Tom Bombadil and the Ring

“I Do Not Wish For Mastery.” If Not Mastery, What Does Gandalf Wish For?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 762-766

The accusation came first from Saruman when Gandalf told him that he could only have his freedom if he surrendered the Key of Orthanc and his staff, to be returned later if he merited them.

“Later! Yes, when you also have the Keys of Barad-dûr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the rods of the Five Wizards, and have purchased yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger than those that you wear now”

Last week we thought about how in these words Saruman reveals his own desire, It is he that desires mastery over all things. As Gandalf puts it, “he will not serve, only command.”

Pippin asks Gandalf what he will do to Saruman and receives this reply.

“I? I will do nothing to him. I do not wish for mastery.”

The idea of mastery is often reflected upon in The Lord of the Rings. The title itself, the only title that Tolkien really liked, is about mastery. It is about Sauron’s desire to rule over all things. So is Gandalf saying that mastery is of its very nature wrong? And if Gandalf does not seek for mastery then what does he wish for?

There is a moment in the story when we are given a very different picture of mastery than the one that Saruman and Sauron give us. It comes in the house of Tom Bombadil when Frodo asks Goldberry who Tom Bombadil is.

Goldberry replies” “He is the Master of wood, water and hill.”

Observant readers of Tolkien will immediately recognise one of his characteristic capital letters here in the word, Master. Tolkien uses them in the middle of a sentence when he wants to draw our attention to the importance of something. In this case it is Tom Bombadil’s authority over everything. It is because of this authority that Old Man Willow has to free Merry and Pippin. But when Frodo asks if this means that the land belongs to him Goldberry replies in distress:

“No indeed!.. That would indeed be a burden… The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves.”

In the case of Tom Bombadil Tolkien gives us a glimpse into Eden before the Fall. I wonder if the reason why the chapters in which the hobbits stay with Tom and Goldberry are so beloved of the readers of The Lord of the Rings is because, just for a moment, just after we have been introduced to the Nazgûl for the first time, and just before the hobbits captivity in the barrow, we rest briefly in a place of pure and childlike innocence. Tom is Master in the sense, as Goldberry puts it, “No-one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest… He has no fear.”

In Tom we see a picture of authority without ownership. It is the authority of a great musician in relation to their instrument and the music they play upon it. The musician gives us no anxiety that the music will be too much for them and while we may admire their mastery it is the music to which we give our ultimate attention. The music belongs to itself and a truly great musician allows us to enter a space that we ourselves do not control but within which we experience delight, wonder, exhilaration, peace and sometimes terror.

So mastery is not, of itself, an evil. In fact, in the world of Tom Bombadil, it allows all things to be truly themselves although even Tom has a house and garden although it is a place in which, as in Treebeard’s Wellinghall, the boundaries between what lies inside and outside the house are somewhat porous. So what does Gandalf reject? For Gandalf also has the kind of mastery that Tom enjoys. Few are likely to catch Gandalf out. As Sam put it when the wargs attacked near the gates of Moria, “Whatever may be in store for old Gandalf, I’ll wager it isn’t a wolf’s belly,”

What Gandalf rejects is Saruman’s idea of mastery with ownership. He rejects Saruman’s desire to make all things serve him. As Gandalf would later say to Denethor, he is a steward. He looks after all things in order that they may be truly free in themselves. That is why he came to Middle-earth to free it from a particular tyranny and to allow it, if it would take the opportunity, freedom to be fully alive.

“We Must Send The Ring to The Fire”. Elrond Concludes The Debate on What To Do With The Ring.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 257-260

After Gandalf ends his tale about his long journey, his battle with the Nazgûl upon Weathertop that the hobbits and Aragorn had witnessed from a distance and his long ride northward upon the mighty Shadowfax in order to draw some of his enemies, at least, away from the Ring and its bearer, he apologises to Frodo and then asks:

“Well, the Tale is now told, from first to last. Here we all are, and here is the Ring. But we have not come any nearer to our purpose. What shall we do with it?”

In response to a consideration of Gandalf’s question Elrond makes brief reference to Saruman’s treachery and the dangers of studying too closely the arts of the Enemy. But he gives his closest attention to a reflection upon Frodo’s story subtly drawing both him and hobbits into the long tale of the years. The Shire is placed at the edge of the great primeval forest and hobbits are named as neighbours to Iarwain Ben-adar, oldest and fatherless, Tom Bombadil of the eastern edge of The Old Forest. Briefly the thought is considered that Bombadil might be asked to be guardian of the Ring but Gandalf swiftly dismisses the idea. “He would be a most unsafe guardian; and that alone is enough”.

Perhaps most significantly Elrond speaks of Frodo and hobbits with respect and some surprise. “Of the tales that we have heard today the tale of Frodo was most strange to me. I have known few hobbits, save Bilbo here; and it seems to me that he is perhaps not so alone and singular as I had thought him. The world has changed much since I was last on the westward road.”

Elrond leaves that thought hanging as the Elves begin to debate whether the Ring should be hidden in some fashion or destroyed. Should it be taken westward to the Undying Lands where it will lie beyond the reach of Sauron? Elrond is confident that those in the Undying Lands would refuse to receive the Ring. For them the memory of Feänor and the corrupting power of the Silmarils will be fresh. Not that the Silmarils were evil in themselves but that Feänor’s absolute desire to possess something that he had made at all costs corrupted him absolutely. It led to the rebellion of the Noldor and the kinslaying at Alqualondë, the only occasion of violent death in the long history of Valinor. Neither the Elves nor the Valar would give welcome to an object of power that was inherently evil.

Glorfindel suggests that Saruman’s lie, that the Ring had rolled down the Anduin to the depths of the ocean should be made true. They should cast it there themselves. But Gandalf dismisses this idea. No solution to the problem of the Ring will be permanent save its destruction and so Elrond brings the debate to its conclusion.

“But it seems to me now clear which is the road that we must take. The westward road seems easiest. Therefore it must be shunned. It will be watched. Too often the Elves have fled that way. Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril- to Mordor. We must take the Ring to the Fire.”

The taking of the hard road, the road into peril, lies at the very heart of Tolkien’s meditation on the problem of evil. He gives no attention whatsoever to the question of why there is evil in the world. It is here and that is all we need to know. And he rejects the two solutions to the problem of evil in our own time, that either we flee from it to some absolute place of safety or that we overcome it by some greater force, defeating evil with evil. Next week we will give greater consideration to this latter solution thinking about Boromir’s suggestion that the Free Peoples use the Ring against its maker. It is enough to know now that Elrond and the Wise reject this possibility. There is only the hard road. The road into the very heart of darkness allowing it to do its very worst. The way of the cross.

The Ring and Tom Bombadil. So is the Ring Really Such a Big Deal?

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The Fellowship of the Ring (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 126-131

I am sure that I am among many readers of The Lord of the Rings who on their first reading share the hobbits’ delight on realising that they could not travel onwards after staying the night at the house of Tom Bombadil but had to stay there one more day. Sometimes the weather calls us to journey onwards and we are delighted to do so. The poem by Patrick Kavanagh that I quoted last week, an autumn poem, ends joyously. “Son, let’s go off together in this delightful weather”. But sometimes the weather tells us that it is a day on which we should stay put and this is such a day for the hobbits.

Frodo begins the day full of energy, running to the window and looking out over Tom’s garden. It is a moment filled with poignancy as we think of the broken hobbit at the end of the story and long for his healing in the Undying Lands even while filled with sadness that this cannot come for him in the Shire. But now Frodo is alive and ready for another day in this wonderful place.

Tolkien’s description of this day spent here is deceptively simple, filled as it is with Tom’s doggerel, but we would do well not to fall into the trap of confusing simplicity with foolishness. Tom’s simplicity is the simplicity of the earth, wind, fire and water and all that grows or moves upon the earth. “He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.”

As the hobbits listen to him they begin to realise that the world about them has its own life and is far far more than an extension of their own. Tom may be Master but that is because he has dwelt among the creatures of the world for long, long years and because they and he have come to share one life together. Unlike them he is a shaper of the world but he is a gardener and in all humility he keeps his gardening and so his shaping also to a minimum. He grows enough to feed himself and Goldberry and the occasional passing guest and no more. Not for him the production and the marketing of surplus. He lives for sufficiency alone and a pleasure in what he has and not in what he might have.

Compare him with the one who made the treasure that Frodo now bears. If Tom is content with what he has got, Sauron is almost defined by his discontent. “Who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?” Tom says to Frodo in answer to the question, “Who are you?” Sauron would answer with the things that he has made, the power that he exercises and all that he desires. Bombadil laughingly speaks of his own lack of control over the weather and immediately readers of Tolkien’s great tale will think of Sauron’s attempts to do precisely that in order to win the great battle before Minas Tirith. And the Ring is his ultimate tool, the technology with which he will rule everything, reducing all to submission to his will.

If Tom Bombadil is about the enjoyment of things and creatures in themselves, content to have enough and no more, Sauron is about the gaining and exercising of power through technology and about never having enough. Not enough power and not enough of the things that power can give him. If Tom is ever hungry it is all part of the pleasure that he takes in the satisfaction of that hunger. Sauron by contrast is always hungry and never satisfied.

And so when Tom Bombadil asks Frodo for the Ring, showing thereby that he is indeed Master, he just plays with it as he might do with any tool.

“The Ring seemed to grow larger as it lay for a moment on his big brown-skinned hand. Then suddenly he put it to his eye and laughed.” Tom is much more Master of the Ring than Sauron could ever be, even placing it upon his little finger with no effect on him. Sauron by contrast gives his entire being into the tools that he makes, seeking thereby to extend that being but succeeding only in diminishing it. Tom is Master but Sauron is slave.