Who or what is Tom Bombadil in Tolkien’s legendarium, officially?

[SeekerOfTruth007]

I've always suspected that he is intended to be a Valar, since he seems to be the only character who could correctly control the One Ring without being tempted by it.

Is there any official answer to this question?

[AI Opinion]

Tom Bombadil is officially “Eldest” and “Fatherless,” and Tolkien very deliberately kept him unclassified. 🌿

In Tolkien’s own letters, he says Tom is not a Valar, not Eru, not an allegory, and not really part of the power struggle of Middle-earth. He’s more a personification of the natural world, a mystery deliberately left unexplained, showing there are things beyond Sauron and the Ring’s drama. ✨

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Tolkien supposedly "hated allegory," yet there are certain clear allegorical themes in the LotR stories and perhaps even more so in the Hobbit. He literally used the LotR novels to evangelize C. S. Lewis into the Christian religion for goodness sake, based on certain allegorical themes found there.

I don't think you can take quotations from the author which are not part of the published work as "canon" either, because authors sometimes contradict themselves after the fact.

Take George Lucas on Star Wars, in one interview he says Luke and Vader were tied for strongest force users who ever lived, but in another he claims only Mace Windu could match the Emperor 1vs1. It seems a case where the author changes his mind contrary to his own published work.

[Anonymous]

I have no idea who he is

[SeekerOfTruth007]

That's because he doesn't appear in the movies. Peter Jackson cut Bombadil completely out of the The Fellowship of the Ring just to save time, but he's actually directly seen in 2 or 3 chapters and discussed again at length at the Council of Elrond. Gandalf concludes that although Bombadil is incorruptible, even he could not be trusted with the One Ring, because Gandalf concludes that Bombadil would become bored with the task of guarding the ring, and probably just throw it away.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Gandalf also concluded that you cannot just throw the One Ring into the Deep Ocean and hope it gets eventually lost or destroyed, because apparently Sauron had agents that lived int he deep ocean. This is sort of verified a few chapters later when the party is attacked by the hundred-handed-one (sort of) at the gate of Moria.