The Lord of the Rings: Shelob’s Lair (Part Four and Last)

 

The Tale

Sam knows nothing of this history of Sauron and Shelob: he knows only that a feeling of fear and menace is growing on him, slowing his steps and making it hard to follow Frodo. Frodo is rushing forward, a strange, exhilarated mood upon him after being free of the tunnel. But Sam notes the glittering blue of Sting in Frodo’s hand, and that the light in the tower still gleams red even though the sun has set. ‘There’s Orcs about, and worse than Orcs.’ He thrusts the revealing light of the Phial into a pocket and draws his grey Elven cloak around him.

Suddenly, with the terror of the light removed, Shelob issues from a black hole in the shadows. ‘Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes. Those same eyes that he had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head. Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each legs end there was a claw.’ It is the worst horror Sam has ever seen, and it is moving with a terrible speed.

Sam gathers his breath to shout out a warning to the heedless Frodo, but he only manages a few words before his mouth is clamped shut by a long clammy hand from behind. Another grabs his neck and he is tripped by something wrapping around his leg, and he falls backward into the arms of Gollum, who gloats that he’s finally got ‘the nasty hobbit.’ He won’t hurt the Master, oh no he promised, Shelob will have him, but he has the ‘filthy little sneak.’ He spits on Sam’s neck.

But fury and desperation about Frodo makes Sam more violent and strong than Gollum expects from the ‘slow, stupid hobbit,’ and he slips partly out of Gollum’s grip, freeing his mouth. His hands still hold his sword and Faramir’s lebethron staff, and he tries to turn and stab the treacherous creature. But Gollum is too quick for him; he grabs Sam’s wrist and with a vice-like grip, forces him to drop the blade, with his other hand still tightening on Sam’s throat.

‘Then Sam played his last trick. With all his strength he pulled away and got his feet firmly planted; then suddenly he drove his legs against the ground and with his whole force hurled himself backwards.’

Gollum falls over with Sam’s weight on top of him, and with a hiss he loosens his hold on Sam’s neck, though he still holds his sword hand. Sam twists away, pivots, then brings the staff down with a whistling crack on Gollum’s arm. Gollum squeals and lets go, and Sam immediately follows his attack with another blow, aimed at his opponent’s head but landing instead on the squirming creature’s back. With a crack the staff breaks.

That is enough for Gollum. He’s used to sneaking attacks from behind; his ‘beautiful plans’ have gone awry since the unexpected appearance of the Phial and its light. And now he’s faced with a furious Sam, ‘little less than his own size,’ who sweeps up his sword faces him, ready to fight. Gollum squeals, leaps away like a frog, and is running back into the tunnel with amazing speed, before Sam can reach him.

In fury, Sam starts to chase him, but Gollum is gone back up the reeking tunnel. The stench suddenly reminds him of Frodo and the filthy monster that is pursuing him. ‘He spun around, and rushed wildly up the path, calling and calling his master’s name. He was too late. So far Gollum’s plot had succeeded.

Bits and Bobs

Frodo’s strange mood is called ‘fey.’  Fey is related to the term fay, or fairy, and is a Scottish word denoting something doomed or fated, and therefore partaking of a heedless nature, caring not for consequences. It can be related to the feeling of someone lost in the woods who is suddenly overcome by the manic urge to run, not unlike the ‘panic’ said to be caused by Pan among the shepherds in the wild.

Shelob’s eyes have a ‘fell’ light. This sense of the word means ‘of terrible evil or ferocity.’ It comes from the Middle English from Old French fel, nominative of felon (wicked ‘person’).

Shelob is described as ‘most like a spider.’ Two outstanding features that are unspiderlike are her horns, which I do not think many (if any) illustrators have included, and her neck. Spiders tend to have only two segments, their head and their body, without a connecting section.

The marks on Shelob's belly are called livid. "Livid has a colorful history. The Latin adjective lividus means "dull, grayish, or leaden blue." From this came the French livide, which English borrowed as livid. The word can describe flesh discolored by a bruise or an appearance deficient in color. Eventually, it came to be used for the complexion of a person pale with anger (i.e., "a person livid with rage"). From this meaning came two new senses: "reddish," as one is as likely to become red with anger as pale; the other was simply "angry" or "furious." -Merriam Webster Dictionary.

We are given an interesting detail in that Sam is only a ‘little less’ than Gollum’s size. Height? Weight? Both? Sam is generally portrayed as ‘solider,’ not as gangly, anyway.

Gollum’s vindictive nature ruins his ‘beautiful plans’ when he stops to gloat a while over Sam being in his clutches, where he can finally pay him back for his ‘nassty’ attitude. There’s a saying in Middle-earth: ‘Oft evil will, will evil mar,’ sometimes expressed as ‘Oft will hatred hurt itself!’ Here is a fine example of the working-out of that principle.

Well! Only one more chapter of The Two Towers left, and it’s a doozy. I started working on the book on February 20, 2023; that means so far it’s been 1 year, 3 months and 28 days. The early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring went a lot faster and I was able to cover most in one post. I think I'll see if I can't cover The Choices of Master Samwise in one go, no matter how long it gets. I think I only managed to 'summarize' the last 2 and 1/3 pages of Shelob's Lair in several more pages than the book.