In the House of Tom Bombadil

by C.R. Wiley

Throughout The Lord of the Rings the Good Professor is careful to distinguish Dominion from Domination. We need to learn how to distinguish them for ourselves, because very often they get blended in unprincipled and tendentious ways. So, here’s my point in a nutshell: Tom is an image of what true dominion looks like.

What this demonstrates isn’t just that Tom is good and Saruman isn’t, but how two different understandings of knowledge work themselves out in different ways of life—one catches things to control them, and another frees them in order to commune with them.