Monday, June 3, 2024

The Lord of the Rings: Shelob’s Lair (Part Two)


The Tale

Frodo’s hand moves to his chest, draws out the Phial of Galadriel, and holds it up. At first it merely glimmers like a star struggling above mist, but as Frodo’s hope grows, so does its light; it fills the dark tunnel until it is the center of a ‘globe of light,’ and Frodo’s hand sparkles with ‘white fire.’ Frodo marvels at the wonderous thing he’s carried so long but has feared to use lest it reveal his location to unfriendly eyes. As if inspired, he cries out words he does not understand: ‘Aiya Earendil Elenion Alcalima!’ (’Hail Earendil Brightest of Stars!)

But ‘She that walked in the darkness had heard the Elves cry that cry far back in the deeps of time, and she had not heeded it, and it did not daunt her now.’ Frodo feels a great malice bearing down upon him, and in the tunnel which they’ve come down, he sees eyes growing visible, ‘two great clusters of many-windowed eyes.’ They reflect the light of the Phial, broken in their thousand facets, but starting to glitter with their own ‘pale deadly fire’, kindled in a ‘pit of deadly thought.’ They are bestial but filled with purpose, gloating over the trapped hobbits.

Frodo and Sam try to back away, but the eyes advance on them as they move. Frodo lowers the Phial, daunted, and suddenly, as if to let its prey run a little in sport, the malice that has held them paralyzed relaxes. They try to run, but the eyes come leaping after them. The stench of death fills the tunnel like a cloud. ‘Stand, stand!’ [Frodo] cried desperately. ‘Running is no use.’

The eyes creep closer. Frodo gathers his courage and lifts the Phial higher, invoking the name Galadriel, and the eyes relax, ‘as if some hint of doubt troubled them.’ Frodo’s heart flames within him, and drawing the Elvish blade Sting, now burning bright blue, and holding the star-glass high in the other hand, whether ‘in folly or despair or courage,’ he advances on the horrible eyes.

And the eyes quail and draw back before him, filled with doubt in the deadly brightness suddenly afflicting them. ‘From sun and moon and star they had been safe underground, but now a star had descended into the very earth.’ The eyes grow dark and move away; the hobbits see ‘a huge bulk’ turning in the shadow behind the light of the eyes. Then they are gone.

‘Stars and glory!’ Sam exclaims. The Elves would make a song about that if they live to tell them about it. But Frodo mustn’t pursue the eyes down into that dark den; they’ve got to run while they have the chance. They flee back the way they had been headed, the hatred of watcher lurking undefeated behind them, but the path easier as it climbs higher above the stenches of the lair. They begin to revive as a cold, thin air comes down to meet them. They feel the tunnel’s end is before them and they pant forward, seeking open space, when they are suddenly flung backward.

They have hit a barrier, not stone, but soft and a little yielding, but impervious; air filters through it but no light. Frodo raises the star-glass to examine it. ‘Across the width and height of the tunnel a vast web was spun, orderly as the web of some huge spider, but denser woven and far greater, and each thread as thick as a rope.’

Cobwebs! Sam laughs grimly. ‘Is that all? Cobwebs! But what a spider!’ He tries to hack at them with his barrow-blade, but it just bounces rebounding off the web. After several blows he finally manages to sever one strand, which recoils and snaps his hand. At this rate it will take days to clear a way through, and they can still feel the eyes upon them, making plans.

‘Trapped in the end!’ said Sam bitterly.  ‘Gnats in a net.’ May Faramir’s curse bite Gollum quickly for his treachery. This was the purpose of his plan all along.  Frodo says that wouldn’t help them now. He gives Sam the Phial to hold up. He will try the blade of Sting on the webbing. ‘There were webs of horror in the dark ravines of Beleriand where it was forged.’

The keen edge of Sting slices through the webs, and Frodo slashes at them until the way is cleared as high as he can reach, the webbing blowing like a veil in the wind pouring in. ‘The trap was broken.’ Frodo is giddy with joy, ‘wild joy at their escape from the very mouth of despair suddenly filled all his mind.’ He springs forward, urging Sam on. He bursts out into the sullen gloom of dying day, but after the absolute darkness of the tunnel it seems like ‘a morning of sudden hope.’

The cleft of the pass of Cirith Ungol is before him, horns of rock on either side. A short race and they’ll be through into Mordor! Frodo calls shrilly to Sam to run, and they’ll be through before anyone can stop them. Sam follows quickly but uneasily, gazing behind them, fearing to see eyes, or worse, springing after them.

‘Too little did he or his master know of the craft of Shelob. She had many exits from her lair.’

Bits and Bobs

The Phial of Galdriel seems to be in some way psychoactive; as the bravery and confidence of the bearer grows, so does its light. In part of the first draft of the story Frodo says he hasn’t used it before for fear of frightening Gollum; its elven nature would have been sure to pain him and drive him away.

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion points out that Shelob could not have heard Elves crying ‘Hail Earendil!’ until after the end of the First Age. This echoes the first line of the Anglo-Saxon poem ‘Crist’ which inspired the very first parts of Tolkien’s Legendarium. Where did that sudden inspiration to cry it come from? The Valar? Something worked into the Phial by Galadriel herself? Some special providence? At any rate, it seems to have no potency against Shelob’s ‘powers of night, old and strong.’

In some way this encounter can be seen as a duel between the light of Galadriel (invoked by Frodo) and Shelob’s darkness. Both are ancient female powers going back to the First Age. Beleriand (‘Balar-land’, named after the Bay of Balar, a prominent feature) was the area of Middle-earth where the main action of The Silmarillion took place. At the time of The Lord of the Rings, Beleriand lies mostly under the waves, a result of the Great Battle against Morgoth. Great spiders, spawn of Ungoliant, haunted the passes near Ered Gorgoroth and harried Beren on his flight toward Doriath.

Shelob’s eyes, faceted like an insect’s, show she is only ‘most like a spider’; while spiders have multiple eyes, they are not ‘compounded’, like a fly’s.  They ‘break’ the light that enters them. Her webs are ‘a greyness which the radiance of the star-glass did not pierce and did not illuminate, as if it were a shadow that being cast by no light, no light could dissipate.’ While her mother Ungoliant lusted to devour light, Shelob is pained and fearful of it.

At this point of the story, the only part of Shelob that has been seen are her eyes. That is soon to change.

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