Of course we can't understand Tom Bombadil

The difficulty many of us face in understanding Tom Bombadil arises from the fact that he is part of nature and we all too often think of ourselves as separate from nature. We cannot grasp mastery apart from domination. We cannot grasp a steward who does not rule. We are thus far more like Denethor and Saruman than any of us would care to admit. It’s also why neither of them understands Gandalf.

Everything but us is a part of Faerie of its very nature, as Tolkien says in On Fairy-stories.1 We are not naturally enchanted. Not now, and perhaps we never were. Yet, if we were, our disenchantment dates from the moment we began to regard ourselves as ruling stewards, as viceregents rather than vicegerents. We are like Sauron unable to imagine that “we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place,” let alone that “we should try to destroy the Ring itself….” (TT 3.v.497). So, of course we can’t understand Tom Bombadil.

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1

Given Tolkien’s description in On Fairy-stories (see below), I have no doubt that he would say that we are disenchanted, not the world. It would take long thought to work out the dynamics of this point of view in opposition to the standard view that the world is disenchanted.

“Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted."