XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: no.spam@no.spam   
      
   On 12/5/2012 7:09 AM, Wayne Brown wrote:   
      
   > So, tell me, how much canon did I violate with my theory?  :-)   
      
   You may be within Canon, or close to with the details, but   
   I think the real basis for Tom Bombadil is this:   
      
   By the time JRRT wrote the LotR, he knew that fans would be   
   discussing it for a long time and analyzing every last detail   
   down to the Nth degree. And one big thing he *didn't* want was   
   for his legendarium to be reduced down to a nice orderly set   
   of categories with neat boundaries drawn around everything.   
      
   So he deliberately left vagueness, uncertainties, unresolved issues   
   and outright contradictions. For example Middle Earth is in   
   the northwest of the Old World, east of the Sea, but all the terrain   
   has conveniently changed since the Third Age. Dwarves don't ride horses   
   but they will ride ponies. Sometimes Balrogs have wings and sometimes   
   they don't. "The Nine the Nazgul keep", and yet "Nine he has gathered   
   unto himself." The Strolling Not-An-Elm Tree of Northfarthing might be   
   an Entwife, but we're never told for sure. Orcs are corrupted Elves.   
   Or maybe not. And even though Denethor releases Pippin from feudal   
   service, Aragorn later reminds him that he's still a Knight of Gondor,   
   subject to recall.   
      
   So what about TB? We just don't know. Because *we're not meant to know!*   
   Tom is an Enigma. He's there to remind us not to try and get Middle   
   Earth down too pat. Or too circumscribed. He's the Heisenberg   
   Uncertainty Principle. And Goldberry is the Quantum Wave Equation.   
      
   Just be glad there's only *one* River Daughter in the story to be   
   concerned with; _The Ring of the Nibelungs_ has THREE!   
      
   SQ   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)