Tom Bombadil & The Terror of the Barrow-wights

Comments · 85

• TO

  @TolkiensLegacy · 5 months ago · pinned

  Do you think excluding Tom Bombadil fundamentally changed how we perceive power in the films — or was he always too enigmatic to fit Jackson's narrative?

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• FR

  @franciswalsh8416 · 5 months ago

  Great summation! The fact that Tolkien had such inexplicable mysteries make the story he tells even better.

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• DA

  @davidsutton2838 · 5 months ago

  I see Tom Bombadil as a kind of avatar, the avatar of Middle-earth itself, who came into being when Arda was created, the first of all its sentient creatures. It is important to note that while his power is very great, at least within his own domain, it is far from unlimited, which surely rules out any idea of his being an incarnation of Eru. ‘Out east my knowledge fails. Tom is not master of Riders from the Black Land far beyond his country’,  he tells the hobbits at their last parting. And then we have the words of Glorfindel at the Council of Elrond, who points out that even if Bombadil could be persuaded to take the ring, ‘soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place, and would bend all his power towards it. Could that power be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not…’ With which Galdor agrees: ‘Glorfindel, I think, is right. Power to defy our Enemy is not in him, unless such power is in the earth itself. And yet we see that Sauron can torture and destroy the very hills’. I think those words ‘in the earth itself’ are a significant reinforcement to the avatar idea, to Bombadil being, if you like, an embodiment of Gaia.

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• KU

  @KurtisC93 · 5 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mKESdSWLXQ&amp;t=465">7:45</a> &quot;Remember those swords. One of them—the one he handed to Merry—would eventually do something that no other weapon in Middle Earth could do.&quot;<br><br>When the trapper falls prey to a trap. 😏

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• PH

  @philipdallmayr4729 · 5 months ago (edited)

  Tolkien deliberately made Bombadil a mystery. He knew people would debate his true nature for decades, and he was correct. Some enigmas cannot be ascertained.

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• AM

  @amon8562 · 3 months ago

  Maybe Eru decided that the world needed a little bit of whimsy and that&apos;s why Tom Bombadil exists

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• TR

  @treyweaver5396 · 5 months ago

  Excellent! &nbsp;Well done. &nbsp;Why Tolkien included Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings? &nbsp;Many have debated that question. &nbsp;I first read the LOTR in mid to late 1970s when I was a teen. &nbsp;I liked Tom Bombadil from the first read. &nbsp;Also Treants. &nbsp;I do remember in the books that some of the main characters spoke of their possible defeat, saying that Sauron himself would have to come to defeat Tom Bombadil. Am so glad that the LOTR and The Hobbit were made into good movies. &nbsp;My Daughter loved them. &nbsp;I had already read them all to her as bedtime reading.

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• ER

  @erwinvantroyen2055 · 4 months ago

  bombadill is the symbol of men who overcome their ego, they become untouchable for money and power, they know what life is all about

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• MI

  @michaelcarey379 · 5 months ago

  Awsome depiction thank you

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• OT

  @OtaHimuro · 5 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mKESdSWLXQ&amp;t=390">6:30</a> &quot;raindrops are falling on my head<br>and just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed<br>Nothing seems to fit<br>These raindrops keep falling on my head, they keep falling.. &quot;

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• DO

  @DocBrown086 · 5 months ago

  I always wonder, they say he’d set it aside and forget about it. If he knew that doing so would cause it to go back to the dark lord and basically end the world as it’s known, wouldn’t he care about it at that point?

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• DA

  @DavidSmith-rn4jv · 5 months ago

  YES, I remember being in the theater and my girlfriend yelling where is Tom Bombdil

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