In article <98942@netnews.upenn.edu> schoi@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (Samuel Choi) writes:
>>xexeo@dxcern.cern.ch (Geraldo Xexeo) writes:
>>Tom is Valar, as far as I am informed.I will try to check the
>>information at home.
>
>There's no way Tom is a Valar . . . or is that that plural? . . . in which case
>there's no way he's a Vala. There're only, what, 9, Valar? Manwe being the
>head honcho, then Melkor, and Umlo . . . and then I don't remember.
>
>I've heard someone say that that he's one of the maiar . . . don't know where
>that info's from . . .
>
All of this is pure speculation that isn't based on anything in any
of Tolkien's texts. True, lots of Tolkien fans and attempted critics have
attempted to work Bombadil into the Valar-Maiar hierarchy, but they are at
a great loss to find any hints in Tolkien's writings to support the various
positions they have taken.
Personally, I think Bombadil is somewhat of an "aberration" in any
attempt to create a totalizing view of Middle-earth. Tolkien once wrote of
Bombadil, (although he was speaking about the Bombadil of _The Adventures of
Tom Bombadil_), that he meant him to personify the landscape of the English Midlands. I think a lot of that carries over into the Bombadil of LOTR as well--
he does seem to be intimately bound to the landscape of the Old Forest and
the Barrow-downs, to the degree that he seems to have virtually unlimited
power within that space, but does not seem to journey beyond it. He seems, in
other words, to be more of a spirit of a place, than of a grand Silmarillion-
esque hierarchy of godlike/angelic beings.
The same, I add, could be said of his wife Goldberry, who is said to
be the daughter of the River Withywindle. She seems to be tied to a specific
local (and even a specific geographical feature), rather than to a some great
family of semi-divine entities.
I think that the fact that Tom and Goldberry show little or no
interest in the affairs of Middle-earth-- the wars, the Ring, or what have
you-- outside of their own domain seems to lend support to this interpreation.
