Quote:
Originally Posted by Wiglaf  Tom is fun, but he doesn't really fit. However, how would you fit in the old forest and the barrow downs without him? I think he can handle the ring because he is unconcerned with things outside of his little area of interest. Besides, he only has it for a few moments. If he pocessed it instead of barrowing it and his little realm was threatened, the ring quite possibly could affect him. |
I'd say that doesn't quite agree with the views expressed in the Council of Elrond, where it is asked whether the Ring ought to be sent to him; the view of the more experienced (including Gandalf) there is that, though he would take it if asked, he simply wouldn't see the importance of it, and would be a most careless guardian -- unaffected by the Ring to the degree that he would simply treat it as a trinket and forget about it or perhaps lose it....
Marvin, what you say above rather ties in with some of what Tolkien was saying, I think; because Bombadil is so self-contained, so centered, as it were, such things as the rings of power simply have no attraction (or any other effect) upon him....
As Tolkien was a very religious man, and as a lot of that permeates his writing, I suppose you could say that Tom is symbolic of the
Unfallen Man -- a glimpse, perhaps, of one possible variation of such, at any rate....
It might help for those who haven't to take a look at the set of verses involving him in
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil -- the first two poems give quite a bit of information (if jovially written) on Tom, including the original uses of Old Man Willow and the Barrow-Wights, as the verse was written long before those chapters in LotR were even conceived....