Posted on 03/15/2002 6:54:33 AM PST by HairOfTheDog
I think we should insist on imperial pints. :)
Agtgments Against Inclusion of Bombadil
B.R.
I have counted myself among Tom Bombadil's most ardent admirers for more than 25 years. However, though he is among my favorite characters in the Triliogy, I am very much in favor of the decision not to include him in the upcoming films. This is because his character is complicated and, if the script does not provide sufficient background (going all the way back to the first chapter of the Silmarillion), the audience will most likely be confused.
On the surface, Tom Bombadil is a comic character – prancing about in those dreadful yellow boots and belching out egocentric poetry of dubious quality. Yet his command over Old Man Willow and the Barrow Wights bespeak the absolute power he wields in the Old Forrest. What are audiences to make of this creature who claims to have lived since the First Age and calls himself Eldest (his Elvish name is Iarwain Ben-adar which means something like "oldest fatherless")? Is Bombadil some sort of Paul Bunyan of the Old Forest or is he a kindly sylvan spite? In fact, Tom Bombadil seems to have been one of the Maiar – one of the lesser Ainur, or "holy ones," that had a direct hand in the Blakean formation of Middle Earth that Tolkien describes in the Silmarillion. To put this in context, among the other Maiar inhabiting Middle Earth in the Third Age were Olorin (Gandalf), Curunir (Saruman), and Sauron. Pretty impressive colleagues for the red-faced goof of the Old Forest! The identification of Bombadil as Maiar makes Gandalf's visit to him at the end of ROTK all the more poignant. Gandalf had to inform his fellow Maiar that the demise of Sauron marked the end of their involvement in Middle Earth. It was time for Bombadil to leave his beloved forest and the rest of Middle Earth to the mortal races and to return Undying Lands. (Except for the last sentence, which is pretty much my own interpretation, the source of all this is David Day's Tolkien Bestiary.)
So for me Bombadil has a this fin-de-sicle role. His departure from Middle Earth brings closure to the Immortal races' meddling in the affairs of Middle Earth – a meddling brought to a head in Sauron's rise and fall. I find all this quite interesting, but I don't think that it needs to be hashed out in film.
Another reason why the Bombadil episodes are probably best left out of the films is that Tolkien himself did not seem to consider them terribly important. I recall reading a Tolkien biography in which the author asked Tolkien what the character of Bombadil was all about. I have since forgotten Tolkien's exact response (and no longer possess the biography), but the gist was that Bombadil was kind of thrown in at the last moment. Tolkien just needed something interesting to happen to the Hobbits on their way to Rivendell. I am sure that the movies will have plenty of other interesting things to make up for the absence of Old Tom's frolics.
I lent my copy of FotR to a friend < sob >, so it's going to be difficult to do much original commentary.
I surely do enjoy everyone's insights, though.
The forest is indeed a mysterious and sometimes seemingly miscievous place. I can recall many "odd" experiences in the forests of various places. Your eyes and ears can play tricks on you under the best of circumstances. A moving shadow accompanied by the rustle of dried leaves from a whisper of wind can become a hungry black bear just out of one's view. A slow, steady breeze can be almost musical, and it isn't hard to imagine enchanting voices in it. Lightening bugs in the woods at night as you walk along a path can take on the magic of fairy lights. And what child has not been frightened at one time or another by the long spindly arms of a tree reaching out in the shadows scratching against a window pane, thinking that surely it was some other worldly monster come after them?
It is very easy for me to understand and relate to our little friends' plight, and even moreso when we consider that, except for Merry, the forest was an altogether unfamiliar place to them.
Not to overstate the obvious but I don't think these trees could be considered normal by any stretch of the imagination!
I want to thank you and the participants for a most enjoyable hour or so. I am currently re-reading the trilogy, but many, many things I didn't know about or notice have been discussed here. I don't know that I will be a regular participant, but I certainly will be a regular reader of this thread.
It is heartening to know that there are so many who love this book, and it is very nice on a rainy, chilly evening to read this discussion, which reminds me of friends chatting around a fire.
Thank you to all of you!
Consider perhaps that they did not exactly "choose" to do so. I think it was more like what could be compared to a heaviness that one might experience with certain kinds of drugs.
Let me recount a personal experience I had that I think makes an even more fitting comparison. I was always a vivid dreamer but like so many people, I had difficulty remembering a lot of the details of my dreams, so during one period of time I decided to keep a dream journal. It proved to be very effective as a means of recalling the dreams but there was a totally unanticipated side effect. I would have days that being awake seemed more like dragging a painfully dense physical body through a dream. And it was literally almost painful and completely beyond my capability to control. Try to imagine moving through an atmosphere with the resistance against you something like that of moving underwater and you will get the idea. It seemed to be not such a great idea to muddy the boundaries between waking and sleeping.
I suspect that it was something of that kind of irresistable heaviness that the hobbits were experiencing. Add to that an other worldly sleepiness combined with their already tired bodies, and it makes sense that they couldn't help but succumb.
Now, that said, there is a question I have. Perhaps it is answered in the book but I have been good and not read ahead and I don't recall from earlier readings. What was Tom Bombadil's relationship with the trees? He reminded me of a kind of Middle Earth Paul Bunyan in his general presence and demeanor. Did he just "happen" along at that time or did he hear their call for help? Or did he perhaps learn of their presence from the trees themselves?
Spoiler Alert?
Is this the guy that turned into a bear or something like that?
I think that's a very good way to describe it.
Aaahhh yes! That's the one had confused with Bomabadil. He turned himself into a bear or somethng didn't he?
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