hello and welcome to the broken sword today we are looking at who and what is tom bombadil tom bombadil is a character that can cause a great divide amongst the fans of tolkien some love his joyful carefree manner and others find his repetitive singing and lack of care frustrating he is a character that some would have loved to have seen on screen yet he was also a character left out of both movie adaptations of the lord of the rings created by ralph bakshi and also the ones by peter jackson as well as the bbc's 1981
radio series so who exactly is this being well let's first give a little description of him before we go into too much depth after all if you have only seen the movies you may have no real idea of anything about this guy tom bombadil is known to possess great power through the use of his voice he loves to sing and this goes with his jolly personality very well in fact he even sings about himself if we head now into the fellowship of the ring chapter of the fog on the barrow downs we get a good
little passage and no i will not actually be singing tom's part no one really needs to hear that but i will speak it so here we go there was a sudden deep silence in which frodo could hear his heart beating after a long slow moment he heard plain but far away as if it was coming through the ground or through thick walls an answering voice singing old tom bombadil is a merry fellow bright blue his jacket is and his boots are yellow none has ever caught him yet for tom he is the master his songs
are stronger songs and his feet are faster there was a loud rumbling sound as of stones rolling and falling and suddenly light streamed in real light the plain light of day a low door-like opening appeared at the end of the chamber beyond frodo's feet and there was tom's head hat feather and all framed against the light of the sun rising red behind him bright blue his jacket is and his boots are yellow this is a sentence that gets stuck in my head for ages every time i read it but it does mean that it makes
it extremely hard not to remember how tom should look and this passage also shows the power of tom's voice with just his singing he manages to cause a wall to collapse in fact this all came from frodo simply speaking the words of ho tom bombadil it even describes frodo as saying it in a small desperate voice too this just shows how there is really a lot of power behind both his voice and his name just one small chant can summon him to help now we have more of an idea of how he looks and what
kind of power he may possess let's have more of a look at what he might be so first let us head back into the lord of the rings when frodo asks tom exactly what we are all wondering in the chapter of in the house of tom bombadil in the fellowship of the ring who are you master he asked hey what said tom sitting up and his eyes glinting in the gloom don't you know my name yet that's the only answer tell me who are you alone yourself and nameless but you are young and i am
old eldest that's what i am mark my words my friends tom was here before the river and the trees tom remembers the first raindrop in the first april he made paths before the big people and saw the little people arriving he was here before the kings and the graves and the barrel whites when the elves passed westward tom was here already before the seas were begged he knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless before the dark lord came from outside this passage does the job of giving us an idea of just where
he came from after all it does come from the man's mouth himself saying that though it still leaves many mysteries he says he was around to remember the first raindrop and first acor and before the dark lord came from outside hinting that he was in middle earth before even the coming of the valor good old tom bombadil lived in a cottage within the old forest with his wife goldberry and this was located to the east of the shire this forest was some of the last of what remained of the vast amounts of forest that once
covered most of ariador before the second age this last bit left is the section that has survived both the deforestation by the numenoreans as well as the wars fought against saron tom would spend most of his day simply wandering the paths of this wood with it even being said the trees would simply move out of his way while he walked but anyway despite tom saying how long he has been there he still appeared in the form of simply a man although assuming he is just a man is quite hard to believe he has a natural
powers especially when he is in the area surrounding his home despite his great power he was more than happy to simply keep himself to himself taking no sides in the wars of middle earth his powers even surpassed that of the one ring tom could wear the ring with no kind of effects happening like being transported into the wraith world he could even make it disappear and reappear at will along with seeing frodo when he wore it as well this does raise questions about his ability to see into the wraith world which is also known as
the realm of the unseen this realm is not considered to be good or evil even though it is most known due to the nazgul it is simply the world that is thought to belong to magic meaning the likes of the maya would walk in this realm to remain unseen by the likes of the elves in valinor however an in-depth look at the wraith world or the world of the unseen is worth its own video so i won't go into too much more detail today all i will say is that it basically implies that tom bombadil
can live in both rounds now let's circle back for a moment to tom's powers we know he possessed these abilities near his home like he demonstrated in front of the hobbits but we are never certain that if he left the borders of the old forest if he would still be able to achieve the same feats so at least at his home he was the true master it is also not known when he first came to be even the elves called him oldest and fatherless as the legend of his existence stretched back further than even their
memories including the likes of alvarod who in fact discusses tom to everyone at the council of auronz during the fellowship of the ring when he says but i had forgotten bombadil if indeed this is the same that walked the woods and hills long ago and even then was older than the old that was not then his name is oldest and fatherless but many another name he has had since given by other folk formed by the dwarves oraled by northern men and other names beside he is a strange creature but maybe i should have summoned him
to our council as you can see from this it is almost though he had existed before anything and would most likely continue to exist in all ages to come as well this passage also does raise an interesting point about him with aorond wondering aloud if he should have been part of the council however gandalf quickly states that tom would not have come even if he had been invited gandalf explains to everyone there that the one ring does not appear to have any power over him as he is his own master but he cannot change the
ring or stop it in fact in the thoughts of others even at the suggestion of taking the one ring to him so that he can keep it within his borders where he possesses so much power gandalf says that this would not work gandalf explains how tom would never understand the danger of it all so that at the end of the day he would inevitably forget about it and the threat that came with it meaning he would probably just lose it although it could postpone the day of evil it would only postpone it not erase it
this gives us another good insight into both the power of tom and the way that his mind works he is basically at the level of being so powerful nothing else appears to worry him also when looking at tom bombadil we need to take a quick look at his wife too goldberry she is known as the river daughter and tolkien describes her as a representation of the actual seasonal changes in riverlands and that is in letter 210 of the letters of j.r tolkie just like tom she is considered somewhat of an enigma with no one knowing
about her true origins either her time generally consisted of preparing tom's house but outside of that generally nothing else is known about her really just like tom tom and goldberry are without a doubt a pair of enigmas to the rest of this world tolkien was once said to have revealed that tom was meant to represent the spirit of the vanishing oxford and berkshire country site and this was from another one of his letters with this bit of information coming from letter 19. tolkien originally introduced tom into the story of the lord of the rings at
an early stage so early in fact that this was back when he thought of it more as a sequel to just the hobbit before he had brought in the background with a lot of the information and events that would in time go into the silmarillion however compared to the earlier drafts the later tone of the story would change and become darker during the first chapters of the lord of the rings tom bombada would have initially fit into the original more childish tone as initially it had been closer to the tone of the hobbit but as
the story progressed and it became darker in nature this became less and less of the case he suddenly started to just stick out a bit being so joyful in a story that was no longer meant just for kids so that explains why a lot of people feel he does not necessarily fit in with the rest of the story but tolkien saw him as important and so he was left in i think if we have a look at another of his letters with this one being letter 144 to naomi mitcheson dated back to the 25th of
april 1954 it is interesting to see how in this snippet of the letter tolkien himself writes about the purpose importance and possible future of tom bombadil tom bombadil is not an important person to the narrative i suppose he has some importance as a comment i mean i do not really write like that he is just an invention who first appeared in the oxford magazine about 1933 and 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 i might put it this way the story is cast in terms of a good side and a bad side beauty against ruthless ugliness tyranny against kingship moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power and so on but both sides in some degree conservative or destructive want a measure of control but if you have as it were taken a vow of poverty renounced control and take your delight in things themselves without reference to yourself watching observing and to some extent knowing then the question of
the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you and the means of power quite valueless it is a natural pacifist view which always arises in the mind when there is war but the view of riven doubt seems to be that it is an excellent thing to have represented but there are in fact things which it cannot cope and upon which its existence nonetheless depends ultimately only the victory of the west will allow bombardier to continue or even survive nothing would be left for him in the world of sauron i find
it very interesting to hear that despite bombadil haven't existed in the times before anything else was in middle-earth if saron had come out victorious in the end he would not have survived and really how tall he defends tom's attitude towards any of the wars or the one ring how it makes perfect sense to him that a lot of these ideas of power do lose all idea of value to the person it is really just that interesting to see how tolkien understands the ideas of his own characters himself he will always just understand things in a
way that no one else can as easily but anyway there are many theories out there about what tom bombadil could really be so i thought now it would be fun to go through a few of these and see if you think any of them could really be true now let's start off with the idea that tom is a maya now firstly for those of you who are not aware the maya were divine spirits and were amongst the first beings ever created by aru iluvatar along with the valar the maya were these divine spirits that then
descended into arda which was the name for the world middle earth existed on and here they would help the valar create and shape the world some of the most notable maya include the likes of the five estari that were sent to middle earth to aid in the fight against sara the maya did tend to only be sent to middle earth with a purpose though so does that mean tom could have had a purpose was this why he stayed within the old forest and did not stray any further or perhaps he managed to escape to middle
earth and therefore had no purpose and that is why he stayed here is obviously very hard to say he has the kind of power you might consider a divine spirit to possess especially when you can see the kind of power tom could hold over even the one ring you may say that this could not be the case because he appears far more powerful than the wizards but remember the istari were sent with just a fraction of their true power which is why gandalf could then be sent back later on as the white with a larger
amount of his true power he hadn't received in some ways an overall power boost they had just unlocked more of his potential on his return or even to a bigger degree sauron is a maya as well and just look how much power he shows off over all of his time in earth it is hard to argue bombardier is weaker than any of these so what about if tom is more powerful than any of these then is he above the maya in terms of power if so is he one of the valar instead and quickly here
again the valar were the other divine spirits as a part of aru's first creations and these possessed greater power than the maya each of these upon their birth were granted the gift of insight into a specific part of iluvatar's thoughts which meant each was more aligned in spirit with that part that they were open to and on a side note here there is only one exception within the valar and that was malcolm as he was granted an insight into every part of iluvatar's thoughts and was therefore the mightiest of the einer but anyway malcolm's story
is definitely one for another day so there is another theory that goes with this and this one involves one of the valar that is known as romney now romney is labeled as the huntsman of the valar and the great rider as well as holding the position of the lord of forests he even has a wife named varna she is the youngest sister of yavana and is the sixth named valiere which is the name of the queens of the valar and she was called the ever young therefore this could very well lead to her being goldberry
so maybe just maybe tom is really a romney in disguise confined to the old forest perhaps with a self-imposed confinement so he will not get more involved of everything that is going on or perhaps not there is no real evidence to support this i just find it quite a fun theory now if we move up the scale of power again there is the idea that tom could even be none other than aru iluvatar himself if we consider tolkien he was a religious man so he would have most likely have the thoughts and beliefs that god
works in all sorts of different and mysterious ways and well there is no doubt that tom is different and mysterious he comes across as a kind caring powerful yet indirect sort of being so maybe tom is just that tom is the one who has placed himself within his creation to witness the deeds good or evil that his children are committing also remember aru created time and the universe through the music of the einer which was a great song and where does a lot of tom's power seem to come from his voice so you never know
maybe tom could be arrow in disguise next let's consider that tom is something else entirely just maybe there is nothing else within any part of arda that comes close to tom consider instead that he is simply nature personified the spirit of the woods and the water more powerful than the maya yet not the valar or god but maybe just something in between we only need to look at another terrifying creature from the silmarillion to guess how this could work and this is by looking at the terrifying giant spider of angoliant she came from the darkness
and just maybe tom is the opposite in that he came from the light whereas angolian is pure evil and after drinking the life of the trees of valinor she grew strong enough to even overpower malcolm before he was saved by his balrogs maybe tom is just the exact opposite his power comes from the light and from good so by surrounding himself in nature within the old forest he swells with power to the point that he could even topple one of the valar if he so wished so something like sauron's ring would be so low below
him and if he leaves the forest in this pure nature he may lose his powers and weaken which could explain why he does not leave this could also explain why the idea that if sauron defeated the men of the west that tom would eventually fall too as with sauron's victory nature would be destroyed and therefore tom's power finally for these theories i will go over a bit of a fan favorite and that is tom bombadil is truly j.r.r tolkien placing himself within his own world this one is really just a bit more fun but consider
this tom is the oldest being because he is tolkien who existed before the words were even put to paper for the books he witnessed everything happened because he wrote the stories he knows what has happened and will happen because it has come from his mind he has enough power to save everyone quickly but chooses not to interfere remember a great story is written when the writer understands their characters and just writes how they would react to a chain of events as opposed to writing events and forcing the characters into those decisions so this is why
tom or tolkien does not interfere because tolkien wrote the story as though he was just recounting history not forcing events to happen now i will say for this one tolkien has stated that there is no embodiment of himself within his work but still it is a fun one to consider so i feel that this is a good place to round things up on our subject for today of just looking into who or what tom bombadil may be he is an incredibly mysterious being that lives his own life in nature with little care of anything else
that goes on in the world he is happy to sing his songs talk to the trees and live a peaceful life with his wife goldberry exactly what he is is never truly determined but that is the kind of thing that makes tom what he is a mysterious man with his bright blue jacket and yellow boots and now with that concluded i would like to hear from all of you what do you think about this character and his origins do you think tom bombadil could be amaya a vala god the embodiment of light and nature tolkien
himself or something else entirely i would love to know all your ideas thoughts and theories on this enigma of a man in the comment section below and now that we have reached the end of the video i would like to also remind you all we do not just have this channel but also two others and they are the sixth ranger for power rangers content and history of dragon ball for dragon ball content links for both of those will be in the description below if you would like to watch and support us on those as well
and now also it's time to shout out our patrons firstly our divine power tier members of kevin abraham matt and glorify of gondolin you are all awesome and a big thanks to our fire demon tier members of nasheed lorenzo denver steele and gregory as well and to go with these i cannot forget there was a staff to your members of john andrew and pirate 747 you are all true legends of the brohearn and finally if you've not already as well please do all that great stuff hit the like button subscribe to the channel share the
video if you really enjoyed it all these things massively help us out as we are growing again on this channel so thank you once more if you have managed to reach the end of this video with me today and we will see you next time on the broken sword
