Is Tom Bombadil the most frustrating character in The Lord of the Rings?
Bombadil has stupendous power at his fingertips, and impervious to the powers of the ring to boot. Is this the one to take the ring to Mount Doom? Nope. You’ll find him staying in the woods while a cosmic battle between good and evil rages around him. He digs the hobbits out of trouble a couple of times early on, dusts them off and sends them on their way. One might expect him to ride to the rescue when all seems lost in The Return of the King. But don’t hold your breath.
In story terms, Tom Bombadil is an unnecessary character, which is why he is cut from the otherwise fairly faithful films by Peter Jackson (at least, faithful as long as you’re not too bothered about the hobbits’ return to the shire which, in cinematic terms, is anti-climatic).
I don’t read around Lord of the Rings much but so far, I’ve not heard convincing explanations as to what Tolkien is doing with Bombadil in his epic story. But I note that the character predates The Lord of the Rings in a poem from 1934, twenty years before Fellowship of the Ring was published.
So what are we to make of Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings?
Given Tolkien’s astonishing ability to create worlds, myths and languages, we should probably trust that he knew what he was doing, and that we’re not getting it. Tolkien wasn’t infallible, but given how he agonised over every word of his magnum opus, we can be sure that he didn’t throw in a character from an old poem because he wasn’t sure what to do next. Bombadil wasn’t just pulled out of thin air. Like everything and everyone in Middle Earth, there’s a history.
Now let’s wander out the back of Frodo’s wardrobe and tumble into Narnia where we might get another feeling if the Bombadils.
From Middle Earth to Narnia
The oddity in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is Father Christmas. Just what was CS Lewis playing at, throwing in a character from our world that simply doesn’t belong? (As is mentioned on the Cooper and Cary podcast here).
Some say Father Christmas in Narnia doesn’t make logical sense. If Aslan is the Christ figure, dying for Edmund on the stone table and rising again, how can there be Christmas in Narnia? Shouldn’t it be Aslanmas? Should there be a story told about the birth of a cub who was born to lead his… wait, isn’t that The Lion King?
The Father Christmas Problem
One can answer this ‘Father Christmas Problem’ in two ways. Firstly, it is clear from the Chronicles of Narnia that this whole tale isn’t just a leaden allegory. Worlds are interplaying with each other. We see this very clearly in The Magician’s Nephew where pools lead to all kinds of other worlds. One of them is ours.
The implication is that Aslan has a presence in all of those worlds. At the end of the Voyage of the Dawntreader, Aslan says that in Lucy and Edmund’s world, he has another name. The fact that he initially looks like a lamb and is cooking fish on a beach in a John 21 kind of way rather screams his name in our world is Jesus Christ.
And Christmas isn’t only mentioned when Father Christmas himself arrives. A refrain thoughout the book is not ‘always Winter, never Spring’, but always winter, ‘never Christmas’.
What Planet Are You On?
The second, and more satisfying way, to understand Father Christmas in Narnia is to read Planet Narnia by Michael Ward. He has convincingly argued that there are themes in each of the seven books that are hiding in plain sight. Each book of the series represents one of the seven heavens in the medieval mindset.
The Voyage of the Dawntreader is dripping with golden imagery relating to the Sun. Prince Caspian, being about a war in a forest, is the story of the planet Mars (God of war and forests). The Silver Chair, with its subterranean lunatic, is the lunar, representing the Moon.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is based around Jupiter, the king of the Gods. Hence there are many references to kingship and kingliness. The book is Jupiter-like, or ‘Jovial’. And who is more jovial than Father Christmas?
You can read much more on this in Planet Narnia, which also sees these heavenly themes in Lewis’s poetry and Cosmic Trilogy. Or you can read the simpler, Narnia-only version called The Narnia Code. Treat yourself. Either is a total treat if you’re a fan of Narnia.
Secrets
CS Lewis never revealed this hidden theme in his lifetime, which ended unobtrusively on the day JFK was shot. The secrecy of this hidden theme is no surprise given Lewis’s nature, not least seen in how he even got married and didn’t tell anyone, even Tolkien.
Tolkien did not warm to Lewis’s Narnia books, disliking the weight of the allegory. In Middle Earth, there is no Christ figure. Is it Gandalf? Is it Frodo? Is it Aragorn? Aslan is pre-eminent in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Lion is in the title. And the book is about kings, the lion being the king of the beasts. Aslan is less present in other books.
But to other critics, Lewis’s books looked cute, rushed, chaotic and haphazard - and Father Christmas sliding in dishing out weapons feels like the ultimate grab of desperation. But do we really think that CS Lewis, a super-bright careful writer and professor in Medieval Literature would allow slapdash stories to be released in his name?
If you trust the author, you can trust the story.
Let us not rush to judgement. Let us allow the story to do its work.
Nativity Stories
We can, and should, apply this principle to the Bible. Trust the author. Trust the story. Why does it say this or that? Or why doesn’t it say this or that?
One of the criticism of the Gospel accounts is how different they are. I took part in a conversation about this on YouTube on Tuesday. Some say that the Massacre of the Innocents could not have happened, since surely Luke would mentioned it.
Why did Matthew not mention that census that seem so important in Luke?
Look at the very start of Matthew, with a genealogy of three lots of 14 generations. The maths doesn’t quite work unless you count one or two names twice.
Again, we should trust the author. Matthew, a tax collector, could probably count to fourteen.
And we can trust God who empowered and inspired Matthew to write every jot and tittle of his gospel in the way Matthew and God intended.
So let’s read it for what it is, not what we think it should have been. It’s just possible that we don’t know what we’re talking about. And that the author does.
There are some useful thoughts here from James Bejon on Ian Paul’s blog comparing the difference nativity narratives. Well worth a read. And here’s that YouTube link again.
Anywhere near Cambridge?
I’m doing a Water into Wine gig at Christ Church on Saturday 29th Jan at 7.30pm. Book HERE. Please consider coming, saying hello - and bringing a friend.
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