Beorn and Tom Bombadil: A Tale of Two Heroes (Character Overview)

IN The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, two characters appear to be purposefully designed to be literary complements of each other: Beorn and Tom Bombadil. In The Hobbit, Beorn helps Bilbo and his company on their way to the Lonely Mountain, and later joins in the Battle of Five Armies. Tom Bombadil appears near the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, and he saves the Hobbits twice, first from Old Man Willow and later from a Barrow-wight. Several have written on the contrasts between the 'good' figures of Tom Bombadil, the Rangers, and the Ents as opposed to the 'evil' figures of Shelob, Gollum, the Nazgul, and the Balrog among others. (1) Yet there is a different kind of literary kinship between Beorn, the skin changing man in The Hobbit, and Tom Bombadil, the eccentric being in The Lord of the Rings. As Peter Beagle notes, "in a literary sense [Beorn] is the forerunner of the more deeply realized Tom Bombadil" (xii). (2) In this article I will discuss the main characteristics of Beorn and Bombadil, their differences, and what makes them so connected. I will start with the questions of their identities, then look at some general comparisons and contrasts of their positions in their respective stories, and discuss the relationship of Beorn to Tom Bombadil in Tolkien's work. Who is Beorn?