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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