Asklemmy

43945 readers

638 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

174

What is Tom Bombadil? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by abbadon420@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

92 comments fedilink hide all child comments

He is not a hobbit, neither a man, but what is he? Is he a dwarf? A wizard? A god? Something else entirely?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Pringles@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

This comes closest of the answers in this thread, imo. Tom Bombadil was a figurine/puppet Tolkien or his kids owned and he would devise stories around it. He included it in the main narrative as a sort of mental resting point, where both the reader and the hobbits come at peace for a brief moment. It's completely separate from the main narrative and it doesn't cleanly fit in the story. I think of it as Tom Bombadil, Goldberry and their house basically being in another dimension, which is why neither time nor the ring affect them.

If you are interested in it, Tolkien discussed the nature of Tom Bombadil in several letters and there are some decent youtube videos on the subject.