
The Terrible Secret (2011) - chmaynard
https://blog.corememory.io/tom-bombadil.html
======
debatem1
I always assumed that Tom Bombadil was a kind of ur-hobbit; a jolly being
largely immune to the hostile magic swirling around him and capable of
opposing it at points but temperamentally disinclined to truly rule.

------
joshuaellinger
If you actually want to understand why Tom Bombadil is in the story, read
Christopher Tolkien series on the creation of the Lord of the Rings.

It was originally envisioned as a sequel to the Hobbit with a slightly more
grown up audience. When JRR wrote it, he hadn't even settled on Sauron as the
bad guy. He vaguely thought the bad guy would be Treebeard! He got Frodo and
co. all the way to Rivendell before he connected his other story (the
Silmarillion) to the LOR story.

Bombadil was left in, in my mind, because he had to explain how four hapless
hobbits could throw the black riders off the trail and still escape from the
forest. And he didn't really have any editorial constraints until the movies
came along.

Sure, you can invent some just-so-story to explain him but the truth is that
the tale evolved in the decades it took to write and so it has vestigial
parts.

------
kurthr
Millennialist bunk, get off my lawn! ;^)

Really, Tom is old... older than the elves, and he (like the willow and the
huron) are tired of having these whipper-snappers come by and ask them to save
them from danger and do their -chores- adventures for them. Old men just wanna
have fun... and the gold ring ain't their bag (or problem).

Merry and Frodo are lucky they remember their time with him any more than
Gildor or Farmer Maggot (or they remember him differently). In the old days we
didn't expect everyone to be nice or have transparent understandable
motives... and we walked up Mt Doom both ways.

------
Angostura
Interesting, because I remember when I first read Fellowship aged 11 or 12 I
was absolutely _sure_ that Bombadil would turn out to be a bad one, beguiling
and leading the Hobbits to their doom, for much the reasons outlined by the
author.

I was pretty sure when they went to be in his conttage that night, they
wouldn't be waking up to a happy morning. I didn;t really trust him until they
got to Bree.

------
maliker
No way, Bombadil is great. He’a immune to the powers of the one ring [1]. He’d
rather sing about badgers than conquer the world. He’s a reminder of weird and
awesome and maybe a little scary powers in the universe that we may never
understand.

Bombadil’s scene is one of my favorites alongside the one where Frodo almost
gives the ring to Galadriel but she resists [2]. Another meditation on power.

[1] [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/103559/did-the-
rin...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/103559/did-the-ring-in-fact-
affect-tom-bombadil) [2]
[https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/86701/when-
frodo-o...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/86701/when-frodo-offers-
her-the-ring-is-galadriel-really-tempted-or-just-making-a-po)

------
whatusername
That's almost as good as the Darth Jar Jar theory:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/)

~~~
balfirevic
That was much better than I expected, thanks!

------
huffmsa
It's definitely best that Tom was left unexplained. We humans (or maybe just
me personally) love being mystified by unexplained, other-worldly powers and
beings.

Tom is presented as someone both powerful enough to take the ring and protect
it, but also someone who'd forget about it and lose it in a swamp. He's not
playing by the rules that Tolkien established for the rest of the characters
in the books.

He could have power beyond comprehension, or zero power, because Tolkien just
didn't know what to do with him. But it's up to the reader to make that
decision.

Is he One Punch Man, or is he really just a nobody?

~~~
rossdavidh
From Elrond's comments on him at the Council, he's basically an Earth
Elemental (which would make Goldberry a Water Elemental, I suppose), a
personification of the element of earth. But, I agree that it's better that
JRRT left it with room for some mystery.

------
efficax
People don't like Bombadil? He was always my favorite part of the books

------
jakubp
Bombadil was the name of a doll in Tolkien's home. That's why he was the
"oldest", because the name predates the book itself. Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil)

------
est31
IMO this is the most likely fan theory out there towards Tom Bombadil. Prior
discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982237)

~~~
chmaynard
OP here. I added a reference to the original article, which was titled "Oldest
and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil".

------
ageofwant
Pffft, apart from several just wrong assertions about who knew who, and who
likes what, I always assumed Tom Bomadil was just some archetype of Tolkien
himself. Both fundamental to the world he built and completely apart from it.

~~~
pookeh
Exactly. I find Sam from Game of Thrones to be in a similar spot.

------
gumby
I always liked him and was surprised to learn that that he had been excluded
from the films.

But I’d never thought of him as a conservationist and rescuer of animals (and
flora) rejected by polite society! A Tolkeinish John Muir. How lovely!

------
dTal
Wow, I read this only a few days ago, on some kind of Tom Bombadil kick, which
I think might have been triggered by a Bombadil-related question in the
StackExchange sidebar.

The memeworld works in mysyerious ways.

------
mnbvkhgvmj
There are several inaccuracies and inconsistencies in this.

\- Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil.

\- Tom Bombadil had heard about Frodo's journey from both elves and hobbits.
I.e. He was known to and communicated with both.

\- Was there not a hobbit song about him?

As to why the hobbits had little to do with Tom Bombadil...

\- A character of his power could easily have chosen to wipe the hobbits
memories. Maybe this was his usual approach to hobbit intruders?

\- Another possibility it that given Hobbits extreme social taboo about
adventures and their fetish for respectability it is quite possible that many
hobbits had interacted with Tom Bombadil but few talked about it (e.g. Farmer
Maggot).

~~~
ekianjo
> \- Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil.

the text does not say otherwise. But the text is correct that Elrond does not
seem to have clear memories of him. From LOTR itself:

> [Elrond said,]‘The Barrow-wights we know by many names; and of the Old
> Forest many tales have been told: all that now remains is but an outlier of
> its northern march. Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from
> what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard. In those lands I
> journeyed once, and many things wild and strange I knew. But I had forgotten
> Bombadil, if indeed this is still the same that walked the woods and hills
> long ago, and even then was older than the old. That was not then his name.
> Iarwain Ben-adar we called him.

He is not even sure it is the same person that the hobbits are referring to.

------
ncmncm
Not well-disposed toward humans, elves, hobbitses and others who cut down
trees means evil?

That's a bit too Manichaean for me.

------
chrisweekly
Tangent: where/how can I obtain the animated 1977 version of The Hobbit? I had
it on vinyl, and remember watching the film. YouTube's got a random selection
of scenes but not (AFAICT) the whole thing.

~~~
hopler
I assume you are looking to pirate it or in an undisclosed non-USA geography,
because it's easy to find on many paid streaming systems and on dvd

~~~
0815test
Why would you assume that? I think he's just looking for a physical copy.
Given what sibling comment says, I assume it was published on DVD at some
point.

------
lisper
If there was ever a clickbait title, this is it. It should be "Tom Bombadil's
Terrible Secret" or "Wild Speculations about Tom Bombadil" or "Let's Geek Out
About Tom Bombadil" or something like that.

(NOTE: At the time of this writing, the title is "The Terrible Secret".)

~~~
hopler
An essay is allowed to have an intriguing title. The problem is on aggregators
like HN for ripping titles our of context and not providing any context but
domain name.

~~~
lisper
corememory.io is not exactly a huge clue here. (And the site actually seems to
be devoted to chamber music. Go figure.)

~~~
carapace
I thought from the domain and title it would be about some arcane flaw in a
CPU or something.

And I always thought Tom Bombadil was the Green Man.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man)

------
_bxg1
> Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings.

In what universe? Every Tolkien fan I know, including myself, loves Tom
Bombadil and sees his omission from the movies as their biggest shortcoming.

~~~
rossdavidh
I think there are (and always have been) a lot of readers of LotR who don't
like Bombadil. If you're in it for the epic battle scenes and the dungeon
crawl and the nighttime fight with wolves and so on, then the time with
Bombadil grates.

I, myself, like him just fine. But it is true that a lot of people who liked
the more "swords and sorcery" aspects of LotR, did not like Bombadil. And
that's a goodly portion of the people who read the books (tho' by no means
all).

~~~
ajmurmann
> If you're in it for the epic battle scenes and the dungeon crawl and the
> nighttime fight with wolves and so on, then the time with Bombadil grates.

If that's what you are looking for LotR might be one of the worst fantasy
books one could pick.

~~~
DougWebb
I agree; LotR is really a fantasy book for fans of walking places.

~~~
klipt
A good long hike in book form!

~~~
fhars
If you are into long hikes in book form, you may still catch up with Corey
Olsen if you hurry:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLasMbZ4s5vIWPwDhtmXRc...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLasMbZ4s5vIWPwDhtmXRcn1s0q8qONMGz)

