Regarding Tom Bombadil, it is generally accepted that Tolkien through him into LOTR without much regard to what he was or how he fit in. And most readers feel he doesn’t fit.
On my last re-reading of LOTR, though, it struck me that the Bombadil sidetrack did actually serve a worthwhile plot purpose (well, actually two or three - the Barrows sequence did serve to show Frodo’s strength and it gave Merry a pretty important knife.) Without the side trip (ha) to Bombadil, would the hobbits have been able to safely make it to Bree? I think not. The black riders would have picked up their trail & overtaken them before Bree if they were not under the protection of the Weird One.
Well, the Peter Jackson movie (and the Ralph Bakshi one, for that matter) drop Tom Bombadil altogether, and moviegoers didn’t seem to think anything was wrong, so he could certainly have eliminated the Bombadil sequence without loss.
And Tolkien admitted that, after he got all the way through, he had to go back and do a lot of trimming. He could have eliminated Tom Bombadil and the many questions his presence raises at that point. But he didn’t. I think he liked the old Maia (or whatever the hell he was) too much, and left him in.
It is so completely different in flavor, maturity and style from the rest of the books that it cannot make it into any movie without a lot of changes. Unfortunately, Hollywood would likely insist on making him very dark and very scary, removing all of the humor and songs from those scenes.
I’ve never had any problems with him. Certainly, those bits of the book are somewhat tonally different, but then, so are the first couple of chapters of Fellowship (C’mon, the scene with the fox doing thinking commentary on ‘What the? Hobbits out at night? Camping?’ is completely out of line with the tone of the books later on.).
I like the Old Forest bits, and Bombadil, and the Barrow Downs. That said, this section is relatively painlessly excised. The BBC radio drama simply has the hobbits sneak into the old forest, and then cuts to a “And there’s Bree, up ahead.” moment, with the implication that going through the wood was enough to at least temporarily shake off the Riders. And Merry’s sword stroke simply works because he’s a hobbit, in much the same way that Eowyn’s strike works because she’s a woman.
I like the Old Forest sequence, I enjoy it, and I think it is woven into the story perfectly well enough. There are lots of other bits you can slice out without really affecting the overall narrative, but no one complains “All of Moria before the Balrog” doesn’t fit into the story or something. And actually, I’m not sure that your initial suppositions that “Tolkien put him in without much thought” or that “most” readers think he doesn’t fit, are correct.
I dislike Bombadil. I hate his singing. I hate his weird jolliness. I hate his irrelevance to the plot. Not only are his own scenes unnecessary, but he has to be explained away at the council in Rivendell which further drags down the narrative for no return in plot development. I don’t mind the Old Forest so much although it goes on for too long. And the Barrow Downs are interesting as well. Especially given the backstory on Merrys knife. But those could have been handled without Hippy Santa.
I agree that he doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the world… and I like it that way. Some things just don’t fit. That’s how life works. A world without any misfits in it rings much more untrue than one with a few.
Tolkien makes it very clear throughout the story that Middle Earth is an old world, that civilizations have risen and fallen and that changes (not always welcome ones) are coming. It isn’t surprising that he shows us vignettes of the ‘old’ places in Middle Earth, the places that have been forgotten or left along the wayside. It’s in keeping with the story. These sections may not be directly necessary to the narrative, but much of Tolkien isn’t. Middle Earth isn’t tidy. It has Ents and Orcs from the oldest of days. It has the Old Forest and the various elves who were there when Middle Earth is new. There are numerous instances where T discusses various bastions of the original world. And I think it serves to illustrate that while the hobbits seems very isolated in their bucolic, rural setting, that in previous times things were very different in their immediate neighborhood.
I agree with Hypno-Toad. It was necessary to show acquisition of the blades as one of them was required to destroy the Witch King. The scene in the Barrow Downs also showed that Frodo has some sand in him. However, the novel would have worked just as well if the halflings had handled the barrow wights and the old tree on their own. In fact, it would have made it a stronger book as they wouldn’t have had to be bailed out by Bombadil.
The Hobbits might have gotten along the road, skulking carefully, jumping down into ditches and shrubs every time a rider came along. They might have snuck their way into Bree.
But, certainly, the road would have been hugely dangerous. They might have been wise to dump the road and go cross-country.
Why didn’t the Black Riders just commit genocide on Bree? Trash the Prancing Pony completely, kill everyone under the roof, find the Hobbits, slay Strider, and leave the poor little hillside town burning?
Why did they back away from Weathertop when they were clearly more powerful than the party – Strider and four Hobbits? Two cases where brute force would have won the day for them.
(And, even granting that they backed away from Weathertop because they figured they’d won – Frodo has a fragment of Morgul blade in his shoulder – how was it that they lost contact with the party? They should have been shadowing them closely from that point on. It’s unforgivable for them to have lost them in the wilds.)
It’s kind of an episodic story and this is one episode. Is it a weaker episode? I guess, but it is not that long and I like it. I see no problem with it.
However, I do not blame any movie makers for deleting Tom.
The Ringwraiths were not physically powerful. Oh, sure, they were dudes with swords and armor, and any one of them could stand up to any untrained peasant when it came to brute force. But they were outmatched by Aragorn on Weathertop, or even by Farmer Maggot and his dogs. Their real weapon was fear, and while that wins battles, it doesn’t win straight-up fights.
Now, that just got me thinking. Lewis was a good friend of Tolkien, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published a few years before *Fellowship *- has there been any serious thought or commentary on Bombadil as a tribute or a lighthearted poke at Lewis for putting Santa into Narnia for no good reason?
Lasciel: I would say Santa’s appearance in TLTWATW did have a reason. It hinted that the Witch’s reign would soon be over. And Santa’s appearance didn’t take nearly as much verbiage as Bombadil’s did.
Trinopus: It may be that the Bree residents, allied with Strider, would have put up more fight than the Ringwraiths wanted. I think the innkeeper says in The Return of the King that they saw plenty of strange things during the War of the Rings. Since the town was still there, I think it’s safe to say that some Bree people had experience fighting nasties and/or some old weapons the Ringwraiths didn’t like. There were also more rangers and the Ringwraiths may have been moving cautiously to ensure they didn’t get into a fight with Strider’s entire band.
You raise some good points. I would say a possible answer to all of them is that Elrond, Galadriel, and others of the White Council might have been using magic to cloud the Ringwraiths’ minds, which were probably not much anyway since they were under Sauron’s domination.
I think one of the most unusual things about the whole Bombadil situation is that JRRT didn’t manage to retcon Tom into his earlier mythos, like he did so much of his later writings. He was the Master of flexing, stretching, adapting, and inventing new material when it came to trying to make it all fit together. And buried deep in some of his manuscripts are rudimentary attempts to make Tom fit better.
But I think he was, in the end, defeated in this venture because he didn’t really understand himself how TB came to be, nor how the concept could be fit into his subcreation.
Just my feeble maunderings on the topic after decades of reading waaaay too much obscure JRRT stuff.
I’ve often thought that this speculative post about Tom raises some good points. Tom’s realm is a place where evil flourishes and in Middle Earth, such a place could only be the realm of similarly-natured being.
I thought Tom Bombadil was a perfect fit in the book and I was expecting him to surface latter on. He was like a chess piece with a unique talent that could be used to nudge things back on track when things got tough. Alas, no.
I can’t agree with the last point. This was the very beginning of the hobbits’ journey. By the end of it, they maybe could have handled the wraiths, but not at the start, when they hadn’t really learned what fear or hardship or courage meant.
If you think about it, the experiences in the Old Forest and at the Barrow Downs, when the hobbits needed help, rather neatly bookends with Pippin & Merry escaping the Orcs in Rohan, and Sam and Frodo in Cirith Ungol. It’s an excellent illustration of how they’d grown and toughened.
I rather liked Tom and Goldberry. They knew the Dark, and stood against it by taking joy in the world as it was, without need to own it.
Chronos and The_Peyote_Coyote: Good points, both. Now, just in my opinion, I think four well-armed and armored ordinary guys (trained soldiers) could probably take the whole of Bree, if starting from an advantage of total surprise. Fear and chaos are remarkably effective force multipliers. But, yeah, Bree has been through some rough times, and a few men and Hobbits know how to hold a knife.
If the Black Riders knew who Strider really was, they could have gone for a strategic gambit, and let him stab one of them, knowing it would harm him, possibly fatally, and, while it could harm them, it couldn’t kill them. Infect The King Who Was To Come with the same sickness that nearly killed Frodo? Excellent trade-off!
(But…they had no clue. Strider was just a big guy with a strong Numenorean aura.)
Another thought, just a thought, about old Bombadillo; shouldn’t they in Buckland know him, and of Old Man Willow? Seems to me he’d come and see, visit Farmer Maggot, trade in butter and in mushrooms, maybe pipeweed also. Sure, he likes his loneliness, lives in isolation, but he’s such a jovial sort, look how he hosted Frodo. He likes a poem and a song, and so does his leman.
According to the History of the LOTR, Tolkien wrote TB before the LOTR (and possibly before The Hobbit). IIRC it was just a silly short story he made up for his children. When he was commissioned to write a sequel to The Hobbit he decided early on to include TB. At that point he envisioned the sequel to be light-hearted like its predecessor and TB fit right in. As the writing progressed, however, it took on a darker and more adult tone but Tolkien loved the TB character so much he couldn’t remove him.