From: bbfaus@wam.umd.edu (John E. Krokes)
Subject: Re: Tom Bombadil
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 06:34:10 GMT


Well, here's what I dug out of _The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien_ regarding
Tom Bombadil. I'm not sure if it sheds much light on TB's place in the
mythology, (other than saying "It's a mystery.") but it goes into his nature


letter 19 to Stanley Unwin 16 December 1937
[discussing possibility of sequel to _The Hobbit_]

Perhaps a new (if similar) line? Do you think Tom Bombadil, the
spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside, could
be made into the hero of a story?


letter 144 to Naomi Mitchison 25 April 1954
[responding to questions about page-proofs of first two volumes of
LOTR]

...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
taken 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
nevertheless 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.
     He has no connexion in my mind with the Entwives. What had
happened to them is not resolved in this book. He is in a way the
answer to them in the sense that he is almost the opposite, being
say, Botany and Zoology (as sciences) and Poetry as opposed to
Cattle-breeding and Agriculture and practicality.


letter 153 to Peter Hastings September 1954
[Peter Hastings, manager of a Catholic book-shop, had problems with
some of JRRT's metaphysics. Hastings said that Goldberry's
description of Bombadil: "He is." seemed to imply that Bombadil was
God. Tolkien's reply]

     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 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...
...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?...
...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 even remove 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. Even the Elves hardly show this. They are primarily
artists. Also T.B. exhibits another point in his attitude to the
Ring, and its failure to affect him. You must concentrate on some
part, 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 part of the
Universe.