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The LOTR Movie Site
June 19, 2000'Hear! Hear!' to No Bombadil
Mark S.
Imagine yourself sitting in a seat in a cinema. The big
music starts up. The big graphics and credits come on screen... 'The Lord Of The
Rings' "Oooh... goo-oo-dd! Elves and orcs and magic, and kings and
armies and all that cool stuff. This is gonna be brilliant!" you are thinking.
And then there's this party with a pack of drunken
off-their-faces munchkins pigging out on free food. And then there's this scene about some
Ring thing or another... and a quartet of those overstuffed munchkins go hiking over the
English-style countryside, eating mushrooms ("Hmm... bit suspicious, that...!")
and end up in the house of some character who talks in rhyme all the time and wears bright
yellow boots. ("Okay... anyone want some popcorn while I'm up?")
Philip M is right. Tom Bombadil has got to go. Why Tolkien
left him in the book in the first place (or why the diotr didn't delete the whole passage)
is beyond me. Maybe Tolkien wanted to show his readers what 'clean' magical power
there was in Middle Earth. But Bombadil is too poorly drawn to be a significant
character. If anything, he's an annoying reminder of the impotence and disconnection
the Valar, High Elves and Maia have with Middle Earth. It's like they just don't
want to know. It's like: "Oh well, you poor mortals can sort this one out
yourselves. We sent you Gandalf. What else do you want?" [Personally, I
kind of hate the Valar! They remind me of decadent, rich Pre-Revolutionary French or
Tsarist nobility... 'What? The peasants are unhappy? Why?!'] I don't know. At any
rate, Lord Of The Rings starts as 'The Hobbit, Part II' and ends as the greatest
piece of Twentieth Century mythopoetica ever written.
Bombadil's out of place and he's a pain. Good bye to him,
and good riddance. "Hey dol, derry do... merry fellow... boots of yellow...!"
Bleeeaaarrccchhh! Leave him for the kids! |