While we were all sitting at home to defeat the plague of coronavirus , I got to thinking about the all-time champion of social distancing: Tom Bombadil. 
I write about him and Goldberry a lot. There are constant debates going on about him on social media and in scholarship. Lots of us are fascinated by Tom, and the unbounded opportunities for speculation he provides. The rest of the writers on the internet can’t stand him.
It’s a funny thing. J.R.R. Tolkien was the most sociable person imaginable. He was always forming groups: the TCBS, the Coalbiters, the Inklings. The characters he writes are often as social and extroverted as he was. Hobbits spend their time in taverns, Elves convene in big feasts, Butterbur persuades total strangers to join the crowd in the common room, Dwarves go to the effort of digging through solid rock to build huge halls in which they can assemble, the Rohirrim are the descendants of Anglo-Saxons who saw exile as a trauma. Loners are usually evil.
Most of Tolkien’s dedicated fans, by diametric contrast, are introverts. We like the idea of convivial groups, but it would be exhausting to live like that all the time. Fortunately, there’s one couple of happy introverts in The Lord of the Rings with whom we can share our attitude. Tom and Goldberry live the introvert’s ideal life. They’re happy to have short-term visitors, but they didn’t make it easy to be one. They conduct their business as they see fit. They make their little realm exactly the way they want it. Best of all, they have the power to keep it that way. It occurred to me to wonder if there was a connection between the Internet’s fascination with Bombadil and his status as the Great Introvert.
How would we test this hypothesis? Our unique (it is to be hoped) circumstances offered a chance to find out. Usually, the people who discuss Tolkien on the Internet are doubly-likely to be introverted. This weekend was different. Everyone was confined to their house and the weather was forecast to be terrible. There would never be a better chance to find extroverted Tolkien fans on line.
The Experiment
Hypothesis: Introverts are more likely than extroverts to love the character of Tom Bombadil.
Approach: Conduct a web survey, soliciting responses from Twitter and Reddit (r/tolkienfans and r/lotr) to two questions.
- What do you think of Tom Bombadil?
- Love him
- I understand why movies always leave him out, but it’s disappointing
- Don’t like him
- Other (free text)
- Are you an introvert or an extrovert? For this purpose, an extrovert is someone who’s energized by interacting with large groups; an introvert is someone who likes to be alone to re-charge after being in a group.
- Extrovert
- Kind of in the middle
- Introvert
The survey ran from April 12th to April 14th.
Results: 1,329 responses were received, of which 1,323 were intelligible. The free-text responses were overwhelmingly of two types. Either they were “both (a) and (b)”, which was reclassified as (a), or they were “neither like nor dislike” which is logically equivalent to and reclassified as (c).
| Reaction | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introversion | Don’t like him | Disappointing | Love him | Total |
| Extrovert | 6 | 32 | 69 | 107 |
| Kind of in the middle | 49 | 192 | 197 | 438 |
| Introvert | 76 | 319 | 383 | 778 |
| Total | 131 | 543 | 649 | 1,323 |
Discussion: The attempt to find extroverts in online Tolkien discussion forums was probably doomed in any case, but we did get over a hundred of them to contribute. 59% of the sample was a proud introvert. 33% described themselves as neither introverted nor extroverted, but it is impossible to avoid the observation that this latter group’s answers were indistinguishable from those of the former (Pearson’s χ² test, p=.0092).
Unfortunately for our hypothesis, the probability that an extrovert would love Tom Bombadil was 64%, compared to 49% among introverts. Introverts were almost twice as likely to say “don’t like him” as extroverts (11% vs 6%).
Conclusion
Extroverts seem to like people more than introverts do, even when the person is fictional and the test is loaded to favor the introverts. The world is a harsh place, and the beauty of a hypothesis can not save it from the brutality of facts.
Thank you and ring-a-dong-dillo to everyone who helped spread the word!
Kate Neville
I am too introverted to be on Reddit or Twitter. I understand why he was left out, but hate that it meant the Barrowdowns were also left out. Tom and Goldberry self/isolate, but I’ve never thought of him as an introvert. Too talkative.
Joe
I figure it’s the only time he’s talked to anyone but Goldberry in twenty years, so the floodgates were open.
Stephen Winter
As always, Joe, you find an original way into Tolkien’s great tale. I am someone with a pretty even balance between extro and intro-version. I am in isolation at present after displaying symptoms of Covid 19 but, after an unpleasant beginning, I am beginning to enjoy the experience. My seven days will be up on Sunday evening. I suspect that I will at first be sorry to leave my hermitage but will soon be glad to be out in the world again, even in the limited manner permitted here in the UK.
I agree that Bombadil is an introvert. He gets all the energy he needs from his small world and has no worries about it ever running out.
Joe
Yikes! Glad you’re recovering. People with antibodies are going to be some of the most useful in the world, for the foreseeable future.
Daniel Stride
I’m not sure Tom is necessarily introverted. He seems to socialise just fine with Farmer Maggot.
(I’m also not sure Tolkien was an extrovert. Sure, he liked clubs… but it was for interests he himself shared. C.S. Lewis, by contrast, was certainly extroverted).
Anyway, I’d personally rank Beorn as the King of Tolkien’s introverts.