euphronius posted:

No. It’s easy to classify him and Goldberry.

When the book came out it was a mystery yes. Now we have the Valaquenta and it’s trivial to identify them.

If you want to say that in the context of lord of the rings only Tom is a mystery ok. Goldberry is a nymph in that context. Tom is an ancient earth spirit.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Even with the silmarillion, local spirits of the earth and stream are the best "in universe" explanation. The maiar came from Outside.

RoboChrist 9000 posted:

Tom's always really bothered me because I feel like while him being unexplained and perhaps unexplainable is cool and fine, this coupled with his complete immunity to the ring - itself already a huge problem in my opinion - kind of is a big narrative problem that is made all the worse by how early in the story it comes up.

The central premise and threat around which the narrative turns is the idea that the Ring is insurmountable as a temptation; no one no matter how pure or good can long resist its allure or wield it for good. Gandalf and Galadriel, powerful and good beings, would become monstrous tyrants were they to wield it. The Ring *must* be destroyed because no one could be trusted to keep it secret, keep it safe.

Except we're barely out of Hobbiton and we've just run into some weirdo in the woods who is completely and utterly immune to the Ring. Literally the first guy we run into who isn't a Hobbit completely negates the central premise on which the conflict/story stands. And one could of course say/argue that Bombadil is unique and so looking around for another being like him to entrust the Ring to would be pointless, but that's not true because we can't say anything like that about Bombadil because literally nothing about him is ever explained. For all we know every forest in the world has a Bombadil if you look hard enough. Just because he is wildly irresponsible and would lose the Ring doesn't mean the next dancing jackass two forests down would.

I mean, I still love the books, and the greater Legendarium, don't get me wrong, but I've just always felt that Bombadil, at least how he's handled and introduced, was a mistake. But in concept, he's cool and fun.

Hey ho.

euphronius posted:

There wasn’t anything on earth when the ainur showed up

Being on earth “before morgoth came from the outside” means Tom could have been there in a large span of time depending on what exactly he meant by that.

sweet geek swag posted:

I think Tom Bombadil is more of a force or an idea than an actual person, which is why this doesn't bother me. He doesn't have a will to bend. He just is. And that sort of eternal 'is' is just something that is essentially indefinable and magical. Tom Bombadil isn't a person or even a thing. He is something else, something beyond description, and that sort of wonder is what makes the character work.

RoboChrist 9000 posted:

This works for me.

Like, again, really, my issue is just more the fact he's both unexplained AND immune to the Ring. I feel like either element would be fine on its own, but together is where the problematic implications arise. Hence why I don't really have much of a problem with like Ungoilant or the Lovecraftian horrors Gandalf implies lurk beneath the world.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I basically subscribe to the "spirit" theory as delineated here: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/t/tombombadil.html

I think that covers all the cites. Tolkien's description of Tom Bombadil as "the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside" clinches it imho. On a meta level he's just an external conceit Tolkien shoved into the larger story (for various reasons, probably mostly intuitive on Tolkien's part); within the structure of the Lord of the Rings, he's a spirit of the countryside, a created being of a different Order from the Valar and Maiar, who predated Melkor within Eä.

Note that there were, explicitly, other "orders" of beings within Eä who weren't valar, maiar, or men/elves/dwarves etc.

hell, technically Hobbits aren't part of the listed Orders in the Silmarillion. (Because the Silmarillion is just elf propaganda).

Arcsquad12 posted:

Tom and Ungoliant are aliens.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

But a earth spirit of a particular region seems to fit better. We know there are such spirits -- see, e.g., Caradhras -- and it seems to take less work to explain everything if Tom is just the spirit of the hobbitty countryside.

Pham Nuwen posted:

Oops All Spiders

Pham Nuwen posted:

In summary I don't think it's useful to say "it speaks but it isn't Elf, Man, Hobbit, or Orc, therefore it's a Maia". Frankly it's kinda loving boring if you have dragons, talking eagles, intelligent hounds, werewolves, etc. but actually they're all just the same sort of spirits that took various shapes.

Pham Nuwen posted:

Iluvatar's probably running dozens of universes simultaneously and sometimes stuff leaks back and forth. "Haha yeah Manwe it's just you guys on Arda and me up here in the Void, that's all of creation" and then he ducks next door to where it's Oops All Spiders.

Mahoning posted:

New thread title please.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

oh sure, it isn't a settled question and he *could* be a Maiar. Especially if *Goldberry* is a nature spirit and then Tom could be a Maiar binding himself to a particular region, a la Melian.

But a earth spirit of a particular region seems to fit better. We know there are such spirits -- see, e.g., Caradhras -- and it seems to take less work to explain everything if Tom is just the spirit of the hobbitty countryside.

Arcsquad12 posted:

Dunno about Shelob but Ungoliant drank the light of heaven itself. The ring is small fry compared to that.

CommonShore posted:

To come up with "true" divisions and classifications for every being in Tolkein is uninteresting and overall impossible because Tolkein's works aren't internally consistent or coherent. He was just a dude who made some stories, and the fact of his world is simply the text that's on the page. There's no statement of what Bombadil "really" is, and so the truth of the situation is that he's ambiguous.

Besides that type of reading is far less interesting that reflecting on what he symbolizes from a storytelling perspective. I see him personifying the indifference of the natural world to the mechanisms of the great and the powerful. Sometimes that natural world can delight and provide. It can even be musical and playful. In other cases it can threaten and menace. But it doesn't give a poo poo about its immediate continued existance, which extends far beyond the horizons of memory, myth, and legend. You can't rely on it to help you or your cause, even if your interests are aligned, because it will just go back to being.

This is really just on a moment's reflection anyway.

Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed posted:

The same sort of thing may be said of Húan and the Eagles: they were taught language by the Valar, and raised to a higher level — but they still had no fëar.

euphronius posted:

Valaquenta et al is literally world building.

Nessus posted:

If I recall they even say that if Bombadil didn't lose the ring or whatever, he wouldn't be able to stop Sauron if Sauron was like "OK, it's in the Old Forest." Sauron would apply enough orcs with shovels and axes to the problem to eventually get it back and he was already winning without physically having the Ring as it was.

euphronius posted:

I’m not getting into Christopher Tolkien stuff on purpose

It gets murky quick.

euphronius posted:

Falathrim posted:

The published Silmarillion is "Christopher Tolkien stuff" though.

Pham Nuwen posted:

"Manwe sent spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles" does not mean "Gwaihir was a Maia"

euphronius posted:

True.

They could be though. It may be as you say they were decsendend from Maiar like Shelob or Aragorn

Pham Nuwen posted:

Didn't we just establish that Ungoliant was neither Maiar nor Valar?

euphronius posted:

ok besides that. Almost of all of it was written and edited by JRRT and intended for publication (in fact sent to his publisher for publication!!)

the other stuff is great but ...

Shibawanko posted:

yeah people ascribe too much reality to fiction, like there's some "real" truth behind what's just on the page. i think it's fine to imagine what bombadil could be or what he's supposed to stand for or what his function in the story is but it's weird to me how people seem so attached to consistency and systematicity in fiction nowadays and expect "worldbuilding" and how every inconsistency is ascribed to an "alternate timeline" ugh

ChubbyChecker posted:

incorrect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmEsCKAb7r0

Nessus posted:

But could you have given Ungoliant or Shelob the Ring?

Data Graham posted:

Yeah but just about the only things Christopher actually added were

- Eonwë being “the mightiest in arms of all Arda” because otherwise changing him from being Manwë’s son and yet a badass in battle seemed weird

- Thingol’s pompous speech to the Dwarves about “how dare you of uncouth race”

Like literally nothing else was made up out of whole cloth by him, his editorial impact lay mostly in deciding not to publish most of JRRT’s later revisions

The War of the Jewels, The Tale of Years, pgs. 354–5 posted:

If [the Tale of the Nauglafring (II.221) and the Quenta (IV.132–4)] are compared with the story told in The Silmarillion it is seen at once that this latter is fundamentally changed, to a form for which in certain essential features there is no authority whatever in my father's own writings.

There were very evident problems with the old story. …

This story was not lightly or easily conceived, but was the outcome of long experimentation among alternative conceptions. In this work Guy Kay took a major part, and the chapter that I finally wrote owes much to my discussions with him. It is, and was, obvious that a step was being taken of a different order from any other ‘manipulation’ of my father’s own writing in the course of the book: even in the case of the story of The Fall of Gondolin, to which my father had never returned, something could be contrived without introducing radical changes in the narrative. It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with ‘The Silmarillion’ as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function.

Shiroc posted:

"The Tolkien thread has way more new posts than I've seen in a while, I wonder what's up--lol Bombadil-o argument-o"