Who Is Tom Bombadil?
The question of who Tom Bombadil is has puzzled Tolkien’s readers ever since he came out. Maiar? Valar? Man? Elf? Something else? He seems to possess certain traits which imply or exclude each of these, and the result is quite a lot of confusion.
Now, I almost want to throw my hat in the ring. I too had a hypothesis, for all of thirty seconds, one which worked really well. Then I remembered something Goldberry said about him, and that hypothesis went out the window.
See, Bombadil can’t be man, elf, or any other Child of Iluvatar. His narration of the world “when only the Elf-sires were awake” puts paid to most of these possibilities, but the statement he makes regarding himself soon thereafter sets aside even these: “He [Tom] knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside” (All quotations not marked otherwise are from Chapter 7 of The Fellowship of the Ring).
Bombadil, clearly, falls into that odd category of being who, though not explicitly Maiar or Valar, enter Tolkien’s world from the same origin, like the Ungoliant if not so maleficent.
The hypothesis I briefly entertained, in fact, was that Tom Bombadil is a manifestation or theodicy of Eru Ilvatar. The marriage to Goldberry, while a little difficult for this hypothesis, was no true problem, as marriage is a reflection of God’s relationship with His people (a fact Tolkien would heartily agree with, in my understanding of Catholic theology), and the fairy-tale expression of theology might well be loose in its expression. Moreover, Bombadil does have a sort of separation from the powers of Arda which speaks credibly to being their elder by virtue of creation (and he is Eldest, as he says, as a creator would be).
The reason I abandoned it so quickly is the passage which set me onto my current, less-than-scientific conclusion: Goldberry’s statement that “The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master.”
In the foreword of the book, Tolkien states, “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.” Here we have a marvelous summation of what I termed analogy versus symbolism, with allegory being the complete domination of symbolism over analogy.
I hold that Bombadil is best described as the First Steward of Arda. He is not the owner of the land (Goldberry assures us of this), but he does rule over it, guiding it to its proper end (including the River’s daughter, Goldberry). He lives out Tolkien’s view of dominion, lives out the Dominion Mandate (Gen. 1:28, 9:1,7). He also seems so like Iluvatar because he lives out to the fullest the Image of God which is the essence of personality and humanity (Gen. 1:26).
Bombadil is not an analogical representation of the Ideal Man. No, Bombadil is a being of somewhat mysterious origin who lives out the archetype of humanity to its potential. His nature is thus mythic even in Middle Earth’s myths, for he is not touched by the sin which the rest of the world is touched by. Arda is, as Tolkien’s writing on ‘Morgoth’s Ring’ makes clear (found in Vol. 10 of The History of Middle Earth), tainted by Morgoth’s part in creating it, making it his One Ring in a way (with more resilience and less power amplification than Sauron’s One Ring). The Children of Iluvatar, while not directly tainted (being Eru’s pure work), are still tainted by this corruption and have given way to much evil. Bombadil, so far as we see, has not done so; he is whole, boisterously so. Thus the utter invalidity of the One Ring’s power with regard to him. Thus his distance from the narrative and his metaphysical solidity, so that it passes through him rather than he through it.
Bombadil lasts in us not merely because he’s amusing or eccentric but because he’s an example of man living up to his calling. Bombadil has true dominion over his portion of the world without claiming (as Sauron, Saruman, and Denethor claim) actual ownership of it; Bombadil lives without regard for wickedness’s power (having none of the “vice that gives temptation force” – St. Patrick’s Breastplate). His state of archetypical excellence, however, justifies even instinctively the necessity that he does not step outside his land into the wider world: the Steward may not leave the land he stewards.
In deference to Tolkien’s stance on allegory, I must hasten to add that much of this theological prognostication falls into two camps. First, it may function as an application of what Tolkien wrote, applying its ideas and theology without taking the application as commanded by the author. Second, it may work as a foundation for the narrative role and weight of Bombadil, how Tolkien chose to shape his role in the narrative, whether consciously or simply as an intuitive application of inculcated and digested theology. Neither option makes Bombadil into an allegory, imposed by the author to teach; in both, he is a being within the story- just one who lives in a particular way which can be applied with benefit to our souls.
