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If I only had a Bombadil... - Page 6

© Michael Martinez

How can someone who is "not important...to the narrative" also represent "something [the author feels] important"? That makes no sense, except when presented as discussion of what the story is about, not of what the plot of the story is. The story is about "tyranny against kingship". Tom is neither a tyrant nor a king because he has "renounced control". So J.R.R. Tolkien never suggested that Tom Bombadil was not an important part of the story. Quite the contrary, he "would not have left [Bombadil] in, if he did not have some kind of function." What is that function which Tolkien felt was so important? In Letter 153 Tolkien wrote:

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 inquiring mind, a spirit coeval 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 state and content of that part of the Universe.

To Tolkien, therefore, Bombadil represents a symbolic part of the whole, necessary and vital to the completeness of the World. Without Bombadil Middle-earth is not what Tolkien intends it to be. Bombadil may seem playful and goofy, but he is a guardian and mentor to the Hobbits. He restrains the Old Forest, which had once attacked the Hobbits (and Merry notes when he leads the others into the Old Forest that "something makes paths. Whenever one comes inside one finds open tracks...." And Bombadil also watches over the Bree-folk, whose land is very close to the Barrow-downs, and who might be threatened by the Wights were they not held in check. And Bombadil also preserves the knowledge of Aragorn's people, and he interacts with them and with the Elves. He recalls the beauty of an ancient Numenorean lady of Cardolan, and takes her brooch for Goldberry so they can honor her, and he fulfills Gildor's request to help Frodo and the Hobbits on their journey.

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