One of the best and most daring parts of Khraniteli, the adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring produced for Soviet television just before the USSR collapsed, is its inclusion of Tom Bombadil. At times hilariously hamstrung by a shoestring budget and laughably bad special effects, Khraniteli remains admirable in other ways for a dogged fidelity to its J. R. R. Tolkien source material. That it included the enigmatic Tolkien creation when Peter Jackson famously eschewed him in his own film trilogy speaks to this admirable quality.
But just who is Tom Bombadil? Jackson didn’t feel like figuring it out and deemed him nonessential to the story. Some Tolkien fans agree. Others argue for his importance. But just about all of us have little to no idea who he actually is. Reviewing In the House of Tom Bombadil by C. R. Wiley for Front Porch Republic, Jeremy Johnston argues that the mystery is the point.
Understanding the mystery, however, does require at least comprehending what we can. As Johnston summarizes:
What we know about Bombadil is that he is a powerful and ancient being, older than Gandalf and older than the elves, and he has no interest in “trinkets” that are used to dominate others. Although he is aware of evil, he has no fear of it. Instead, he travels about his business bedecked with yellow boots, a blue coat, and a feathered cap. He wanders the woods singing silly songs of seemingly nonsense verse and he possesses an indomitable cheerfulness. In a story filled with perilous journeys, evil rings, and the terrors of trolls, orcs, and wraiths, it would seem that Bombadil’s jolly demeanor is out of place. But, when the hobbits first encounter him in the Old Forest, his arrival is as welcome to the reader as it is to the hobbits. This is because Tom rescues Frodo and his companions from certain death — not once, but twice in the two chapters in which he appears. His appearance is unexpected yet timely; what could have been a tragic ending — the death of the hobbits and the failure of the quest — is not only avoided but happily and joyfully thwarted by Tom Bombadil.
After these adventures, Bombadil is only referenced in the rest of the text: discussed but then dismissed as a potential Ringbearer at the Council of Elrond (it is decided that, though the Ring has no effect on him, his very incorruptibility would make him an “unsafe guardian” of it); sought out by the wizard Gandalf the White when he and the hobbits return to Bombadil’s domain (Gandalf expects Tom to be “not much interested in anything that we have done or seen, unless perhaps in our visit to the Ents”); and then finally, just at the work’s very end, as Frodo’s departure to the Grey Havens fulfills a dream he had in Tom’s house near the very beginning of his journey.
So that’s what we’ve got about Tom Bombadil. That doesn’t fully answer the question of who he is. But as Johnston tells it, we’re not really supposed to know. Johnston cites Gandalf’s warning to the overly mechanistic, analytic (and evil) wizard Saruman that he who “breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.” And he cites Tolkien’s own words (from a letter) on Bombadil, in which Tolkien admits that Bombadil is “not an important person — to the narrative,” but:
He represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function.
In that same letter (No. 144, for the real nerds out there), Tolkien also notes that “even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).” This does not mean it is impossible to attempt to interpret the character’s meaning; Wiley seems to have done so in his work. But Johnston warns against obsessing overly about one’s fan theories about the character. Even if his enigmatic nature generates those theories in the first place, some things are meant to remain unresolved at a more basic level, testaments to transcendent reality or meaning.
That’s how Tolkien wanted it, anyway. And that’s good enough for me.