Bombadil and Smith

Well, I'm going to try explaining what I hinted at in my last post. Essentially, Tom Bombadil struck me just the other day as being rather like a wildly jolly and unpredictable man named Innocent Smith in G. K. Chesterton's book Manalive! Here are some similarities they share:

• big man, but able to move quickly and nimbly
• laughs at danger and evil
• mysterious and enigmatic
  
• wears brightly-colored clothes
  
• possesses quite a hat
  
• would go to the ends of the earth for his wife (to court her again or fetch water lilies)
• seems to arrive at the right time to help in a way that wasn't expected

If anyone else has read both and would like to add to the comparison or mention contrasts, be my guest! If you haven't, I recommend both books highly. Manalive! really is a fun book, especially worth reading with someone. And I'm in the middle of The Fellowship of the Ring at the moment, which is as always wonderful in more ways than I can say. But I'll save that for another post. :-)