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What is Tom Bombadil? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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He is not a hobbit, neither a man, but what is he? Is he a dwarf? A wizard? A god? Something else entirely?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Tolkien was just retelling legends, folktales, fairy tales, children's bedtime stories etc. He did piece them together to create extended connected lore, but not everything gets cleanly explained away in this kind of worldbuilding technique.

So really imo Tom Bombadil is just some contrivance of Tolkien to make the story feel more like some old fairy tale.