My Theory of Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil isn't simply the most interesting character in LOTR; in my opinion, he is the most important character in the entire mythos. Stick with me.
- Tom Bombadil always does and says things through music. He hums, he sings, his singing has enormous power in his realm. Just as Treebeard is the embodiment of the forest, Bombadil is the embodiment of music.
- Elrond tells us that Bombadil is “older than the old” and “oldest and fatherlesss,” and Glorfindel says, “if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First.”
- Gandalf says that “the Ring has no power over him. He is his own master, but he cannot alter the Ring itself, nor break its power over others.”
- Gandalf also tells us that “now he is withdrawn into a little land, within bounds that he has set...and he will not step beyond them.”
So here are Bombadil's salient characteristics. He is the oldest, the First. He has immense power but chooses not to exert it in Middle Earth beyond the bounds he, himself, has set. And he is the embodiment of music.
I submit that there's only one character in the Tolkien mythos who fits these characteristics: Eru, aka Ilúvatar, the all-powerful creator god of Arda. Eru created the Ainur, who are the local “gods” of Arda, and the Maiar, demigods or junior Ainur.
In the Ainulindalë, “Ilúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme” and he said to them “Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music...I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.”
The physical world of Arda (aka Earth), including Middle Earth, is this song, the Music of the Ainur, given form by the will of Eru. In a very literal way, the world is built from music.
The Ainulindalë further explains that “in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth.”
Bombadil's realm, in short, is a place where the machinery of the world pokes through, where the music of creation is manifest. (All the water imagery...rivers, streams, rain, even the bathtubs...is no accident.) And the one who controls that music is Bombadil.
So if Bombadil is Ilúvatar, why are his powers limited and constrained?
While some of the Ainur went to dwell in Arda (where they're known as the Valar), Ilúvatar himself did not. He's a “hands-off” kind of god. Just as he sat and listened to the Ainur making the “Great Music,” so he observes Arda but doesn't meddle. Only once, at the behest of all the Ainur, did he take direct action in Arda: at the fall of Numenor he bent the land and seas to make the Blessed Lands inaccessible except to the Elves.
Similarly, as Bombadil he doesn't use his powers beyond bounds he's set. He doesn't interfere with Middle Earth, allowing the Music to play out. Like Christ in the Christian mythos, Bombadil is a physical incarnation of God; unlike Christ, he's not there to save anyone or influence history.
Let's look closer at Gandalf. He is Olorin, a Maiar (a demigod, one step below the Ainur/Valar). He and his fellow wizards (also Maiar) are sent to Middle Earth by the Ainur/Valar to help defeat Sauron (still another Maiar).
Gandalf tells Frodo that in Bilbo's finding of the Ring, “There was more than one power at work...I can put it no plainer that that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its Maker. In which case you also were meant to have it.” Here Gandalf seems to be saying that a higher power arranged for Bilbo to get the Ring. We know that the Ainur/Valar weren't responsible...they sent the wizards in lieu of taking direct action in Middle Earth. Events were fated...which, in mythos terms, means they were set up in Ilúvatar's original theme.
Let's look at another bit of fate. Remember when Merry stabbed the Lord of the Nazgul in the knee, distracting him so Eowyn could kill him? We learn this about Merry's sword: “the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse...glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long agoin the North Kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king.” In other words, Merry's sword had been made specifically to fight the Witch King of Angmar...aka the Lord of the Nazgul.
To make sure we get the point, Tolkien continues, “No other blade...would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.” No other blade, get it?
Who gave Merry that blade?
Bombadil.
Bombadil who set up his realm in just that location, so long ago that there was no one around to know it. Bombadil who pointed the hobbits toward the Barrow-downs. Bombadil who then rescued them, and gave them their swords...long before an intricate series of adventures left Merry in exactly the position to strike the Nazgul Lord.
You might say that Merry was meant to find that sword....
As Gandalf and the hobbits approach the Shire in the last chapters, Gandalf peels off “have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time...we shall have much to say to one another.”
After Gandalf's battle with the Balrog (yet another Maiar-class being), “I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell. Naked I was sent back—for a brief time, until my task us done.” He was transformed into Gandalf the White. Now, it's possible that he returned to Valinor...we don't know what happens to Maiar when they die...but it sounds to me like he passed beyond Arda and was sent back by the Big Guy himself. In which case, stopping for a long chat with Bombadil/Ilúvatar might be just what the...er...deity ordered.
So what about Goldberry? If Bombadil is the incarnation of Ilúvatar, I'd suggest that Goldberry is the spirit of the Music, i.e. the spirit of Arda/Earth. Their relationship mirrors the relationship between Ilúvatar and Arda: he admires her but doesn't tell her what to do; he loves her but doesn't possess her; he will do anything he can for her.
There you have it, my theory of Bombadil.