He is not a hobbit, neither a man, but what is he? Is he a dwarf? A wizard? A god? Something else entirely?
I can’t answer what Bombadil is in the lore of LOTR, he seems to be unique in terms of entities we are shown. But I can tell you what he is at a meta level. You see, LOTR was first told as stories to Tolkiens kids, which you probably already knew, which you may not have known, is that Bombadil was a recurring character in previous stories he had told his children. So at a meta level, Bombadil is just a fun callback to a previous character for his kids to have enjoyed.
Thank you for indirectly leading me to discover the book title “The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England”. Even if I never work my way to finding out anything further about this corner of literature, that title certainly tickled me.
It’s a really fun read. Sanderson gets some hate from literary snobs for his simple writing style but sometimes that’s the style of story you need.
This comes closest of the answers in this thread, imo. Tom Bombadil was a figurine/puppet Tolkien or his kids owned and he would devise stories around it. He included it in the main narrative as a sort of mental resting point, where both the reader and the hobbits come at peace for a brief moment. It’s completely separate from the main narrative and it doesn’t cleanly fit in the story. I think of it as Tom Bombadil, Goldberry and their house basically being in another dimension, which is why neither time nor the ring affect them.
If you are interested in it, Tolkien discussed the nature of Tom Bombadil in several letters and there are some decent youtube videos on the subject.
I believe he is considered the spirit of that world, not necessarily a god, but a physical incarnation of the world. It would explain why he holds an insane amount of power and even Sauron’s ring only tickled him. It also makes sense when Gandalf says if Mordor conquers the rest of the world then maybe bombadil would fall because the world would be irreparably harmed
I never thought of him being immune to Sauron as him being powerful. He is just like the the hobbits but to its fullest. Bombadil is perfectly content with his own existence and there is nothing for the ring to tempt him with.
So why didn’t the eagles take him…
Just kidding! Don’t want to open that can of worms.
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As far as I know Tom is left as an enigmatic character and never explained. Just a strange encounter to make the world seem larger and more mysterious.
He’s Q but it’s TLOTR
Do we know for sure that Star Trek and LOTR don’t play in the same universe?
In Star Trek Enterprise, there’s an episode where the crew finds a planet being ravaged by disease. Bizarrely, the planet has two humanoid species: one dominant (intelligent, technologically advanced) and one less dominant (less evolved brains). The captain mentions that in every planet they’ve encountered, only one humanoid species survives the process of evolution.
Well, it turns out that the disease is genetic, it only affects the currently-dominant species, and they will go extinct in a few centuries because of it. The same evolutionary phenomenon that explorers encountered countless times before on other planets was happening right before their eyes.
Middle Earth has like at least 3 humanoid species (Man, Elf, Dwarf), more if you count Hobbits and Orcs. That’s totally incompatible with Star Trek lore!
Well when we see the story of LotR, the elves and dwarves are disappearing - maybe it’s the Trek rule happening in front of us again! Orcs certainly don’t seem to fare well during it either. Hobbit are disappearing too, if they’re to be counted as separate to humans at all. It’s very much becoming a world of humans when the plot of LotR happens
But you just explained it yourself. Currently there >1 humanoid species on planet “Middle Earth”, but over time there will likely only be 1 for one reason or another (diseases, dominant races doing the good old genocide, etc.)
So either the Enterprise / Federation hasn’t found the planet yet (and it will become the first planet with this many humanoid species on it) or LOTR and ENT simply don’t play at the same time.
He’s a merry fellow, bright blue his jacket is and his boots are yellow.
