rest of the eassy SpencerC18 ?????

 

[SpencerC18]

Sure if you'd like to I dont want to be a pain in the rump though.

 

[OldTomBombadil]

I think Tom may be Tolkien's version of Father Time and his Goldberry mother nature, or maybe in a different view Tom is organic nature personified (Trees, grass, animals?) and goldberry is inorganic nature personified. (water, rivers) I don't know what do you think?

Those are interesting theories. Do you have any evidence to support them? Certainly something has led you to form those conclusions.

My thoughts...

Certainly Tom is surrounded with nature imagery, for example--

A door opened and in came Tom Bombadil. He had now no hat and his thick brown hair was crowned with autumn leaves.

--and in a letter written to Stanley Unwin (publisher of The Hobbit) in 1937 Tolkien referred to Bombadil as

"...the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside..."

Tom was definitely in close communion with nature. He spoke to badgers, otters, and several sorts of birds. (Refer to "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and "Tom Bombadil goes Boating".)

Most notably he had the power to quiet Old Man Willow. Goldberry tells the hobbits that Tom is "the Master of wood, water, and hill" although the "trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves."

I don't think Tom himself was a personification of organic nature, however. It seems to me that Treebeard would fit this description more closely, but the Ent is merely the oldest of the shepherds of the trees rather than some great nature spirit.

Goldberry does not seem to fit the image of Mother Nature. Remember that she is the River-daughter, her mother is the River-woman. (See again the link above for "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil".) If anything, Goldberry seems to be some sort of water nymph.

Tom's mission to collect water-lilies is most curious--

'Did you hear me calling, Master, or was it just chance that brought you at that moment?'

...'Did I hear you calling? Nay, I did not hear...But Tom had an errand there, that he dared not hinder.'...

I had an errand there: gathering water-liles,
green leaves and lilies white to please my pretty lady,
the last ere the year's end to keep them from the winter,
to flower by her pretty feet till the snows are melted.
Each year at summer's end I go to find them for her,
in a wide pool, deep and clear, far down Withywindle;
there they open first in spring and there they linger latest...

--as is the description of Goldberry as the hobbits enter Tom's cottage:

Her long yellow hair rippled down her shoulders; her gown was green, green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew, and her belt was of gold, shaped like a chain of flag-lilies set with the pale-blue eyes of forget-me-nots. About her feet in wide vessels of green and brown earthenware, white water-lilies were floating, so that she seemed to be enthroned in the midst of a pool.

Given the importance Tom places on this task leads me to think that if for some reason he was not able to collect the water-lilies, Goldberry would return to the deep weedy pool inhabited by her mother.

I think a closer fit to Mother Nature would be Yavanna Kementári, the Valier (female Vala) who created the Two Trees of Valinor and whose special providence was the plants and animals dwelling in Middle-earth. Yavanna means "giver of fruits" while Kementári means "Queen of Earth" in the High Elven tongue (Quenya).

As far as inorganic matter personified, my thoughts are drawn to Caradhras, one of the mountains of Moria.

'We cannot go further tonight,' said Boromir. 'Let those call it the wind who will; there are fell voices on the air; and these stones are aimed at us.'

'I do call it the wind,' said Aragorn. 'But that does not make what you say untrue. There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world that have little love for those that go on two legs, and yet are not in league with Sauron, but have purposes of their own. Some have been in this world longer than he.'

'Caradhras was called the Cruel, and had an ill name,' said Gimli, 'long years ago, when rumour of Sauron had not been heard in these lands.'

But even if there was a great spirit of the mountain it would be localized, much as Tom is (self) confined to his own little land.

 

[ASLAN THE GREAT]

ok i will have to frind the site were i got it from and then i will

 

[Gothmog]

ASLAN THE GREAT.

Please do not post the rest of the essay on TTF. Instead post the link to the site where the essay can be found.

 

[SpencerC18]

Well Tom makes me think of Father Time, simply because he was here when Arda was first formed. And also he seems to me to personify organic nature for things that you stated above.

 

[Morgul Agent]

The true answer is that Tom is based on a toy that Tolkien's children owned.

But as for who he 'was', I think your Father Time theory is the best I've ever heard! I've heard that he was Eru/Iluvatar, Manwe, even Tolkien himself, but none of those ideas really stand up.

I seem to remember that Tom almost stood in defiance of time, and that he never changed while time flowed around him. In a way, this kind of fits the Father Time theory as well.

 

[Alcuin]

The true answer is that Tom is based on a toy that Tolkien's children owned.

I like that, Morgul Agent! I’ve failed to notice that along the way, or at least to remember it. Do you have a citation on it, and can you elucidate?

The classic discussion on Tom Bombadil by Tolkien is in Letter 153 to a Mr. Peter Hastings.

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 and Agriculture. ...

There is a good deal more. If you are interested, you should get hold of a copy of Letters of JRR Tolkien and read the entire letter. Many libraries have copies.

 

[OldTomBombadil]

The true answer is that Tom is based on a toy that Tolkien's children owned.

I like that, Morgul Agent! I’ve failed to notice that along the way, or at least to remember it. Do you have a citation on it, and can you elucidate?

Humphrey Carpenter in his biography of J.R.R. Tolkien provides some history of the character Tom Bombadil:

...Tom Bombadil was a well-known figure in the Tolkien family, for the character was based on a Dutch doll that belonged to Michael. The doll looked very splendid with the feather in its hat, but John did not like it and one day stuffed it down the lavatory. Tom was rescued, and survived to be the hero of a poem by the children's father,"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", which was published in the Oxford Magazine in 1934.

 

[Morgul Agent]

Thanks Tom, I could never have found the quotes myself, I only remembered reading about that.


Imagine if the maker of the toy ever realized that he had created Tom Bombadil!

 

[e.Blackstar]

That's a good point, Spencer.