Who is Tom Bombadil?

who is Tom Bombadil he's one of the most powerful characters in the Lord of the Rings world and yet also one of the most enigmatic so who is he and whose side is he on if anyone's hi everyone this is Robert welcome to in deep geek this video is brought to you by my wonderful patreon community I am now creating regular j.r.r tolkien and Lord of the Rings content on this channel that's as well as the usual Game of Thrones and Westworld videos if you're interested in seeing more please click on the subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen and the bell icon Tom Bombadil is one of the most enigmatic characters in the Lord of the Rings he was left out of the films and has been similarly admitted from most other adaptations to the frustration of some fans and delight of others but it's easy to understand why he doesn't fit he almost always speaks or sings in silly rhyme in 7 beat meter dresses in ridiculous clothes and cares little about the outside world but is as knowledgeable and powerful and generous of spirit as any other character we meet he talks about matters of great importance but almost always in a whimsical joking way and he helps the hobbits freely without ever really taking their side as I said he doesn't fit easily into the often otherwise clear good versus evil battle of the Lord of the Rings the history of the character is very different to that of the other characters we know who mostly evolved through the process of writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Tom Bombadil was invented before either book he was inspired by and named after a Dutch doll Tolkien's children had had which had been accidentally flushed down the toilet Tolkien wrote silly rhymes and poems about Tom Bombadil in which he was some kind of nature spirit of the English countryside in which his family were growing up The Adventures of Tom Bombadil a poem was published in 1934 and describes Tom Wonder apparently aimlessly through the countryside as various characters including some others who made it to Lord of the Rings like old man willow and Barrow white try to capture him Tom Bombadil is singularly not bothered by their attempts and defeats them with the power of his words he ends up capturing gold berry the river woman's daughter who appears again as his wife in the Lord of the Rings so Tom Bombadil as some kind of expression of nature as well as gold Bree old man willow and the Barrow White's were present in Tolkien's imagination well before the writing of the Lord of the Rings or even The Hobbit that early poem and the later poem Tom Bombadil goes boating present a picture of a being who is somehow above or outside normal laws of created beings he commands those who get in his way to return to their natural existence and they do Tom Bombadil goes boating also includes him visiting farmer maggot in the Shire placing it firmly in middle-earth Tom and farmer maggots family drink and dance and generally enjoy life before Tom heads back home again this is a tale of experiencing life and living in the moment as we might say today we'll come back to this but this is a really important part of who he is and it also sets up a nice little reference back to the poem in The Lord of the Rings when Tom Bombadil mentions his friend farmer maggot as a complete aside here farmer maggot really is one of the most underrated characters in the Lord of the Rings as well as being high in Tom Bombadil estimations he actually faced down one of the male's girl who came to his door telling him to be off or he'd call his dogs on him another example of how hobbits are capable of great courage when required anyway it is in The Lord of the Rings that we learn the most about Tom Bombadil the hobbits meet him when he rescues merry and pippin from old man willow he was apparently just passing by collecting water lilies for his wife called Bree and as in the poems he commands old man willow to let them go and sings it to sleep Tom then shelters the hobbits for a couple of days before sending them on their way refreshed and reinvigorated during those couple of days though lots of odd things happen Frodo for example has a couple of dreams which seem like true dreams one is of Gandalf where he has been captured by Saruman and the other appears to be a premonition of him sailing into the west from the Grey Havens Tom tells them stories and sings to them and shows an astonishing ability to be unaffected by the One Ring the only person we ever see who is completely unaffected by it he can still see Frodo when Frodo wears it and when Frodo gives it to him Tom puts it on and he doesn't disappear he then does a little magic trick with it making it disappear and then reappear in his other hand Tom rescues them again when they fall prey to the Barrow Wight and sets them on their way once more and that's the last we see of him the Council of Elrond briefly consider him as a keeper of the ring it doesn't affect him after all but Gandalf counsels against it Tom wouldn't understand the importance of what he is being asked to do and would most likely forget about the ring or lose it quickly so who is Tom Bombadil well he certainly grew in power and significance from the character talking about in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by the time of The Lord of the Rings he seems to be above petty squabbling 'he's like the War of the Ring happily unaffected by the power of the one thing everyone is fighting over and it's made clear that he is old very old perhaps the oldest being middle-earth Elrond calls him older than the old and Tom Bombadil himself calls himself the eldest he isn't God or any kind of representation of that Tolkien was very clear on that he's something else entirely this is what Tolkien wrote in a letter to a reader 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 and he represents something that I feel important so perhaps the reason why Tom Bombadil feels so odd a character is precisely because he is a comment by Tolkien or a representation of something he thinks is important rather than being there purely as a part of the story he explains what this comment he is making through Tom Bombadil might be in another letter 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 saved 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 take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself watching observing and to some extent knowing then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you and the means of power quite valueless in other words Tom Bombadil is an expression of delight in things as they are the natural world people life things as they are on their own terms not just thinking about how you could use them Tom Bombadil is an expression of delight and wonder in what is around us and enjoying it in the moment this conclusion I think is underlined by the last time he is mentioned by Gandalf at the end of The Lord of the Rings Gandalf's life the mission in middle-earth is complete he and the other history were sent to middle-earth to advise and encourage the free peoples of that land against Elrond and with Sauron now gone Gandalf will also return home to the undying lands all that is left for him to do is say his farewells and his priority is not to pay a last visit to the Shire say but to visit Tom Bombadil I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil such a talk as I have not had in all my time he is a moss gatherer and I have been a stone doomed to rolling but my rolling days are ending and now we shall have much to say to one another while Gandalf was out doing things advising Kings leading missions and fighting the good fight he had no point of reference with Tom Bombadil Gandalf was all about doing whereas Tom Bombadil was and is all about being now they will have much to say to one another and simply enjoy each other's company Tom Bombadil is an enigma deliberately placed by Tolkien because he is both unimportant to the plot the film's work perfectly well without his presence and incredibly important to understanding the meaning tokine wants us to know that striving fighting darkness and doing the right thing are important but they are not everything sometimes we need to just sing silly songs to our friends enjoy the natural world around us and just be like Tom Bombadil if you'd like to see more videos on the world of JRR tolkien and the lord of the rings please click on the link to the playlist on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get 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Channel: In Deep Geek

Views: 371,624

Rating: 4.9673319 out of 5

Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, lord of the rings, hobbit, tolkien, jrr tolkien, tom bombadil explained, tom bombadil lord of the rings, tom bombadils song, tom bombadillo, tom bombadil, who is tom bombadil lord of the rings, who is tom bombadil really, who is tom bombadil, lord of the rings tom bombadil, lord of the rings tom bombadil song, tom bombadil theory, tom bombadil theories

Id: jDqYInyet3I

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020