this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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I'm also fine with Tom not being in the movies, for exactly the reason you're saying.
I also selfishly want him on screen just to stare at, I'd love like a whole 45 minute cutscene or entirely separate production laboriously following the details of his actions and behavior that are in the book. I don't even care that his ultimate nature is a mystery. Honestly, I just love his buoyant singing and style.
Did you read that theory about him being the song of the ainur? It's a great read. One of the nerd of the rings or other fans do a summary video of it on YouTube if you want to cut down the reading time.
That's totally fair :). You like what you like! I haven't heard of many people who are big fans of Tom Bombadil, but it makes me happy to know you seem to love those chapters!
Yes, I've heard this theory! Honestly, when I first read the books I didn't really appreciate Bombadil, and I think this helped me appreciate them a lot more. I think how weird Bombadil is made them hard to read for me. They're so unexpected that it's almost hard to fit them in your head and have a clear mental image of what's going on, you know? Also I just find songs hard to read... Which is problematic for these particular books, haha.
Yeah, I totally get what you're saying, his presence is a bit of a non-sequiter in the flow of a grand adventure getting underway.
I had the opposite reaction upon meeting Tom for the first time in the books, reading the Lord of the rings the first time was not exactly boring but felt more like a chore than many novels I read(and I do feel like if I went through them again, I'd enjoy them more now), but the section where bombadil showed up is like this bright light in my memory where some indefinable quality of the story fell into place for me and just made sense. I don't know if it's the musical nature of the elf language songs in every culture or how important nature is to the world without any obvious deities or practices of worship in the lotr,, but when tom showed up I instantly felt like "oh, here he is", and although I never got an answer regarding his ultimate nature, it always seemed like he played this indispensable role inside of that musical natural world.
Yeah. I think if nothing else it does really stand out! It definitely feels like it's really important and significant... But in a way that sort of isn't to everything that's going on in the story? Which I guess is kind of exactly what Bombadil is... They're some ultimate power that's just there, but doesn't really care too much about the goings on aside from in their little insular region. I think it didn't really sit well with me that Gandalf was like "no, Bombadil won't really care about the ring," though... Because I think when we encounter Bombadil they're a little sporadic, but they clearly care enough to help all of the main characters and didn't really seem inattentive in any way to me.
I had read the books after I had already seen the movies so I was kind of confused when I first encountered Bombadil. I imagine that makes them stick out even more... Makes Bombadil seem weirdly non-canon, which is a bit of a shame, I think.
The first time I read the books I only got to a little after bombadil. Maybe halfway through fellowship, and then I quit.
And then the movies came out and I was like. Oh yeah this is way easier.
But then I was teaching a student who was obsessed with the books and had read every tolkien work related, so I finally went back.
And it's so funny. You mentioned that quote by gandalf because again I had the opposite reaction. When gandalf said that Tom wouldn't care about the ring, I just had this feeling of "Well of course not, that isn't his concern."
I just had this bizarre connection to how peculiar though powerful Tom was, I guess.
Yeah if they find a letter in 20 years that tolkien wrote to his editor that tells them to just take Tom out of the final draft because he's still figuring out what to do with him ultimately, I would think" Oh of course, that Tom guy is practically an anachronism in lotr."
Structurally, sure, take him out, but for just my feeling of the whole world, I do like enigmas and idiosyncrasies and Tom is a haiku in a hurricane.