from letter 144 I referenced:
"Tom Bombadil is not an important person - to the narrative. I suppose he has
some importance as a 'comment'. I mean, I do not really write like that: he is
just an invention (who first appeared in the Oxford Magazine about 1933), and
he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared
to analyze the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he
did not have some kind of function. I might put it this way. The story is cast
in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness,
tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion
that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in
some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. But
if you have, as it were taken 'a vow of poverty', renounced control, and take
your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching,
observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and
wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the
means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always
arises in the mind when there is a war. But the view of Rivendell seems to be
that this it is an excellent thing to have represented, but that there are in
fact things with which it cannot cope; and upon which its existence nonetheless
depends. Ultimately only the victory of the West will allow Bombadil to
continue, or even survive. Nothing would be left for him in the world of
Sauron."
Gandalf and Elrond are not pacifists, at least not during the time that they
tutor Frodo. Nor are the High-elves of Lorien pacifists. It was
you, not I, who said that Bombadil might have taught Frodo to have faith in
Higher Powers. Yes, Frodo needed months of long hard lessons from
experience for that lesson to sink in; but you, not I, pointed to Bombadil as
someone who taught Frodo a lesson in faith. All I am saying is that
Tolkien left Bombadil in the book because he represented "a natural pacifist
view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war," and I don't think
it is any coincidence that Frodo came to adopt that point of view in the end,
whether he consciously based it on Bombadil or not.
Let's put it this way: there are two and only two pacifists in LotR, one being
Tom Bombadil at the beginning of the quest and one being Frodo at the
end. I find it hard to believe that the one bears no relationship to the
other.
“I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.)” (From Tolkien Letter # 131.)
Tips for posting in the Reading Room.
