The trouble started with the trees. These are not any trees, however. These trees are alive, but alive more than just, say, taking in carbon and letting out oxygen. I don’t know yet if the trees are sentient, exactly, but they do act. Mostly it seems they react.
It is the Willow that seems to be the most trouble. After they encounter him the Hobbits are overpowered with sleep, as if a spell has been cast on them. They find themselves drifting off into a warm stupor, a sleep they cannot resist (it is not clear why sleep is dangerous but it is). The tree then throws Frodo into the water, holding him down as if to drown him by its roots. They are in quite serious danger, for a moment.
But just as the Hobbits begin to panic, a new character arrives on the scene. He appears with careless, happy, nonsense singing. He ambles forth wearing “an old battered hat with a tall crown and a long blue feather stuck in the band” (117), “too large and heavy for a hobbit, if not quite tall enough for one of the Big People” (117). He’s wearing great yellow boots on thick legs, a blue coat and a long brown beard; his eyes were blue and bright, and “his face was red as a ripe apple but creased into a hundred wrinkles of laughter” (117). He is carrying white lilies on a tray.
Tom Bombadil is large and authoritative but also joyful and full of mirth. His authority is not gravitas, exactly, but the kind of confidence that comes from knowing things will be alright. The Hobbits upon meeting him are “half hopeful and half afraid”.
Once Tom sees the danger the Hobbits find themselves in, he quickly rebukes Old Willow and then invites the Hobbits to his home for supper. (Supper is very important to the Hobbits- perhaps I will write a bonus installment on the role of “supper” in this first book).
Once they approach Tom’s house, the Hobbits are immediately at ease. The landscape is suddenly tamed; the river laps gently at its banks, the grasses are tended, the Forest edges trimmed. The feeling of wildness and unease that loomed from the moment the Hobbits left the shire is now gone.
Tom’s house feels like the Shire, but it is in the presence of the wild. Tom’s home has the feel of the Hobbit house in chapter 1- the long low room is cozy and lit with lamps, bedorned with candles and lilies and flowers. Tom is seated in the midst of the room, enthroned like a king.
The difference between the house of Tom Bombadil and the Shire is that Tom knows what has come before. Tom was there in the old ages. He is older than the forest, than the Trees- he saw the Sea before it was bent. He was there before the Elves. As Goldberry says, “He is”. (Exodus!)
Once the Hobbits encounter Tom, they are immediately at ease: “All their weariness and fears had fallen from them” (119). In Tom’s house, the Hobbits are fed- each meal better than the last. When they ask Goldberry who Tom is, she gives them only a cryptic answer:
“Fair lady!’ said Frodo again after a while. ‘Tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish, who is Tom Bombadil?’ ‘He is,’ said Goldberry, staying her swift movement and smiling.
Frodo looked at her questioningly. ‘He is, as you have seen him,’ she said in answer to his look. ‘He is the Master of wood, water, and hill.’
‘Then all this strange land belongs to him?’
‘No indeed!’ she answered, and her smile faded. ‘That would indeed be a burden,’ she added in a low voice, as if to herself. ‘The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master… He has no fear.” (122)
Tom is the Master of this home, ensuring its safety by his presence alone: ‘Nothing passes doors or windows save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hill-top” (125). The Hobbits sleep deeply in his home. Their nightmares are immediately interrupted when they wake and remember where they are.
Perhaps most importantly, Tom handles the Ring casually, as if it were a trinket. Remember that the elder statesmen of the Shire, Gandalf, was terribly contorted when he encountered the ring. All of his wisdom and authority is lost when he holds it. This troubles the Hobbits greatly, for they held Gandalf in such esteem. But the Ring has no power over Tom. He handles it casually, laughing as he lifts it up and peers through it like a looking-glass. The Ring has no power over him, nor is it a temptation to him. He “sees through it” and laughs.
I am told that “who is Tom Bombadil” is one of the great legends of Lord of the Rings. It would be easy to engage an opinion or two; certainly he has the authority of a divine, “master but not owner” of all that exists. He has the playful confidence of the author of a text, knowing its pre-history and “seeing through” its most honored symbol. But perhaps he is best left as a gentle giant who lives in the woods, providing nourishment and succor to weary travelers. Tom Bombadill lives at the edge of fear and uncertainty, but he lives there in peace. “Fear nothing!” he cries, “For tonight you are under the roof of Tom Bombadil” (121). They do not know who he is exactly, but they know they are safe in his care. And so they slept.
Tell me in the comments- who do *you* think Tom is? And does it matter, or is it better left unexplored?