I'm copying it below but it's a bit long so I might not go through and fix formatting all the way -- if you'd like to read it properly formatted with italics and everything, please check out my blog, the Plattered Head.
Great thanks to all who contributed in the other Mastery thread -- but especially @Chrysophylax Dives and @Boromir88. Hope I haven't done y'all too wrong with my silly little (silly big?) post
“He turned round and listened, and soon there could be no doubt: someone was singing a song; a deep glad voice was singing carelessly and happily, but it was singing nonsense:
Hey dol! Merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!”
It is with these words that Tom Bombadil comes striding -- or hopping, rather, though he strides equally well -- into the sixth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. He will stride right back out, riding on his pony Fatty Lumpkin up “over the bank and away into the dusk” just two chapters later, vanishing almost altogether from the plot of the Rings saga.
Bombadil is a puzzle and, though he comes up a few more times in conversation through the remainder of Rings, what little about him is revealed is neither particularly informative nor apparently connected to the main thrust of the narrative. The interlude in the Old Forest and Barrow-downs is, for the most part, a self contained little story -- a riddle which goes unanswered. It’s no wonder that fan solutions to just who Bombadil might be range from the divine to the metatextual -- reflecting, it’s worth saying, an in-universe confusion. When Frodo asks point blank for clarification he is given a fairly 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 movements and smiling.
Frodo looked at her questioningly. ‘He is, as you have seen him,’ she said in answer to his look. ‘He is 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. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.’
A door opened and in came Tom Bombadil.”
It’s not entirely clear whether Goldberry’s expanded answer is helpful to Frodo, and Tom -- who will later throw open hillsides and undo Barrows-enchantments, who is said to be a poor guardian for the One Ring by virtue of the fact that the most dangerous surviving artifact in Middle-earth might slip his mind or be misplaced, is left unexplained. Fan efforts to patch this gap are, as I said, endless. Is Tom Bombadil the Christian God? Eru Illuvatar? Tolkien himself? Something much more, or something considerably less? If an identity could be suggested for Tom, it seems it has been -- especially with the proliferation of internet forums and the growing trend towards the exploration of all hidden corners of every subcreated world. We might, in reference to Tolkien’s own Leaf by Niggle, call this impulse the “painting of all leaves.”
If you know me personally, you likely know that this kind of “hard” fantasy, while compelling in its own right, is not what does it best for me. I don’t think it’s what did it best for Tolkien, either -- something of the magic of Niggle’s Leaf is in its eternal incompletion, the quixotic nature of mortal subcreation mirroring an infinite god.
The “right” answer to the question of Bombadil is, in my opinion, to leave it unanswered and to let him remain a queer inhabitant of faerie, met on the first stages of our quest -- closer in kinship to the talking fox of the Shire or the sing-song elves of The Hobbit than the hierarchies of angels presented in the Powers of Arda.
I am not going to try and explain Tom in this post. I don’t think I could. I’ve heard explanations which appealed to me and I’ve heard explanations which I didn’t like that much and I don’t think, either way, that it’s worth the time to hash out again. What I want to talk about instead is the phrase at the heart of Frodo’s confusion, a statement which corresponds greatly with what I feel is one of the major themes of Rings -- Goldberry’s baffling statement that Tom “is master.”
Master
The word Master appears more than five-hundred times in Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion collectively with, as one might expect, a tremendous variety of explicit meanings and connotations. Yet Goldberry assumes her meaning is somewhat self-evident -- “He is.” she says at first, and only when Frodo still seems confused does she expand that Tom “is as you have seen him ... master of wood, water, and hill.”
To Goldberry, something about Tom’s very essence suggests this mastery -- it ought to go without saying, and it lacks what she goes on to call the “burden” of ownership over the land.
When I realized (longer ago than I’d like, and sorry to those who’ve been waiting on this post!) that I might be putting something together about this, I reached out to the members of the Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza, a fansite which was once host to some of the longest-running discussions about the nature of Tom that I’ve ever personally seen. I wanted to know if anyone else had caught any interesting uses of “Master” in Tolkien’s works. Tremendous thanks to the users there, especially Chrysophlax Dives and Boromir88, whose input helped me figure out what I actually wanted to say here. Chrys particularly pointed out that, long before Tom shows up in Fellowship, “Master” has already been used in a context with which Frodo would have been far more familiar:
“'Master' is introduced into the story as a conventional Shire term, recalling (of course) slightly antiquated (say, late Victorian) English usage. The number of Masters is quite remarkable - Master Everard Took, with a Miss Melilot Brandybuck, start dancing on a table before Bilbo finishes his going-away speech, Bilbo always calls the Gaffer 'Master Hamfast', many copies of the Red Book were made for the descendants of the Gaffer's son, Master Samwise, and so on.”
This is the context which Frodo brings to Goldberry’s statement -- and the context in which the term “Master” is applied to him. It’s Sam’s preferred term (“Master Frodo!”) as well as Gollum’s, and Gandalf, too, informs Frodo on Bilbo’s departure from the Shire that he is “the master of Bag End now.” If we assume Frodo’s misunderstanding to be a result of the gap between “Hobbitish” and “Goldberryian” uses of mastery, things become a little clearer.
There is, as is often raised, a substantial class undercurrent to the relationships within Rings. Frodo, who seems to have come into wealth entirely through his membership in good family and to exist mostly as an idle gentleman, is of a higher social stratum than “Masters” Samwise or Hamfast, who are gardeners and laborers (at least, until the Gamgee family’s precipitous rise at the end of Rings.) Bilbo’s term for the Gaffer is a sign of personal respect -- whereas Sam’s term for Frodo is an accurate title which takes on greater meaning given their deep personal affection. It is nevertheless a title rooted in class -- appropriate, then, that Frodo assumes “master of wood, water, and hill” to suggest ownership. Ownership may indeed be said to be the primary element of Hobbitish “master” -- evidenced not only by Frodo’s mistake with Goldberry but also by the timeline of Frodo’s own increasing masterships -- over Bag End by inheritance and over Gollum via possession of the Ring.
We might then divide “Mastery” broadly into two categories -- possessive, or Hobbitish, mastery, and Goldberry’s elusive term for Tom which lacks this element of ownership. These are not, however, the only uses of the word in Rings.
Other Masters
The Hobbitish, or possessive, “master” appears in nearly one hundred different places in Fellowship alone and -- again with great thanks to Chrys and Boromir of the Fanatics Plaza -- could probably be divided into a few distinct forms. We had a good discussion about it a while back -- I’ll drop a link to the thread at the bottom of this post, if you’re interested, since there were a lot of good thoughts that either didn’t make it into this post or which I’ve cut in the hopes of making it somewhat readable.
We can understand all these forms of mastery as still broadly linked through our notion of possession and ownership over -- it’s just that the relationship between the “possession” and the “master” shifts a little bit. Consider what Gandalf says of Bilbo’s discovery of the ring:
'There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur's hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Deagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: [...] So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!”
in contrast to Gandalf’s scene-setting for the Ring’s creation:
“‘Ah!’ said Gandalf. ‘That is a very long story. The beginnings lie back in the Black Years, which only the lore-masters now remember. If I were to tell you all that tale, we should still be sitting here when Spring had passed into Winter.’”
and, finally, Aragorn’s musing on the correct path after Gandalf’s fall into Moria:
“His own plan, while Gandalf remained with them, had been to go with Boromir, and with his sword help to deliver Gondor. For he believed that the message of the dreams was a summons, and that the hour had come at last when the heir of Elendil should come forth and strive with Sauron for the mastery.”
These three masteries are still fundamentally what we’ve called “Hobbitish,” defined by a possessive relationship and a power of control -- be it Sauron’s power exercised in possession over the Ring, Gandalf’s possession of knowledge and power over lore, or the more nebulous thing which Aragorn must strive with Sauron for -- “the mastery” over Gondor and true kingship. In a strange sense it is the Ring which most directly derives its mastery from ownership -- the Ring is supernatural, of course, and where most objects would pass to a new owner in all ways which matter as soon as they were taken, it still feels the pull of the person who truly, rightfully owns it. There is, as the movies put it, only one Lord of the Rings -- he is a subjugator, one who has mastered and will continue to master others, possessively. This ownership-mastery by right is similar to Aragorn’s mastery -- the mastery of divinely appointed kings. Aragorn’s mastery with Sauron is still possessive, a mastery of land. It is also a “mastery” in the sense that the Last Alliance “had the mastery” (demonstrated their superiority) and drove back Sauron’s armies from the Morannon -- and mastery in a more existential sense, in which Aragorn must prove his right to possess his crown by freeing it from the threat of Mordor.
The “lore-master” form -- mastery pertaining to supreme skill and knowledge -- is perhaps less clearly linked to possession. It is also the closest we get to Bombadil’s kind of mastery outside of the man himself -- Tom is, after all, eminently capable. “No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear.”
There is, nonetheless, a possessive strain which runs through this mastery of skill which is (according to Goldberry) not present in Tom. A lore-master may, after all, still be said to possess wisdom and Gandalf’s vain to open the west gate of Moria is an example of how such wisdom may be more or less successfully bent to the possessor’s will. This is mastery which requires a possessed object. Our other mastery -- the Bombadillian -- is defined by the lack of this object. It is the mastery which Bilbo invokes when he says it is time for Frodo to “be his own master.” It is a mastery of the self, the independence which might be destroyed when one is “mastered” by another -- be it the Ring or an unjust king. It is related, as I mentioned, to the possessive mastery of ability, but it is as far from possession as one could possibly get. It is, in a way, a deeply religious mastery.
To explain why, we’ll need to step out of Middle-earth.
The Letter
“My political opinions,” Tolkien writes in a 1943 letter to Christopher, “lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) -- or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.”
This is a statement of political ideals which admittedly makes about as much sense as labelling oneself a bolshevik menshevik, a francoist republican, or a hobbit-for-trolls. Whether we examine it in its “philosophical” dimension or the pop-culture vision of “whiskered men with bombs” anarchism must surely be, at some foundational level, opposed to the divine right of kings -- and yet Tolkien sits on the fence, as though the gap between the two philosophies is a minor interfactional schism and not the length of a long political spectrum.
I want to be extremely clear, once again, about my goals in this (long) post -- I am as unqualified to (and disinterested in) prove(ing) whether Tolkien was an anarchist or a monarchist as I am in what’s “really” going on with Tom in a “scientific,” in-universe way. I am not a political scholar, and anyway doing what would on some level be a kind of radical politics purity test on a man who died twenty-some years before I was born is not helpful to the point I’m trying to make. There are also those, for the record, who have written quite a bit on “anarcho-monarchism.” I happen to disagree with them, politically. That’s beside the point.
I raise the letter only to say that by the time Tolkien was entering his fifties he was concerned to some degree with power and the systems instituted by those who read it. The rest of the letter is fiercely opposed to the legitimization of “Government” -- he prefers that we acknowledge the tyranny of the few (“Winston and his gang”) over the many. He is frustrated by the notion of a “state” as anything more than the inanimate land. Tolkien is interested in rulership, and those who rule.
This may seem unsurprising, given that the man wrote a tight 1100 pages about (among some other things) the return of a rightful king. But if we ignore the apparent contradiction in Tolkien’s belief and move on to the things which he claims motivate his shifting political interests -- especially with our various possessive masteries in mind -- and then consider the major recurrent notes of Middle-earth (including: the domination of dark lords. the possessive love of craftsmen over their crafts, and of course what Tolkien called the “ennoblement” of mannish kings via an ancient strain of divine blood) we may begin to understand why Bombadil, the narrative cul-de-sac, is so thematically relevant.
Another way to label the divide between “possessive” and “objectless” masteries we’ve identified might be to raise the somewhat fundamental anarchist tenet -- the abolition of oppressive hierarchies and systems. We might call the possessive mastery -- even in the benign form which marks Frodo’s relationship with Sam -- mastery in-hierarchy and the non-possessive “mastery of the self” mastery-without-hierarchy. This mirrors the dichotomy in Tolkien’s political views -- the urge toward a simple system of ultimate authority in a single good (rare) king (master, we might say), who is capable of leading, a messianic figure with the right and ability to rule, contrasted with the liberation offered by an anarchist mastery-without, the Bombadillian mastery of the self.
There is also something profoundly Catholic about Tolkien’s desire for the rare good king. Not only does it mirror the many (many) millennial traditions among worldwide christian groups -- it also strikes a similar note to the perspective held by many christian anarchists, that there will be one “good king” and one good king only -- a king whose heavenly right to rule delegitimizes all earthly despots. In a world where this Hobbesian eminently capable eminently rightful eminently just king is yet to appear -- in a world, that is to say, where Jesus has not yet returned -- what is someone of Tolkien’s apparent political persuasion to do? Bow before the iron crown of earthly governments? No -- rather dream of the blade that was broken, and write an escapist fantasy where the true king does return (with evidence! with skill! and, above all else, proving himself capable time and time again) but also to model oneself on a very different master.
Tom Bombadil is Master
Goldberry is shocked when Frodo suggests that Tom might own “all this strange land.” It would, in her view, be a great burden to possess. Likewise, at the Council of Elrond, Bombadil is discarded as a guardian of the Ring by the very reason of his inability to possessively own -- it is decided that, even if the Ring could be safely returned to the Old Forest, Tom would promptly lose it. Rather, like Treebeard, whose selfness pervades his forest home until he and the land are indistinguishable, Bombadil models a very different kind of mastery. His is a mastery of perfect self-knowledge and self-control, a mastery of one who knows his place in the world and is content to remain in it. It is a far different mastery from our possessive, Hobbitish forms -- and yet it is the kind of mastery the Hobbits must demonstrate when they return to their home at the end of Rings, in order to free it from a tyrant. Bombadil’s self-mastery is the mastery which both Gandalf and Galadriel demonstrate when they reject the offer of the Ring -- and the mastery which Isildur and Ar-Pharazon fail to find, to their dooms.
Tom is, after all, master of nothing beyond the borders of his own small land. He is no “master of the Black Riders” and “the power to resist does not lie in him unless it lies in the land itself.” Gandalf remarks that Tom is a “moss-gatherer” and Gandalf “a stone doomed to rolling,” but now that “his rolling days are over they will have much to talk about.” Tom Bombadil is a moss-gatherer indeed -- a contented, possessionless master, the kind of anarchist Tolkien might himself become -- until, that is, the king returns.
I particularly like your last comment, I think it's fitting...
