http://km-515.livejournal.com/1042.html

Speculation but fun

I didn't realize people don't like Tom.



I don't want him to be evil.



Seriously though, doesn't Gamdalf basically offer up that Tom was a nature spirit of some sort? I know the write-up is just fun speculation, but I was wondering if I was misrembering? (Edited for my poor grammar).

nice

good nemesis for a 4th age adventure!

An interesting read. Wonderfully speculative logic.

Were he as powerful as he was and wanting to come into his own, would he not have oh .. kept the ring when Frodo offered it to him to see? Given his relative power over the ring by it not affecting him, surely he could (in the logic of the article) have bent it's power to his will to loose his chains and defeat any challengers.

I'd think that Tom letting the ring go to Sauron in the hands of a couple of Hobbits would have been a risky proposition at best and foolish for such an ancient power to give it up when the probability was that the Hobbits would fail, the ring to to Sauron, and well, then his plans would be hooped.

As was the speculation that should the Balrog have taken the ring and used it then Sauron would have probably been subject to the balrog - at least until Sauron could figure a way of getting the ring back.

Very cool, thanks.

I'm one of those who never could make sense of Tom, both in a story-sense (why did Tolkien bother?) and a continuity sense (why didn't he go clear out the barrows ages ago?), so I appreciate the author's thoughts on the matter.

-Jeff

Wonderful take on Bombadil - but I think at the heart of the matter is Tolkien's notion that nature in itself cannot be "evil", it can only be dark and dangerous. Evil, it seems to me, is always connected to corruption in Tolkiens works, and corrupted nature is very clearly distinct from uncorruptet nature - in the form of Trolls or Wargs, for example. Malevolent Huorns probably come closest do a middle-ground between nature and evil (even though I would say that they are, within Tolkiens metaphysical framework, dark and dangerous, but probably not evil).
For Tolkien, evil is a moral category, and Tom Bombadil is probably a kind of entity that exists outside morality. Casting him in a "darker" light is therefore actually quite easy and sensible, but if you do that, you get an entity that conforms more to a Lovecraftian notion of evil - an existential evil beyond moral categories, the evil of something primordial that simply doesn't care for humans, dwarves, hobbits or elves.
It's a matter of perspective - you could write a story about an "evil" Tom Bombadil without changing much (if anything) from what we learn about him in LOTR by just taking another perspective on what exactly constitutes evil.

Very well stated. This is exactly the side I took (of a discussion I had with a friend of mine about this "take" on Bombadil). In short, while I don't find this angle "wrong" particularly, it does seem counter to Tolkien's animist leanings.