Okay, I didn’t remember correctly. Hey, I’ve only read the thing once. (Well, I might have read that part 3 times - it’s in the first half of the first book). So where were the Hobbits headed at that time, and why again did Frodo have the ring, if it wasn’t to do something with it?
Let’s look at it from the flipside, how do you trust Tom to take the ring seriously? I mean, he treats it as if it is nothing, and tells Frodo that it’s no big deal. Would you not feel a little strange handing off the biggest Evil object you’ve ever encountered to the safe protection of a guy who tosses it around like a penny? What about him strikes you as someone who really gets how important it is?
As Gandalf says, he wants it destroyed, not hidden away somewhere so that someone could eventually stumble onto it again. If there’s one thing the ring can do, it’s wait.
“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 each other…”
What strikes me is that he’s immune to it. Should I give it to Gandalf? Heck, no; Gandalf himself explains how it would tempt him and why he shouldn’t carry it. Should I give it to Frodo? I’m pretty sure the guy would change his mind before he could drop it in the lava, succumbing to its influence and putting the ring on his finger to declare himself the new power in the realm. Who else – aside from the guy who goes around rescuing our heroes before giving them useful information and equipment – can handle the ring without being corrupted?
Whoever (the hell) Tom Bombadil is, he wouldn’t be Tom Bombadil if he was the sort to traipse off on some quest. While benevolent, it’s not for him to order the world. Gandalf has a similar attitude, his responsibilities are also limited. After the defeat of Sauron it is time for the rule of men, for good and ill. He leaves the Hobbits to deal with the problems in The Shire, although he is confident they are up to the task.
Consider that both Gandalf and Bombadil are beings of a higher order than men. If they do not set limits upon themselves, would they not inevitably become tyrants? The dictatorship of Bombadil would indeed be terrible, with enforced singing, capering and hey-dol-a-dillos.
The four hobbits are on their way from Frodo’s new house in Crickhollow to The Prancing Pony in Bree, where they expect to meet Gandalf. I think Gandalf mentioned a backup meet in Rivendell, but Frodo’s aiming for Bree, and not really thinking beyond that point.
I don’t think there’s been any discussion whatsoever of destroying the Ring at this time. I’m sure Gandalf has it in mind, but I don’t think he mentioned it to Frodo, who is already frightened as it is.
I completely agree with this. It’s not trashing Bombadil to say that he’s not the appropriate one to carry the Ring to Oroduin. Bombadil himself would say so in a heartbeat. I’m not sure he can leave the area around the Old Forest, and he has only the mildest interest in the rest of Middle-earth. He has way more important things to do, to his mind. He’s extremely powerful in his own bailiwick, but I think Tom is utterly parochial in his interests.
To me that doesn’t necessarily imply that Gandalf and Tom Bombadil had never actually met before, just that Gandalf had never had time to really kick back and chill with him.
Given how long Gandalf has been in Middle Earth, and the authority with which he speaks about Bombadil at the council of Elrond, I agree it’s safe to assume they have met before. It’s not just that Gandalf has been too busy to talk to him in depth before, it’s that his concerns have been very different. With Gandalf returning to the west and taking up a very different, much more passive life again, he does indeed have much to discuss with Bombadil.
To me, that doesn’t say they’ve never met or never talked, just that they’ve been very different people with very different personalities and interests. Only now Gandalf is changing, he’s “retiring” to the sendentary life that Tom lives, so he thinks finally they have something to share. And perhaps that Bombadil can give him pointers and such from experience that Gandalf lacks.
But that’s the point, we all agree that Bombadil can handle the ring without being corrupted - we see it happen. That’s not the point. The point is who can make the journey and destroy the ring. Tom does not display the willingness to do so, nor the gravity of awareness of what the ring represents. Since it’s nothing to him, he could just toss it in a corner of the Barrow and ignore it, where some hapless wanderer could stumble across it in a couple millennia and start the whole mess again. What about Tom strikes you that he would do anything else with it? That if the Council asked him, he’d be willing to leave his patch of woods to make that dangerous journey. The ring may not weigh him down, but I’m sure a Balrog would give him pause, and an army of orcs is nothing to sneeze at.
He’s got things that are more important to him. His patch of forest is more important to him than all of Middle Earth. He doesn’t seem inclined to see the forest for the trees, as it were. His attitude is very “Y’all have fun storming the castle.”
He doesn’t even offer to escort them all the way to Rivendell, what makes you think he’s going to accept a quest to Mordor?
[QUOTE=Irishman]
But that’s the point, we all agree that Bombadil can handle the ring without being corrupted - we see it happen. That’s not the point. The point is who can make the journey and destroy the ring. Tom does not display the willingness to do so, nor the gravity of awareness of what the ring represents. Since it’s nothing to him, he could just toss it in a corner of the Barrow and ignore it, where some hapless wanderer could stumble across it in a couple millennia and start the whole mess again. What about Tom strikes you that he would do anything else with it? That if the Council asked him, he’d be willing to leave his patch of woods to make that dangerous journey.
[/QUOTE]
That’s just it: the Council didn’t ask him. Multiple members of the Council wonder whether they should’ve asked him, or should even now ask him; someone else assumes Tom wouldn’t have come; someone else mentions knowing little of the guy besides his name. You’re assuming it’s nothing to Bombadil and he could just toss the ring in a corner and ignore it; I admit he has no “gravity of awareness of what the ring represents” back when the hobbits are likewise ignorant, but nobody tells him what they tell Frodo And Co, and so he never gets the chance to reply as Frodo does.
All we really know is that he treats the ring like what it is: an ordinary-looking piece of shiny metal that neither tempts him nor turns him invisible, nor lets anyone else vanish from his sight, and that no one has explained the importance of. Why, I have dozens of those next to me as I type this; until and unless someone tells me one is crucial to the future of the world, I treat 'em pretty much the way Tom treated that one. Yes, right down to performing sleight-of-hand tricks with 'em.
[QUOTE=Oy!]
It’s not trashing Bombadil to say that he’s not the appropriate one to carry the Ring to Oroduin. Bombadil himself would say so in a heartbeat.
[/QUOTE]
The characters in the book assume that – well, one of the characters in the book assumes that – and so no one actually asks Bombadil himself, instead giving the ring to someone who inevitably succumbs to its corrupting influence the way Bombadil wouldn’t.
can’t disagree with you Waldo - but as I pointed out before, Council was working with what info they had. Additionally they felt under some time pressure. It was urgent to make a decision after the attack by the ringwraiths. They prob felt they couldn’t risk the trek back to Bombadil to ask him.
Well, they did send out scouts and wait several months before they left. But I think its simpler than that. The council has absolute 100% trust in Gandalf. Gandalf said Bombadil wouldn’t be a safe guardian and can’t/won’t step foot out of his area. The council has no reason to believe Gandalf is lying to them or giving them advice which isn’t in the best interest of destroying the ring.
I admit he has no “gravity of awareness of what the ring represents” back when the hobbits are likewise ignorant, but nobody tells him what they tell Frodo And Co, and so he never gets the chance to reply as Frodo does.
[/QUOTE]
Given that Tom has a very clear memory of the circumstances and participants in the battles of the Barrow-downs back when the North-kingdom was defeated, and that he knows a fair bit about Barrow-wights, I find it very implausible that he doesn’t know or understand anything significant about the Ring.
Sure, you could make up a story about Tom being an undiscovered potential hero languishing in obscurity and ignorance who would have saved the day if only he’d had it properly explained to him that the day needed saving, but IMHO it just doesn’t ring (ha ha) true.
Tom Bombadil as Tolkien wrote him is just not that interested in getting involved with the affairs of mortals or making their quests his own. If he were that type of guy, he’d never have been content to linger so passively there in the Old Forest for all those millennia while desperate battles between the forces of good and evil were raging all around him. “Thanks for preserving my wife’s brooch in honor of her memory, dude, but where were you when the minions of Angmar were raping her on top of my blood-soaked corpse?”
Sorry, she didn’t get the summon-me song right. That should have been ‘By fire, sun and moon, hearken now and hear us’… Hearken.
Also, in defense of Frodo being a fine choice for ring disposal, hobbits alone had recently shown to be unique as far as corruptibility by the ring, (Bilbo giving it up willingly after 60 odd years ) Gandalf may well have known it would be impossible for Frodo or anyone else to intentionally destroy the ring, but he (like Tolkien who speculated about it in one of his letters) may have realized the way to get around that catch-22 is for the ring bearer to destroy himself along with the ring. A stout hearted, slow-to-corrupt hobbit would be as ideal a candidate to accomplish that as anyone.
Except for introducing himself by rescuing the mortals in question, and rescuing those mortals again when asked, and equipping them for their quest.
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as “undiscovered” and “obscurity”; the Council knows full well that Tom can wear the ring as if it were just an ordinary piece of jewelry; they just don’t think he’d bother holding on to it as he would, say, a brooch.
Yeah, like I said, Tom gives aid and comfort to people on his own turf. Remember when the hobbits beg him to accompany them to Bree, and he knows full well what they’re afraid of in the Black Riders?
Too bad, sorry guys, you’re on your own! “Tom’s country ends here, he will not pass the borders.”
Nope, Tom Bombadil as a quest hero is just not believable.
In fairness, though, that’s before the stakes are spelled out, right?
Still, in the interest of ending the thread-jack, I’ll gladly drop the matter for the moment rather than drone on about a counterfactual I of course can’t prove.
