OK, it started as a small joke in the Business room, but it seems there are a few people who've been wanting to talk about Bombadil, and Voronwe accorded me the honor of starting a thread ...
Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?
The most important line in the book, imo.
Back when Crispy's thread, Are They Important Films?, was going strong on TORC, I made a passing comment that the orcs were too concrete in Jackson's films, and Shagrat responded that the orcs were not concrete enough in Tolkien.
This got me to thinking about why Tolkien made the orcs such foils ... and all the other ethical dilemmas he seems to have gotten into regarding orcs when he had to begin explaining them. The 'corrupted elves' explanation had always satisfied me, but on reflection this would seem to make them more worthy of pity, not less so. And Tolkien did not present them as worthy of sympathy in any way ... their potential for redemption is simply not addressed in the book.
The more we discussed the moral dimensions of Tolkien, the more this problem of orc redemption bothered me; but at the same time I felt at some deep level that his decision to use them in this manner was right. It was true. There are ways of being in the world that remove the potential for redemption. So I thought and thought about this and finally settled on an explanation that felt satisfactory ... and I've procrastinated writing about it for a few months now, but will try to put it into words tonight because I just realized tonight that Bombadil also takes on new significance in light of this explanation, so I can't say what I want to say about Bombadil without talking first about the orcs.
<opens box of cookies ... takes out three and sets box where everyone can reach it >
This is spawn of TMU, so bear with me through a very brief recap. My assertion in 'Tolkien's Moral Universe' was that LotR is not about rejection of the Ring but rather about affirmation of life in the face of mortality, suffering, failure.
What the book shows for each character, subtly but thoroughly, is the affirmation that allows them to resist using the Ring. I want to use the example of Aragorn because I wrote about it already on TORC and because it dovetails most gracefully with the quote from Bombadil above.
What I wrote previously about Aragorn was that it is Arwen's love that enabled him to seek the Kingship without using the Ring to obtain it. The Ring is a shortcut to the Kingship but it is shortcut to the Title alone, behind which his name would be lost as the name of the Witch King of Angmar is lost. Arwen cannot love 'the King' abstractly; none of us can love an abstraction. If she loves, she loves Aragorn concretely. That is, she loves him by name and not by title (borrowing this distinction from Carse), and that love is what allows him to hang on to his own name and not take the shortcut to a title offered by the Ring. As long as he loves Arwen, the title alone is meaningless for him and the Ring holds no serious temptation, but he must hold the awareness of Arwen's love before him at all times to continue to resist the temptation. He sets this affirmation against the false promises of the Ring, so to speak.
Now ... what I am lately realizing is just how sore a trial this must be.
Because there is another way to sidestep the temptation of the Ring, which is the way of not wanting anything at all. Putting oneself beyond both affirmation and negation, putting oneself beyond the concerns of this world. Buddhism offers this as the highest good, though one must affirm the world before transcending it. But this path is not open to the characters in the story. They are charged with first solving this problem of the Ring in Middle Earth. And in order to convey the Ring to Mordor, each of them must continue to remember and affirm that one true thing in their lives, whatever it is, while being in constant proximity to the tool that would allow them to achieve it superficially in an instant - to save the Shire, to win the Kingship, to preserve Lorien, to restore Gondor, etc. - and yet remember as well that the tool will betray them and so not use it to achieve their purpose.
To continue to want it with all your heart, and to have the means of achieving it at your disposal, but to refrain from using that means even though you can't stop wanting to.
I was trying to think of a mundane comparison and all I could think of was Mastercard. You want all those things you see on ebay and you've got your Mastercard in your pocket but you absolutely, positively cannot use it because in the long run that will be really, really bad. (Two rings for mortal men doomed to debt.)
Now think how well you've handled that temptation in the past, all the rationalizations you've used on yourself, and you'll have a clue what our heroes were up against while plowing through the snow of Caradhras and fleeing the orcs through Moria. I can't even keep my grubby fingers off the damned credit card when I'm sitting comfortably in my own home with a cup of hot cocoa and every legitimate earthly need met.
And, seriously now ... what a lot of people do is cut their credit card in half, or simply never visit ebay (that's my strategy) ... that is, they remove from themselves the temptation to want the thing because they cannot resist the temptation to obtain it in a harmful way.
And that it precisely what our heroes must not do. They must not stop wanting the things they have affirmed, or else the quest becomes a wandering in the wildnerness, an endless series of purposeless involvements in meaningless tasks, no direction home ...
for some reason Jim Morrison's lyrics come to mind:
"... can you picture what will be, so limitless and free, desperately in need of some stranger's hand ... desperate land ..."
And this is what I think the orcs are ... creatures who have given in to existential exhaustion and fear, and no longer affirm anything in their heart of hearts but wander from meaningless deed to meaningless deed. They can be loyal to no one because they can want no person's purpose; they can hope for no particular end. Tolkien does not even offer us speculation on what an orc would do with the Ring if he got his hands on it ... this is somehow beyond their capacity to even want the power of the Ring. Thus they are enslaved by Sauron and Saruman but never loyal to them, never believing in the cause; they are cruel but their cruelty is disorganized. They live from moment to moment without a guiding principle.
It is not necessary to consider the potential for redemption of such a creature because they would have first to turn into something that could want redemption ... that could want something, anything, beyond the moment at hand.
... I want to say that our heroes are people who have rejected the Ring, and the orcs are people who have rejected the opportunity to be tempted by the Ring. They are people who have abdicated their own significance.
And yes, I think there are people like that. People whose lives are the equivalent of crouching in a corner, wanting only to grab what is near at hand and, basically, eat it.
<gets more cookies>
So, to tie this back to Crispy's thread ... the concreteness of Jackson's orc bothered me at a subconscious level because they were too willfull. They bought into Sauron's program - they carried forth his will, rather than being driven by his will and against their own. They are not concrete in Tolkien because to make them concrete he would have to invest them with a degree of willfulness, purposefulness, and this is precisely what they are intended to lack.
So ... getting back to Bombadil ... what I realized recently while considering that line about being alone and nameless, is that Bombadil is a real paradox within the context of the story. In him we see 'beyondness' from a different perspective, a positive perspective. I'm not sure that 'beyondness' is even the right word ... it's more like an in-ness ... an identity that is whole and complete within itself. And this is wonderful and intriguing and perplexing because he is not an 'opposite' of any other 'type' in the story, but he manages to contrast with just about every purpose expressed in the book.
Hmm ... well, my thoughts about this are not yet well-formed, I see, because I'm having trouble finding words to express them. And it's getting very late here. So maybe I'll just break off here and see what others were going to say about Bombadil.
I realize this post doesn't sound as if it's about Bombadil, but I think that it is. I think that the wholly bizarre and unexpected concreteness of Bombadil plunking himself down in the middle of this story and being nothing but his own name ... I think he is a big part of Tolkien's 'answer' to one of the eternal questions ... what are we here for? what is our significance?
Jn