Book IV, Chapter 9: Shelob’s Lair
Well, here we are -- the confrontation with the ancient spider monster. The most horror film moment in The Lord of the Rings. The Shelob battle isn’t entirely confined to this chapter, of course -- we’ll have to get to Chapter 10 to completely dispose of her. But dealing with Shelob is really the entire business of this shorter installment of my journey.
One of the things I have to emphasize about this chapter right off the bat -- and yes, here’s another James hot take -- is how weird it is that Frodo and Sam aren’t more prepared for what ends up happening. As they both know, and have known for days now, they are making for a pass called Cirith Ungol. Now, I know all those of you who speak Sindarin are already well aware of what I’m about to say -- and by the way, a hearty and belated mae govannen to Sindarin-speaking readers of these posts -- but for the rest of us, Cirith Ungol in Sindarin means Spider Pass. Spider Pass. “Hey Gollum, how do we get into the terrifying monster-land of Mordor?” “Oh, Spider Pass.” “Awesome, that sounds very safe and not at all infested by horrors that will devour us.”
Seriously, folks. Frodo Baggins’s skill with Elvish languages has by now already impressed Gildor Inglorion with his Sindarin greeting, and he knew enough Sindarin to make at least a little sense of the Sindarin dialect spoken by Faramir’s rangers (who, as Numenorean descendants, had that language handed down to them). You’re telling me he doesn’t know the word for spider? I mean, he sure isn’t going to forget it after this. But it is just slightly distracting for Tolkien to have slipped like this -- I don’t mind Shelob’s Lair, which we are about to enter, being named Torech Ungol (Spider Tunnel) because the narrator explicitly notes that Gollum doesn’t give it that name. We only know it thanks to the narrator. But Cirith Ungol has been named aloud multiple times in Book IV. It’s just bizarre to me that they don’t at least ask Gollum if there are any spiders around -- or that they’re not more attentive to things like webbing, etc. All we can assume is that Frodo’s either very, very tired, or else he dislikes spiders so much that when he saw that page in his Sindarin for Dummies book, he flipped on immediately to the next page, and thus never learned it. Those are the breaks, I guess.
To talk about Shelob, I think we have to talk briefly about her even more monstrous mother, Ungoliant -- yes, Ungoliant, you’d think Frodo could do some simple Sindarin roots here and figure out what Ungol means but nooooo -- who is a elemental force of evil on a level that probably outdid even Sauron. She appears out of the void at the beginning of Arda’s existence, and her commitment to sating her hunger by devouring all things until all that’s left is darkness and emptiness is, uh, pretty strong. She even intimidates the crap out of Melkor, Sauron’s boss, although the two of them quickly make a bargain to oppose the Valar -- Ungoliant cloaks them both in webs of darkness, they invade Valinor, and once Melkor has wounded the Two Trees (yes, here they are again) Ungoliant drinks up all their light so that none remains. They then run away, like villains do, and turn on each other -- Ungoliant expects Melkor to give her the Silmarils so that she can consume their light, but he won’t. She tries to kill him and nearly succeeds until his Balrog guards hear him calling for aid and they come drive her off. The Silmarillion is wild, y’all. Anyway, she runs to Gorgoroth, the landscape we are about to enter, and makes her home there. And now here’s Shelob, the last remaining child of Ungoliant, still keeping her gruesome watch over the pass into Gorgoroth -- as Tolkien tells us in really florid (and wonderful) prose, “there agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form . . . who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dur; and she served none but herself, drinking the blook of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness.” Whew. This is a force of malevolence like nothing Frodo and Sam have encountered -- Shelob is far removed from the Ring and cares nothing for it. She desires nothing but the death of all things that live, “and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her.” A perfect ally for Gollum, since her interests align with his exactly.
As Shelob approaches them -- depicted most gruesomely and effectively by John Howe, I think http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/b/b9/John_Howe_-_Shelob_About_to_Leap_on_Frodo.jpg -- it’s just a fortunate thing that Sam remembers the Phial of Galadriel and that Frodo keeps it in his pocket rather than at the bottom of his pack. Frodo’s cry as he holds it aloft -- “Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima!” -- means “Hail Earendil brightest of stars!” He barely feels like it’s him saying it -- a little Galadriel magic at work here, I think. Unfortunately for him, Shelob is pretty bad news, undaunted by a little Elvish, even a little light in these tunnels that have never seen light since the world was made. Frodo does manage to cow her just slightly, though -- he does the one thing she doesn’t expect, approaching her with the Phial and the sword extended and gleaming, looking to Shelob as though “a star had descended into the very earth.” Nice work, Frodo -- alas, this is a horror film, and the killer’s never dealt with the first time you think they are.
I do think it’s a little funny that Sam’s blade doesn’t cut the spiderwebs while Frodo’s does -- Sam’s wielding a blade of Numenor, and we’ll find out in Book V that they have certain enchantments that make them very handy in a scrap with a Nazgul. Apparently spiderweb poses a different kind of challenge, though, so it’s a good thing Frodo’s got an Elvish sword to handle them.
Well, this chapter ends with a run of bad news -- first Sam notices that Frodo, running headlong out of the tunnel to the pass, is headed right for a tower clearly still occupied by Orcs, judging from Sting’s gleam. Then he sees some kind of Lovecraftian monstrosity -- and yeah, I think Shelob’s a lot better analogue to Elder Things from that mythos than she is to almost anything else in Tolkien’s cosmology -- as he watches “the most loathly shape that he had ever beheld, horrible beyond the horror of an evil dream” come boiling out of some shadowy passageway. I’ve been calling her a spider but the narration is pretty careful to explain that it’s more that she’s a beast in spider form -- horned, clawed, with a stinger in her abdomen, she doesn’t really resemble spider anatomy in certain details, although the awful eight-legged arachnid quality definitely still comes through with that “soft squelching body and its folded limbs” et cetera (just give me this, spider apologists -- I know you exist and you love the little critters but hoo boy I am not a fan). And then Gollum pounces on Sam, of course, and even though Sam manages to scrap his way loose from Gollum’s grasp, for some foolish reason he chases Gollum back into the tunnel before remembering that Frodo is in danger -- totally out of character for Samwise Gamgee if you ask me, the dude is selfless to a fault -- before turning and sprinting back to Frodo, “too late” as the narrator helpfully informs us.
Not too late for any action at all, of course, He’ll have to face The Choices of Master Samwise as we close out Book IV with Chapter 10, tomorrow.