![]() "Your Quest Stands Upon The Edge of a Knife." Galadriel's Silent Interrogation of Each Member of The Fellowship."Arwen Vanimelda, Namarië!" What does Aragorn say to Arwen at Cerin Amroth?."I Tried to Save The Shire, and It Has Been Saved, But Not For Me." Frodo Leaves the Shire and Goes Into the West."What Gift Would a Dwarf Ask of The Elves?" Galadriel Gives Three of Her Golden Hairs to Gimli."All You Wish is to See It and Touch It, If You Can, Though You Know It Would Drive You Mad." Gollum Swears To Serve The Master of The Ring."I Will Take The Ring, Though I Do Not Know The Way."."All We Have to Decide is What To Do With the Time That is Given Us".Gandalf Tries to Enter Moria by the Western Gate but is Thwarted By His Own Cleverness. Tom is Master but Sauron is slave.įollow Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings on Blogs I Follow 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. 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. “The Ring seemed to grow larger as it lay for a moment on his big brown-skinned hand. Sauron by contrast is always hungry and never satisfied.Īnd 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. If Tom is ever hungry it is all part of the pleasure that he takes in the satisfaction of that hunger. Not enough power and not enough of the things that power can give him. ![]() 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. And the Ring is his ultimate tool, the technology with which he will rule everything, reducing all to submission to his will. 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. “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. If Tom is content with what he has got, Sauron is almost defined by his discontent. He lives for sufficiency alone and a pleasure in what he has and not in what he might have.Ĭompare him with the one who made the treasure that Frodo now bears. Not for him the production and the marketing of surplus. ![]() He grows enough to feed himself and Goldberry and the occasional passing guest and no more. 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. 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. “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.” In the house of Tom Bombadil from a diptych by EiszmannĪs 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’s simplicity is the simplicity of the earth, wind, fire and water and all that grows or moves upon the earth. 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. But now Frodo is alive and ready for another day in this wonderful place. 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 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.įrodo begins the day full of energy, running to the window and looking out over Tom’s garden. “Son, let’s go off together in this delightful weather”. The poem by Patrick Kavanagh that I quoted last week, an autumn poem, ends joyously. Sometimes the weather calls us to journey onwards and we are delighted to do so. 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. The Fellowship of the Ring (Harper Collins 1991) pp.
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