I understood Ciridan the Shipwright to be the oldest character but may be wrong.
Cirdan is certainly the oldest elf in Middle Earth during the period of the LotR. Treebeard and the other ents are probably older.
Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
161–170 of 349 posts
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#162I would not be commenting about how little interest I have in this story, if the website didn't break the back button. The people who do this, what are they thinking? That we will never leave, and keep watching their webpage until we die?
Tolkien is overrated, but this... this is useless and annoying.
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#163Tolkien on Tom in Letter 144: I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. but if you have, as it were taken 'a vow of poverty…
This has always been my understanding of Bombadil as well. The most popular/accepted view of who he is among Tolkien-dom that I've heard is that he represents the lands of the West themselves (or perhaps all of Middle-Earth?). In the Tolkien legendarium power comes from knowing the right names for things and the right words to say to them. Tom Bombadil is the most powerful being in Middle-Earth because he is so old t…
eric_cc & hacknat: Thanks for your posts; now I'm a bit sorry for complaining about bikeshedding comments. ;)
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#164Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow.
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue it's the one piece of fiction from the last 100 years with the highest likelihood of staying power for the next 1000 years. If any piece of fiction from this period of time is still important in human culture in 1000 years (taking for granted that humans still exist), I think it would be Tolkien's work.
I will venture further out on the speculative limb, and predict that in 1000 years when virtual reality subsumes reality, that Middle Earth (and the larger Tolkien world) will become the dominant reality - as it doesn't and may never have any competition for that role.
Tolkien either defined or at least cemented what Elves, Orcs, Dwarfs and Halflings are like (including their culture, environments and architecture). Almost all of fantasy is keeping more or less close to those definitions.
If this influence continues to hold, then the popular fantasy VR reality doesn't need to be Tolkien World. It can stand completely on its own and still generally look and feel like Middle Earth would.
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters. Why? He doesn't actually do anything except drone on and on about the color of his boots. He doesn't advance the story in any way (which is why it is so easy to omit him in adaptations).
Tom represents the Great Mystery, the great unknown of the beyond that is all seeing and all knowing and all powerful. Omitting him is like omitting the whole premise of the book. It's like making a movie based on the Bible but omitting the Resurrection of Jesus.
Sorry, but that just doesn't compute for me at all. Tom is a silly character with no gravitas. He puns his own name just to make it rhyme with "yellow" -- over and over again. And there is nothing in Tom's story that is even remotely comparable to the Resurrection. The Resurrection is a key event in the Bible story. It is something that happens to change the dramatic arc of all mankind. In Tom's story, nothing happens at all.
The scene at Mount Doom where the Ring is finally destroyed is analogous to the Resurrection, not Tom Bombadil.
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#167> Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure so disliked by fans of the book that few object to his absence from all adaptations of the story. I've been a fan of Tolkien for decades, and this doesn't match up with my experience at all...Tolkien fans seem to generally love Tom, and many were deeply disappointed that he wasn't in the movies (even though his exclusion makes perfect se…
I tried to read LoTR when I was 11. I got to Tom Bombadil and just gave up. 70 pages of him singing with no real point. I just couldn't go on. I finally read it in full around 5 years later.
The first LotR movie released when I was in grade nine. IIRC, of the 14 students in our class, 11 started reading the books after the movie. Of those, maybe 4 finished. The boredom of Tom Bombadil was the cause of a lot of the dropouts.
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
It provides some pretty key context to where Merry got his blade from and why it is able to break the spell and make the Witch King killable. Bit of a better explanation than Eowyn's "I am no man."
Merry's sword was Númenorean, but there was no need of that entire digression to get Merry a Númenorean sword. The movie has Aragorn tell them "here are some weapons, help yourselves", which is just as good.
You can argue that much of the books can be eliminated because they're just not Hollywood, reading is for boomers after all.
The origin of the blade is relevant because they nearly died in getting it, and because it came from the tomb of a prince who himself died battling the Witch King, so in a sense he obtained vengeance from beyond the grave. "Wow, this sword just turned out to be magic, what a coincidence" isn't nearly the same thing.
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters. Why? He doesn't actually do anything except drone on and on about the color of his boots. He doesn't advance the story in any way (which is why it is so easy to omit him in adaptations).
He's extremely mysterious and in a good way. He is one of the only characters able to just casually put on the one ring with seemingly no effect and then give it back immediately afterwards. I think he gives off eldritch horror vibes, but in a mostly benevolent way. If everyone else were ants, he would be an etymologist intrigued by our behavior or something.
> He is one of the only characters able to just casually put on the one ring with seemingly no effect and then give it back immediately afterwards.
OK, that's fair enough. But to my mind, this is just a setup that cries out for an explanation that never comes. It's a major flaw in the dramatic structure of the narrative, a bug not a feature.
But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.
Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
#170> Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure so disliked by fans of the book that few object to his absence from all adaptations of the story. I've been a fan of Tolkien for decades, and this doesn't match up with my experience at all...Tolkien fans seem to generally love Tom, and many were deeply disappointed that he wasn't in the movies (even though his exclusion makes perfect se…
Absolutely thought "I must be living in a bubble" when I read this: I don't think I've spoken to a single book-reader who wasn't vocally disappointed by the omission of Tom from the films. He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters.
I was mostly bummed the barrow-wights were utterly missing from the movies.