Who is Tom Bombadil?

 

“Hey dol! Merry dol! ring a dong dillio! Ring a dong! Hop along! Fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!” 

 - Tom Bombadil, The Fellowship of the Ring

Who is Tom Bombadil? Well, he certainly is a “merry fellow”. 

*Note: this post mainly includes information from the Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, and Silmarillion (not any of Tolkien’s additional books)*

Background

Tom Bombadil meets Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin on their way to the Prancing Pony in the Fellowship of The Ring book. He is described as having a long brown beard, bright blue eyes, jolly appearance; wearing yellow boots with a blue jacket and hat. Singing in a careless nonsensical fashion and collecting water lilies at a stream, he first encounters the hobbits when he saves Merry and Pippin from being killed by a willow tree. At Tom’s home in the forest, the hobbits meet his wife Goldberry, listen to his strange tales, and take a short rest in safety. To the hobbits’ great surprise, Tom puts on the One Ring and is completely unaffected by its power. He can also see Frodo when the hobbit wears the ring. 

After the hobbits leave Tom’s home, they are kidnapped by barrow-wights and nearly killed. Just in time, Frodo calls out for Tom, and the he instantly arrives to save the hobbits. Later, when it suggested the One Ring be given to Tom, Gandalf dismisses the idea. Gandalf explains that Tom does not have power over the ring (though it doesn’t have power over him), would not understand the task of keeping it, and would not care enough to do so.

So who (or what) is Tom Bombadil?

First, let’s rule out the obvious: Tom is clearly not an Ent or Eagle, and he is explicitly stated not to be a Hobbit. Tom is not a creature of evil nature or servant of Sauron, because if he was he would’ve taken the ring. Besides, he saved the hobbits from danger too many times to be evil. He can’t be a Dwarf, Man, or Elf, as he possesses significant supernatural abilities and claims to be older than rivers and trees. That leaves us with the Ainur (the Valar and the Maiar) and Eru Illúvatar. 

Tom calls himself the “Eldest” and when Frodo asks Goldberry who Tom really is she replies “He is”. Nevertheless, it is impossible that Tom is Eru Illúvatar, the in-universe creator of Arda (the planet containing Middle earth), the Ainur, Elves, and Men. If he was, than there would be no reason why he does not have power over the One Ring, or literally everything in Middle Earth and all of Arda.  Furthermore, Tolkien explicitly stated that Eru does not have a physical embodiment in his world. Thus, we can interpret Tom’s description as “Eldest” to mean one of the first beings to be created, not the one who created everyone else. 

That leads us to the possibility that he is one of the Valar. Since there are 14 Valar (not including Melkor/Morgoth), and 7 of them are male, there are limited possibilities as to who Tom might be. Tom Bombadil is clearly not Manwë, Ulmo, Mandos, Oromë, Tulkas, or Lórien. He does sort of look Aulë-ish though, but that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s very unlikely that Tom Bombadil is actually Aulë, who acts completely different from Tom, is infamously indifferent to plants, and enjoys crafting things of metal and stone, rather than gathering lilies and talking to trees. 

That said, its not as large of a stretch to say that Goldberry is actually Yavanna, Aulë’s wife who cares very much about plants. So, though it is extremely improbable, perhaps Tom is actually Aulë pretending to be a different person (prompted by Yavanna) as some kind of sick inside joke taking place over thousands of years. Assuming this is the case, the part where Goldberry/Yavanna calls Tom/Aulë  “master of trees and grasses and all things growing” becomes quite hilarious and ironic. The part where Tom takes the One Ring and tosses it around carelessly gains a second meaning too, because before Sauron became evil he was a follower of Aulë.

It is much more likely that Tom is one of the Maiar, powerful but not as powerful as the Valar. However, he must be at least as powerful as Sauron/Mairon, and more powerful than Gandalf/Mithrandir/Olorin. After all, he was not affected by the ring. 

Alternatively, Tom might have nothing to do with the mythology of the Lord of the Rings universe at all. Gandalf does say that the ring is none of his concern. Maybe he’s just a representation of the readers, who are not subject to the imaginary rules laid out in the books. Like the readers (presumably), he’s rooting for the side of good, but can’t go very far on the journey and doesn’t actively aid the cause of the free peoples. No matter what happens in the story, he’ll just go on singing and doing whatever he pleases, being largely unaffected by the world around him.