Absolutely thought "I must be living in a bubble" when I read this: I don't think I've spoken to a single book-reader who wasn't vocally disappointed by the omission of Tom from the films. He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters.
Agree. Tom represented a couple of things for me when reading the books.
First, he represented all the small pockets of unknown magic that could exist in Middle Earth. I would stare at the map of Middle Earth in the front of the book and wonder about the parts not covered in either The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. What strange things might be there? Tom heightened my sense of wonder about the world.
But second, Tom showed up just as the hobbits seemed to have met their darkest hour. You can dismiss this as deus ex machina on the part of the author, but it was a needed break from the stress and anxiety that had been building to a crescendo at that point. And I thought perhaps Tolkien was suggesting that sometimes you have to trust in the benevolence of strangers — or that some higher power is watching over the most vulnerable.
And beyond that, I thought the first half or so of this reading (that Bombadil is a lot more than meets the eye) was also common.
But he is definitely one of the most interesting characters and one of the best ways the story shows it is taking place in a big world with a lot of different things going on.
> the first half or so of this reading (that Bombadil is a lot more than meets the eye) was also common
Certainly that he's more than meets the eye (that seems plain) but the conclusions here seem less common...
I think it's interesting to contrast the speculation in this article with the depiction of elves in The Hobbit (book) - much less obviously a benign force than as portrayed in LoTR.
The author's assumption - accepted as given at the outset - is that the "evil" within the Old Forest is genuine, rather than a representation of a certain perspective. The thesis is then that Bombadil must be guilty by association.
This initial assumption seems simplistic to me. A common trait of mystical (especially nature-connected) beings in northern European mythology (at least!) is a duality of intent - being a perhaps-positive yet untrustworthy force. This seems reflected in a lot of Tolkien's world; while Sauron / the Ring / others do have a more directly corrupt "evil" attributed to them, there's much more ambiguity elsewhere - it says of Old Man Willow that "his heart was rotten, but his strength was green": rotten != evil and in the context of nature has positive connotations (alcoholic fermentation) elsewhere in his writings. Green isn't necessarily positive either, but the usage here is notable.
It's admittedly in a different part of the book, so may be linguistic styling rather than lore-indicative, but the Old Forest felt more "wild" than "evil."
In the Old Forest, there were certainly dangers, including some lethal ones, but loosely organized and operating independently. More druidic.
Whereas Sauron / Morgoth were far more hierarchical in structuring their domains, exerted dominion over their forces, and attempted to implement a master plan.
The forests are selfish and harsh to outsiders but wish merely to sit and be left alone. The evil of Sauron and Saruman is their wish to spread and dominate (which puts Saruman in direct conflict with the forest, to his loss).
Interesting, because I've always seen the hobbits as being so insular that they wouldn't need any conspiracy forest to keep them inside the Shire: it was such a paradise (and most hobbits so "boring") that nobody felt any desire to venture outside. Bilbo and Frodo were very much viewed with suspicion for their world-wandering ways, after all.
I read the books as a kid, twice. I was glad they left Tom out of the movies. I mean, what he means to the story and the mythology is STILL being debated, 40 years after I read the books, and that was decades after they had been written. If Jackson had included him in the movies, he would have had to make an interpretation about his nature, one way or the other, or face endless waves of criticism from people (casuals) who don't understand that the character was left vague in the writing. I'm glad he didn't try to nail it down in the medium of film.
The thing is, he didn't need to be in the movies _per se_ --- they just needed to have the Hobbits swallowed up by Old Man Willow, then fade to black, then they awaken on the Barrow w/ a couple of swords, and the ponies tied up nearby, and a figure riding away on a pony humming/singing a tune.
Folks who had read the books would know what had happened, folks who hadn't would just have to accept it as a magical incident/rescue w/o explanation.
Jackson would've had to make an interpretation about his presentation, not about his nature. I see no reason a similar approach to his literary description couldn't be achieved cinematically.
Fwiw I would've cast Tom Waits. And had musical scenes.
> He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters.
Why? He doesn't actually do anything except drone on and on about the color of his boots. He doesn't advance the story in any way (which is why it is so easy to omit him in adaptations).
He's extremely mysterious and in a good way. He is one of the only characters able to just casually put on the one ring with seemingly no effect and then give it back immediately afterwards. I think he gives off eldritch horror vibes, but in a mostly benevolent way. If everyone else were ants, he would be an etymologist intrigued by our behavior or something.
> He is one of the only characters able to just casually put on the one ring with seemingly no effect and then give it back immediately afterwards.
OK, that's fair enough. But to my mind, this is just a setup that cries out for an explanation that never comes. It's a major flaw in the dramatic structure of the narrative, a bug not a feature.
But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.
One of Tolkien's goals was to create something which resembled history rather than literature. Or if not history, then mythology that plausibly belongs to a real place, rather than a neatly-constructed story. So, some of the things that he does are "janky" from a purely dramatic perspective, but fulfill that purpose.
A common example from Lord of the Rings is having many related characters with the same or similar name. The convention in literature is to make characters distinguishable for practical reasons, but in "real" history naming conventions are messy and people aren't always distinguishable. There are even real debates among historians about whether a name refers to multiple people or not!
Tom Bombadil is a similar thing. He serves no dramatic purpose. But a history, or a mythology, doesn't always have events that fit together in a neat way. Sometimes stuff just happens, or there are things that are only tangentially related. And it's difficult to draw a circle around events and say inside the circle is our story, and outside the circle not our story. There are other stories, intersecting.
In part, I think it's one of the ways he mimics the form of books like Beowulf or Gilgamesh or other works of that sort—that kind of thing tends to be full of digressions and whole scenes that simply seem like mistakes—dragging down the "momentum", not "advancing the plot"—if you're going by modern very-focused standards of what constitutes acceptable plotting, which of course is the kind of thing most people are used to reading/watching.
See, that's the best part. It's what makes people "fall into" Middle Earth. That there was whole parts of the backstory that don't get explained. That there are periods of history you get a glimpse into to believe there is a huge depth to it. That the way we see the continent now is not how it always was. Who were the barrow wights? Why were they cursed?
As a kid first reading it, I feared the barrow wights as much if not more than the Nazgul.
The whole aside was to show that the hobbits had truly "left the Shire" and that perils lay along the road in any direction they might turn. But, again, there were allies or, at least, guides all along that road as well.
Bombadil and Old Man Willow are a foreshadowing of the Ents to come.
The naive reader’s expectation of conformity to dramatic structure is an expectation that plenty of authors have played with, for reasons including stylistic effect, subtext, and for fun. It’s not a flaw, bug, feature, or other arbitrary and inappropriate use of software jargon.
Chekhov's Gun is but one playwright's opinion on what makes for "correct" dramatic structure.
As others have also stated, Tom is one of my favorite characters purely because he is left so unexplained. Tolkien sought to create a world. In order to create a world [0], it doesn't make sense for the whole of that world to be defined by a singular story or set of events. Least of all a world created by an author who so dearly loved folklore and mythology.
It's not that I'm taking Chekhov's Gun as an axiom. The rest of LOTR hangs together quite well on this criterion. I'm judging Tom by that standard. Gollum, for example, makes sense. In fact, Gollum is probably one of the best examples of a dramatically coherent character in all of literature. He is introduced as a bit player and ends up being a pivotal and very complex character, almost a protagonist in his own right. But that only happened (and let me apologize in advance for venting some frustration here) because he didn't just fucking vanish after being introduced!
How would one demonstrate a character who is so powerful that they can "just fucking vanish" without having them do just that?
You could go on to explain that fact or similar, but I think driving home that point any more than Tolkien did just muddies it and makes it more clumsy.
David Lynch directing The Lord of the Rings would be a fascinating experiment. Lynch would make the experience of the Ring-bearer, in particular, sublime.
The goal to some is the journey and not the destination. I wish I had a link, but there's a TikTok of some woman that always thought the Lord of the Rings looked stupid, but then her partner mentioned that it had all this backstory lore like the family trees and she then read all the books in like a week. She didn't care about the ring or Sauron, just the fun world building. I'm fairly similar.
I have a system that I use to rate movies: "Must see", "Worthwhile", "Wait for the video" and "Don't waste your time." After watching Mulholland Drive I had to invent a fifth rating: "I want those two hours of my life back."
Lynch fills his works with characters and scenes that are—at best—plot-adjacent, whimsical/incongruous/uncanny, and full of often-unexplained and apparently-metaphysical mystery or magic. He's as likely to let mood or theme drive the content of and editorial-decision-to-include a scene or a shot or an entire character(!), as plot. It makes sense you'd dislike his stuff if you don't like the Bombadil section of LOTR.
(this is not intended as some kind of judgement, to be clear, I was just curious if works with similar qualities had the same effect for you, or it was something specific to that kind of element being in LOTR in particular, maybe because of the context or something)
It's both. I like a story to go somewhere, to have a point. I want it to at least be possible to figure out what the fuck is going on, even if it requires some effort and isn't obvious on a first reading (or viewing in the case of movies). In fact, the best stories are the ones where you have to do some work (The Godfather is my poster child). But if I put in the work, I want it to at least be possible that I could figure it out.
LOTR is mostly like that. Most of the events make sense in the context of the overall arc of the narrative. If you ask, "Why is this scene here?" there is usually an answer.
Except Tom. He appears, puts on the ring, fails to disappear -- which is quite extraordinary! --- and that's it. The end. Toodle-oo. Vanishes entirely from the story without so much as a by-your-leave. Why was he introduced? To this day I have no idea. And that is why Tom bothers me particularly. With Lynch you know what you're getting. Tom seems like a bit of a bait-and-switch.
> He is one of the only characters able to just casually put...
He is the only character in the middle earth that can do that actually. The ring, and its immense power, has control over everyone else incl. Gandalf, Galadriel, and Sauron.
Tom represents the Great Mystery, the great unknown of the beyond that is all seeing and all knowing and all powerful. Omitting him is like omitting the whole premise of the book.
It's like making a movie based on the Bible but omitting the Resurrection of Jesus.
Sorry, but that just doesn't compute for me at all. Tom is a silly character with no gravitas. He puns his own name just to make it rhyme with "yellow" -- over and over again. And there is nothing in Tom's story that is even remotely comparable to the Resurrection. The Resurrection is a key event in the Bible story. It is something that happens to change the dramatic arc of all mankind. In Tom's story, nothing happens at all.
The scene at Mount Doom where the Ring is finally destroyed is analogous to the Resurrection, not Tom Bombadil.
Tom is perhaps silly, but just the fact that he can is seemingly immune to all the Ring can do (with it being implied to be the most powerful artifact in all of Middle Earth, strong enough to even influence Maia like Gandalf) makes him have enough gravitas. If anything, his silly antics make him even more intriguing: how did he gain that power and is it because or despite his silliness?
He advances the world and builds context for many elements in the later story. Fangorn has many parallels to the Old Forest, and much of the storyline involving Ents & Huorns benefits from the context given by the earlier encounters with Tom's neighbouring spirits (and his enchantment of them).
Perhaps it was the age when I first read the books (~12 or so years old) – but I loved the contrasts between the cozy world of the hobbits and the more savage, epic nature of the rest of Middle-earth.
For me, Tom Bombadil never fit well into either of these categories. There was a while where I heard about Tom Bombadil potentially being Eru Ilúvatar, but that theory has been found pretty lacking in various aspects, as well as having been debunked by Tolkien himself.
