LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 10 - The Choices of Master Samwise

[Estelyn Telcontar]

We’ve reached the last chapter of Book 4, which is also the last chapter of The Two Towers – congratulations and a big thanks to all who are still with us! It begins and ends in great suspense with Frodo’s desperate fate, though he himself remains passive throughout it, first presumed dead and then known to be only unconscious. As the title reveals, this is Sam’s chapter, showing his courage and determination, but also his limits.

Sam accomplishes something that no great warrior has ever done, wounding Shelob! He takes up the tokens of Frodo’s quest – first the sword, then uses the phial which he already carries, and finally the ring. Is there any significance to the fact that he did not attempt to take the mithril vest off his master?

Again Galadriel is invoked – one of Tolkien’s Catholic revisions, perhaps, giving her more of the Virgin Mary’s function? In song, it is Varda who is called upon – both female – yet another indication of the importance of Mary in the Catholic church? I always find it interesting that a book normally thought to be rather patriarchal has its characters praying to females, rather than their male consorts/counterparts.

It’s also interesting to see that the Phial is “interactive”, apparently responding to the person or situation in which it is used.

What additional details do we learn about Shelob here, especially her weak spots?

Sam reacts with grief, then anger, then despair. Then he makes his decision – was it the right one? Later on, he doesn’t think so, but what would have been different had he stayed with Frodo? Would he have been able to save him from captivity? He shows the truth in Gandalf’s words that there’s more to a hobbit than one first thinks, rising to greatness yet remaining humble. But you haven’t put yourself forward; you’ve been put forward… They didn’t choose themselves. And he grows with his new task, gaining strength enough to carry the weight of the Ring.

What more do we notice about the effect of the Ring when he puts it on?

We are introduced to two orc leaders, Gorbag and Shagrat – let’s discuss their conversations and what we deduce about orcs from them.

Isn’t it funny that Gollum gets the same nickname from orcs that Sam gave him – Sneak?!

The chapter (and book) ends with the ultimate cliff-hanger, a sentence that has become one of the best-known: Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy. What a brilliant closing! Can you imagine how torturous it must have been for the first readers to wait so long for the next book?!

[Celuien]

This is one of my favorite chapters. :)

Following up on the discussion of Shelob's fear of the Phial as opposed to Ungoliant's hunger for the Silmarils, I wonder if this reflects the continued fall of Middle Earth; even evil beings sought light in the beginning. Now they have fallen further and no longer seek it. I also find it interesting that she is vulnerable through the eye, aka the window of the soul - not sure how to follow up on this just yet.

Sam's reactions make some of the most moving portions in the book. I still find myself growing misty-eyed when I read this passage:

And for a moment he lifted up the Phial and looked down at his master, and the light burned gently now with the soft radiance of the evening-star in summer, and in that light Frodo's face was fair of hue again, pale but beautiful with an elvish beauty, as of one who has long passed the shadows. And with the bitter comfort of that last sight Sam turned and hid the light and stumbled on into the growing dark.

Gorbag and Shagrat certainly don't seem to be mindless orcs. The fact that they question the actions of the Tower would suggest to me that they are more than simply extensions of Sauron's will. I also find it interesting that while they seem to have a code of "moral" behavior, deriding the "regular elvish trick" of leaving Frodo in the pass, they don't show loyalty to Ufthak. It's as if they have an idea of right and wrong, but disregard it.

Finally, I had the cliffhanger experience when I first read this chapter. I had to take the books out of the library one at a time and The Return of the King was checked out when I was ready to pick it up! The few days I had to wait before finding out what happened next were indeed torturous. :) I can't imagine waiting longer.

I hope this is coherent. I'm running on sleep-deprivation mode with lots of caffeine right now. That's never a good thing...

[Kuruharan]

What additional details do we learn about Shelob here, especially her weak spots?

Apparently the best way to deal with her is to trick her into jumping onto your sword.

We are introduced to two orc leaders, Gorbag and Shagrat – let’s discuss their conversations and what we deduce about orcs from them.

One gets the idea that these two had known each other for quite some time. (Of course, this prompts one to wonder how they managed to survive the acquaintance for so long...)

Even Mordorian orcs dislike being around the Nazgul. In fact, I detect some traces of Nazgul envy. The orcs don't like serving Sauron, but they are afraid of the Free Peoples as well. Gorbag also does not believe that Sauron pays enough attention to what his orcs try to tell him. Gorbag also wants to run off somewhere and Shagrat seems to have fond memories of the past when he was out on his own. One wonders if Sauron instituted an orcish draft of some sort...

Sauron also apparently had his own version of the NKVD.

Gorbag, at any rate, does not have much trust in the word of his superiors. Gorbag also seems to have a more talkative personality than Shagrat. He also seems the more intelligent of the two. He's the one who voices many of the ideas early in the dialogue and Shagrat just makes ambiguous remarks that seem to tend toward agreement. However, Shagrat is clearly no dummy. He is observant and knowledgeable, at least as far as the area of his own command is concerned. He seems to possess a rather practical mind. Shagrat is also rather prickly about his command, a trait he shares with Ugluk. Shagrat also may have what might be a rather sunny personality for an orc (har har). Notice how he accuses Gorbag of excessive pessimism and is determined to deal with what is under his control before he starts worrying about something else.

Also note...

He sends or comes Himself

Sauron had a physical body.

[bilbo_baggins]

A single thought from one who hasn't posted on these threads before:

Isn't it a little interesting to note that even though Ungoliant and her descendants (Shelob) devour the light, that they must recoil at such baubles as the phial of Galadriel? Why do you suppose that happens?

And I really do like the occurences that happen with the orcs. Not only as Kuruharan pointed out, Sauron has a physical body, Sauron doesn't have mind-boggling powers over all his orcs, because they don't all know what he knows and don't work together completely as a team (The conversations between Shagrat and Gorbag).

bilbo_baggins

[davem]

SHELOB

Shelob is a chip off the old block in many ways: ancient, insatiable, opportunistic, loyal only to herself (though she may inadvertently aid and abet the likes of Sauron and Gollum), unrepentant and fertile. JUSt as her mother made fleeting common cause with Melkor, Sauron's master, so does Shelob's hunger inadvertently serve Sauron's ends insofar as she provi des "a more sure watch upon that ancient path into his land than any other that his skill could have provided..." (17' 424). . Shelob is as fecund as Ungoliant, breeding and then cannibalizing her broods, her appetites unchecked, her matemal instincts non-existent. Her power is made explicit: "none could rival her, Shelob the Great" (TT 423), and Gollum is drawn into worshipping her and acting as procurer for her. His plan, of course, is to feed the hobbits to Shelob in the hopes that he can retrieve the ring and ..then we'll pay Her back" (IT 423). GolIum plans to wreak revenge on the bloated matriarch. Unlike her mother, however, Shelob is speechless: we never hear her speak, though Ungoliant converses briefly with Melkor at one point in the Silmarillion . Also unlike her mother (who ..sucked up all light that she could find...until no more light could come to her abode; and she was famished" [881]), Shelob is afraid of light: the light from the Phial of Galadriel makes her feel exposed rather than hungry: Finally, unlike her mother, Shelob is oblivious to the lure of jewels or rings. Ungoliant might have swallowed the ring, but Shelob is o~livious to history and culture and to the power of the Ring, oblivious to everything but her own primal hunger "Little she knew or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the all hunger, with no ability to speak or reason and no transcendent values: a deliciously misogynistic conception. After Shelob emerges as a set of eyes, Frodo summons his courage and pursues Shelob, with the Phial in one hand and the spiderstabbing Sting in the other. Shelob backs doWn momentarily, allowing the hobbits to discover a "vast web." They try to hack at the web, realizing that it is their Phial that keeps Shelob at bay. They make a rent in the web and, prematurely, unag they are free.

Rowling's Aragog can be read as a revision of Tolkein's SheIob in a number of ways. One of the ways in which the gender of the authors manifests itself can be found in the differences between their most vividly portrayed arachno-monsters. Rowling transforms the dreaded monster from a female into a male; Rowling gives her spider the power of speech and logic (Aragog is not just a blind and malevolent appetite); Rowling de_eroticizes the scene of confrontation between Ihero(s) and spider; Rowling humanizes Aragog slightly by making him the patriarch of a family; most important, Rowling makes Aragog a grateful being-grateful for the empathy once shown to him by Hagrid. Whereas Shelob is able to enter into a legalistic, quid pro quo relationship with Gollum, Aragog, because of his gratitude for Hagrid's care and protectiveness toward him, has transcended his carnivorous spider's instinct and resolved never to eat Hagrid-nor to let his children eat Hagrid. Aragog is clearly Shelob's moral superior. Moreover, Aragog explains to Harry what happened fifty years ago when the Chamber of Secrets was last opened, offering a corrective to Voldemort's self-serving account of events and clearing Hagrid's name in the process. When Aragog finally gives his children permission to devour Harry and Ron, he is only acting as any conscientious parent would: prioritizing his children's best interests. But Harry and Ron never resolve to kill nrim; they seem to accept him as a denizen of the Forbidden Forest, while Tolkiel1 suggests that Shelob has been either killed by or seriously wounded in her confrontation with Frodo and Sam. ..
The spiders of Mirkwood help Bilbo conceive of himself as a worthy burglar, Shelob enables us as readers to see Frodo and Sam as independent fighters, and Harry's strength of will in the duel with Voldemort proves that Harry is an extraordinary boy. Tolkien's matrilineal family of spiders is clearly identitied as evil, although the intensity of the evil seems to attenuate with time, so that the spiders of Mirkwood are fairly tame IOmpared to their foremother Ungoliant. Juxtaposing Tolkien's she-spiders with Rowling's he-spider Aragog enables one to appreciate just bow deliciously mIsogynistic the conceptions ofUngoliant and Shelob are and just how ambivalent Tolkien is about the female body. Ungoliant and Shelob represent the dangers of unrestrained female appetites.Tolkien suggests that fecund females like Shelo't and Ungoliant are traitorous swallowers of everything from orcs to jewels to light to themselves. Rowling, by contrast, implies that actual spiders like Aragog fulfill certain positive long-term functions and simply need to be avoided if Harry Ron are to survive. The figurative spider Voldemort is Rowling's equivalent of Sauron: the ineluctable evil that both threatens the hero and enables the hero to define himself.

"Clicking its pincers menacingly": Arachnophobia, Gender, and the Transformation of the Hero in the Work of Rowling and Tolkien: ELLEN ARGYROS, (Concerning Hobbits & Other Matters)

She is, in fact, almost a parody of Sauron in certain of His aspects. Though Shelob, unlike Sauron, has no desire for slaves, willing or otherwise, and though there are hints of sexual appetite in Tolkien's presentation of Shelob, hints that appear in no other character, nonetheless the Dark lord and Shelob both serve to represent the far extreme of a single negative. The swollen, engulfing existence that Shelob desires is little different from the expanding reaches of Mordor' that the Dark Lord's destruction creates. Each brings darknch brings death. Each wishes for no other power than his or hers alone. Each is an example of appetite run amok:. "All living things" are Shelob's "food" (Tolkien, 1965aJ, and Sauron, we are told, "would devour all." What is emphasized by such statements is the sheer extent of Shelob's and Sauron's appetites, the insatiability each exemplifies. But in Tolkien's world it is not simply appetite that so moral gauge. Virtue or corruption can also be measured through the particulars of diet alone. To put it simply: baddies eat bad and the goodies eat good.
‘Eating, Devouring, Sacrifice & Ultimate Just Deserts’ Marjorie Burns. (Proceedings of the 1992 Centenery Conference)

Of course, these ideas have been discussed before - what did Shelob symbolise for Tolkien himself? Was she some kind of comment on his feelings about the ‘feminine’ - or simply about women? Or was she simply a horrific childhood memory ‘mythologised’ (‘seen through enchanted eyes’ as John Garth put it)?

Tolkien makes it clear that Shelob is not simply a big spider - she is ‘an evil thing in spider form’. In an early draft for the story we find an interesting statement:

The account of UngoIiant's retreat is largely illegible, but phra', can be read: 'She seemed... to crumple like a vast bag', 'her legs sagged, and slowly, painfully, she backed from the light away in the opening in the wall', 'gathering her strength she turned and with a last ..... Jump and a foul but already pitiable... she slipped into the hole’

CT comments:

The words 'foul but already pitiable' are read from a subsequent gloss of my father's. He gave up on the next word and wrote a q.uery about it; it may perhaps be 'scuttle'. The words 'but aIready pitiable' are notable. In TT there is no trace of the thought that Sheiob, entirely hateful and evil, denier of light and life, could ever be 'pitiable' even when defeated and hideously wounded.

I wonder whether this is more important to an understanding of what happens in this chapter as regards Shelob. Shelob is not a giant female, ‘she’ is evil made physically manifest - back to the idea of ‘incarnation’. The Light of Earendel, a ‘myth’ becomes physically real & present in this chapter, as does (& perhaps as a direct result of) the darkness of Evil being equally physically manifest. A cosmic battle between ‘Powers & Principalities’ has entered into the everyday world of Middle earth. Shelob must be an all consuming monster, unspeaking, irrational, because Evil in Middle earth is that way:

Melkor is a brutal coward, not a darkly glamorous Miltonic Satan. The more his wickedness waxes, the more his innate powers wane. By the end. he can only huddle stupidly in the dungeon throne room of his iron fortress. (The Universe According to Tolkien, Sandra Miesel)

Evil cannot be other than this monstrous negativity & so cannot be pitiable. And It is hardly fair to single out Shelob’s femaleness to make a point about Tolkien’s attitude to women, as his greatest ‘monsters’ are the two Dark Lords. Certainly Sauron & Shelob make a ‘pair’, but she is no worse than he.

More, hopefully, later.

Finally for now though, a few things that struck me in my reading of HoME. First of all, there’s the interesting idea, which Tolkien rejected, of having Gollum lead the orcs to Frodo’s body, which made me think of the obvious parallell with Judas leading the soldiers to arrest Christ. I can’t help wondering to what extent, as the story became more ‘mythological’, as Good & evil became more & more ‘solidified’ & grounded in the story, whether Tolkien had increasingly to fight against it becoming ‘allegorical’. Would such a blatantly Judas-like role for Gollum have increased the Christ-like nature of Frodo?

And a couple of questions: first, when Sam finds Frodo ‘dead’ he wishes to make a cairn over him, but can’t find enough stones.

'There were no stones for a cairn, but he rolled the only two he could find of a wieldy size one to Frodo's head and another to his feet.

Is this a primary world tradition placed in Middle earth? And does it tell us something about Hobbit funerary practices?

Second: Have we here an early reference to Sanwe in the conversation between ‘Gorbag’ & ‘Shagrat’:

, The Lords of Dushgoi have some secret f quick messages and they will get the news to Lugburz quicker than anyone you can send direct.'
...'I tell you, nearly two days ago the Night Watcher smelt something, but will you believe me it was nearly another day before they started to send a message to Lugburz.' How do they do that?' said Shagrat. 'I've often wondered.' 'I don't know and I don't want to ...'

[Formendacil]

And a couple of questions: first, when Sam finds Frodo ‘dead’ he wishes to make a cairn over him, but can’t find enough stones.

Is this a primary world tradition placed in Middle earth? And does it tell us something about Hobbit funerary practices?

I think it has to do more with Sam have no digging implements (what? pans?), a general reluctance to burn him (if the Hobbits are like Numenoreans, then this would be a no-no; besides, Sam wants to come back and die by Frodo's body), as well as no fuel to do so. So a cairn would seem like the most available option. Or so I read it.

[Lalwendë]

This chapter isn't pretty, but it's one of the best!

As the Hobbits manage to get into Mordor, which ought to be well guarded, we might assume that at Cirith Ungol the watch has not been properly maintained, but the Orcs are clearly still doing their job:

'Now, now," growled Shagrat, "I have my orders. And it's more than my belly's worth, or yours, to break 'em. Any trespasser found by the guard is to be held at the tower. Prisoner is to be stripped. Full description of every article, garment, weapon, letter, ring, or trinket is to be sent to Lugburz at once, and to Lugburz only. And the prisoner is to be kept safe and intact, under pain of death for every member of the guard, until He sends or comes Himself. That's plain enough, and that's what I'm going to do."

So it seems Sauron is at least aware that something may try to get into Mordor via this pass, and he has entrusted the guard to the orcs there. Gollum of course has passed this way before unharmed, but it seems that he was allowed to pass freely, under orders from Sauron. So to be fair on Gollum, he possibly does not think that the orcs there would pose any threat – in his mind the only threat is Shelob. I wonder why Gollum was allowed free passage as it seems that his coming to Cirith Ungol is noted and taken as a portent of ‘spies’.

I like the conspiratorial talk between the Orc leaders of things having ‘slipped’

'Yes," said Gorbag. "But don't count on it. I'm not easy in my mind. As I said, the Big Bosses, ay," his voice sank almost to a whisper, 'ay, even the Biggest, can make mistakes. Something nearly slipped, you say. I say, something has slipped. And we've got to look out. Always the poor Uruks to put slips right, and small thanks.

The Orc leaders remind me of two middle managers, responsible for leading their ‘troops’ according to orders, but still intensely critical about their own bosses, hiding in corners to grumble and spread rumour. All this talk of something having ‘slipped’ is mysterious, and it could be that they are talking of the Ring having got through into Mordor. But I don’t think it is that. I think that what has ‘slipped’ is simply what Sauron assumes are mere spies. He must also think that any such spies would automatically be Elves, as the Orcs seem to assume that what they have caught is an Elf and that another Elf is on the loose. Sauron has not considered Hobbits and this is one of the first times we see he is capable of making big mistakes.

Sauron has also made the error of focussing only on the attack on Minas Tirith:

"Bad business," said Gorbag. "See here--our Silent Watchers were uneasy more than two days ago, that I know. But my patrol wasn't ordered out for another day, nor any message sent to Lugburz either: owing to the Great Signal going up, and the High Nazgul going off to the war, and all that. And then they couldn't get Lugburz to pay attention for a good while, I'm told."

"The Eye was busy elsewhere, I suppose," said Shagrat. "Big things going on away west, they say."

Those he has entrusted to the command at Minas Morgul have been distracted by the signal to go to war and when they get around to contacting Sauron, he himself isn’t paying much attention.

There was an excellent example of the use of sanwe in chapter 8, in Frodo’s mental struggles with the Nazgul, and here the orcs talk of something similar. The rapid despatch of messages between Minas Morgul and Barad Dur could even be done in this way. Of course, it could be due to the use of palantiri which are kept hidden from the orcs, yet from what Gorbag says about the powers of the Nazgul it seems they have darker powers:

'No, I don't know," said Gorbag's voice. "The messages go through quicker than anything could fly, as a rule. But I don't enquire how it's done. Safest not to. Grr! Those Nazgul give
me the creeps. And they skin the body off you as soon as look at you, and leave you all cold in the dark on the other side. But He likes 'em; they're His favourites nowadays, so it's no use grumbling. I tell you, it's no game serving down in the city."

The Nazgul seem to have the power of removing the body from a person, leaving them as spirit only. I wonder what ‘the other side’ refers to? It cannot be death as known by Men, but it could refer to a place which has something of the properties of an anti-Halls of Mandos. What I think it does refer to is that the body is removed, thus making the fea completely vulnerable. As shown in Frodo’s struggle, the hroa can enable an individual to block the intrusion of the Nazgul into their thoughts; without this, the individual is utterly vulnerable and I can imagine this punsihement, and fear of it, being used against insubordinate orcs.

This brings to mind the chilling words of the WK to Eowyn:

'Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.'

What greater punishment could there be to be stripped of life and yet denied death? To have your body removed and every thought left exposed to be examined by Sauron? This something even Orcs are afraid of. When Sam dons the Ring he too feels exposed, which again makes me think that the Ring must have the effect of burning away the hroa of an incarnate being.

What gives me the creeps is the thought that all the Nazgul must have left Minas Morgul, and yet in their absence, someone or something still remains there capable of taking command over the Orcs, and capable of listening and talking to Sauron. Whatever this thing is, it either has command over a palantir or strong skills of sanwe. Could it have something to do with the Silent Watchers mentioned by Gorbag?

Here’s another thing:

Full description of every article, garment, weapon, letter, ring, or trinket is to be sent to Lugburz at once, and to Lugburz only.

Sauron has made it clear that any information is to go direct to him, and that it is not to be sent to the Nazgul or anyone else. Is he aware that what he seeks could be dangerous in other hands?

This is the culmination of an excellent series of chapters. There is horror laid upon horror. We have a treacherous broken creature, a dangerous path, evil armies, mind reading wraiths, gangs of orcs, an insatiably hungry giant spider, and hints at spiritual horrors. I’m glad I first read this chapter when all the books were available as the cliffhanger would have been unbearable.

[davem]

I think it has to do more with Sam have no digging implements (what? pans?), a general reluctance to burn him (if the Hobbits are like Numenoreans, then this would be a no-no; besides, Sam wants to come back and die by Frodo's body), as well as no fuel to do so. So a cairn would seem like the most available option. Or so I read it.

I see what you mean, but I was thinking specifically of his placing a stone at Frodo's head & feet...

[bilbo_baggins]

I see what you mean, but I was thinking specifically of his placing a stone at Frodo's head & feet...

Placing stones at Frodo's head and feet stems from the ancient practice of setting boundaries on the body/spirit, if you will. When the body was marked with a cairn (if possible), the spirit would remain bound to the body and not wander lost. The stones at the head and feet (I think) showed the spirit where its home/resting place lay. Anyone remember the Barrows?

[davem]

Makes me wonder why Tolkien left this incident out of the final version. Would it have opened up too many questions? I know he had originally intended Sam to sing a song over Frodo's body, & I can see a reason for leaving that out, but in light of a recent thread on why there are no graveyards (etc) in the Shire (or at least there are none mentioned in the book) its interesting to speculate on why Tolkien left out this little 'ceremony'. Was it that this particular practice didn't fit in with what he 'knew' about Hobbits, being based on ideas about what happens to souls post mortem, or what? On the other hand, if Tolkien left the incident out for other reasons - pacing or whatnot - then can we assume that Hobbits did hold this belief about stones as 'place-markers' for the souls of the departed?

[Celuien]

(Study break ;) )...

Looking again at the idea that Sam wants to return and die, maybe he can't quite bring himself to go through with a final farewell ceremony until he is ready to join Frodo. I don't know if the atmosphere of the Shire that makes graveyards out of place there applies here since the specter of death has already intruded. Then again, it would complicate things to suddenly give the hobbits traditions regarding funerals that didn't reappear once the setting returned to the Shire.

I wish I knew more about the evolution of this chapter - I haven't had a chance to read HoME yet.

[Kuruharan]

then can we assume that Hobbits did hold this belief about stones as 'place-markers' for the souls of the departed?

Well, I don't know about place-markers for the souls...bodies maybe... ;)

I think that is a reasonable assumption. At least it was an idea in Tolkien's mind at some point.

[davem]

Another post full of quotes I’m afraid...

Two incidents struck me, one in this chapter, one in the last. Both have to do with the Phial & its effect on those who wield it:

'Galadriel!" he said faintly, and then he heard voices far off but clear: the crying of the Elves as they walked under the stars in the beloved shadows of the Shire, and the music of the Elves as it came through his sleep in the Hall of Fire in the house of Elrond. Gilthoniel A Elbereth!
And then his tongue was loosed and his voice cried in a language which he did not know:
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
o menel palan-diriel,
le nallon si di'nguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!*
And with that he staggered to his feet and was Samwise the hobbit, Hamfast's son, again.

*O Elbereth Star-Kindler gazing afar to thee I cry here beneath-death-horror. look towards (watch over) me, Fanuilos!

Tolkien comments on Elbereth in The Road Goes Ever On:

As a "divine" or "angelic" person Varda/Elbereth could be said to be "looking afar from heaven" (as in Sam's invocation); hence the use of a present participle.'" She was often thought of, or depicted, as standing on a great height looking towards Middle-earth, with eyes that penetrated the shadows, and listening to the cries for aid of Elves (and Men) in peril or grief. Frodo (V ol. I, p. 208) and Sam both invoke her in moments of extreme peril. The Elves sing hymns to her. (These and other references to religion in The Lord of the Rings are frequently overlooked. ) .

The other I’ve mentioned in our discussion of the last chapter:

Frodo gazed in wonder at this marvellous gift that he had so long carried, not guessing its full worth and potency. Seldom had he remembered it on the road, until they came to Morgul Vale, and never had he used it for fear of its revealing light. Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima! he cried, and knew not what he had spoken; for it seemed that another voice spoke through his, clear, untroubled by the foul air of the pit.
But other potencies there are in Middle-earth, powers of night, and they are old and strong. And 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.

Both Frodo & Sam spontaneously utter Elvish invocations - of Earendel & of Elbereth respectively - & neither of them know what they have spoken. So where do the words come from? Are they placed in the Hobbits’ mouth’s by Galadriel herself? It seems that in a way She is present with them in the cave & the pass & it is her power that stands against Shelob. The point is, these are specifically Elvish invocations, probably traditional ones (certainly the one Frodo utters is traditional), & the language is what we would expect Galadriel to speak. TRGEO again:

The language is Sindarin, but of a variety used by the High Elves (of which kind were most of the Elves in Rivendell), marked in high style and verse by influence of Quenya, which had been originally their normal tongue.

Sanwe or not, this seems to be more than simple ‘thought transmission’ - both Frodo & Sam seem almost ‘taken over’ by a power &/or consciousness strong enough to daunt Shelob. They have asked for help & got it, but I can’t help wondering about the implications of these events. It seems the ‘good’ side are as willing as the evil side to dominate minds & wills...

(Deliberately being a bit provocative there, but you see where I’m going, I hope....)

[bilbo_baggins]

Hmmm. I think I do see where you are going with that.

A friend once told me that the reason Frodo and Sam both called on Elvish incantations was because the ones that they used were ones that struck into the heart of goodness, ad infinitum de nauseam. (to infinity of nausea) The person didn't understand the Elvish...

I think that it is some good force working here, at the very least opening words and ideas to the Hobbits, if not actually using their minds. Is it Galadriel? I can't even begin to assume here, so all I know is that the Good forces - whoever they may be - allowed power, true power, that was backed with forces greater than the enshrouding darkness, was brought into play by the humble halflings.

Why?

bilbo_baggins

[davem]

Thinking more about this I wonder if Tolkien is referring to 'speaking in tongues' - specifically xenoglossia (as opposed to Glosssolalia:

Xenoglossia: (a.k.a. Zenolalia, Xenoglossia) This is the ability to spontaneously speak a foreign language without first having learned it, or even been exposed to it. This term is also derived from two Greek words: Xenos, which means "foreign" or "foreigner", and glõssai, which means "tongues" or "languages." An event in which an individual who knows only English, has never been exposed to any other language, and who suddenly starts to speak in fluent Swahili would be an example of Xenoglossia. Stories of xenoglossia are well known, particularly within the Pentecostal movement and psychic research. E. D. O'Connor describes some cases. Another source claims that "no scientifically attested case of zenolalia has come to light." 6 Still another writer states that essentially all claims of xenoglossia are hoaxes. 7He claims that only one credible case has ever surfaced: that of a "Jewish woman who slipped into another personality" during hypnosis who was able to speak in Swedish.
(See this site:http://www.religioustolerance.org/tongues1.htm for a distinction between the two.)

[Kuruharan]

...but taking a page from the "It was the Ring that spoke to Gollum" book, could this be the Phial speaking?

It seems the ‘good’ side are as willing as the evil side to dominate minds & wills...

If this is the case (and lets assume for the sake of this particular talking point it is) there is still a difference. Evil will dominate against the will of those it dominates. Frodo and Sam invoke the good before strange things start happening.

[davem]

But is the motivation of who/whatever is speaking/acting through Frodo & Sam to save them from Shelob or is it to increase the chances of the Quest succeeding & the Ring being destroyed? Are their conscious minds/wills (temporarily) overthrown in order to save their lives or in order to help the Quest? The former could be seen as acceptable, even though the Hobbits don't consent to this loss of control - it just happens to them. The latter seems more suspect, as the Hobbits would be being treated as little more than pawns, as a means to an end....

[Kuruharan]

Just to set a tone for my response allow me to say that I disagree with the assessment that desiring the completion of the quest is somehow seedier than saving their lives. Also, I think that it is possible (even vitally necessary) to desire both at once. I hope this preface serves to clarify my response. I hope I will be able to explain myself adequately below.

First, I trust we can agree that the Power of Good places value on the lives of Frodo and Sam because the Power of Good values life as being inherently valuable.

That being said, I’m going to say something that may sound a trifle harsh. Frodo and Sam were the chosen tools to complete a task that is also inherently valuable to the Power of Good. Frodo was chosen to bear the Ring and I think it is safe to say that Sam was chosen to accompany and assist him. This task involving the freedom of the living beings in the world and involving who was going to be given the divine honor entangles the fate of myriads more beings than Frodo and Sam. Their status as “pawns” actually armors them with more value to the Power of Good because they are the way to achieving an aim that is also inherently good.

even though the Hobbits don't consent to this loss of control - it just happens to them.

I’m not so sure about this either. I think their use of the Phial does imply some degree of consent in what happened. What they said may have been an expression of their own will, only in a form “focused” through their use of the Phial into a more powerful form.

Also notice the difference here between Sauron and Gandalf (and ultimately Eru). Sauron sends the Nazgul to find the Ring, beings he tricked and has utterly enslaved to his will. Gandalf, on the other hand, persuades Frodo to go and Sam goes for love of Frodo. Frodo accepts the burden of his own will where the Nazgul fulfill their task without regard to whatever will they may or may not have had in the matter.

That Fordo earnestly attempted to get as far as he had (up to that point) I think is a powerful aid to consent when the Power of Good desired to intervene to both save their lives and ensure the continuation of the Quest.

Also notice the, well, almost providential manner in which this whole business falls out. Frodo and Sam were trapped between two large parties of orcs in unfamiliar territory with little potential for cover. They had One Ring to split between them. Chances are, had Frodo escaped Shelob unscathed, one or the other of them would have been spotted (whichever didn’t have the Ring obviously) and the Quest would have been in deep doo-doo. Instead, Frodo is poisoned and taken prisoner and Sam escapes through use of the Ring. However, Frodo is taken in the direction he was intending to go, into Mordor. Through the loot the orcs find on his body, the garrison of Cirith Ungol is destroyed, which would have been a terribly difficult obstacle for Frodo and Sam to get past had things gone otherwise.

Frodo and Sam may have gotten through Cirith Ungol and into Mordor in the only manner possible.

[littlemanpoet]

Isn’t it funny that Gollum gets the same nickname from orcs that Sam gave him – Sneak?!

I wondered about that when I reread this chapter, and felt that it broke the enchantment of Secondary Belief for me: it would verge on authorial intrusion (both arbitrary and artificial) for both Sam and the Orcs to just happen to use the same derogatory nickname for Gollum. Yes, it's plausible, but still out on a limb. So I reread the last page of two chapters ago, and noticed that Sam does NOT give Gollum this nickname: he accuses him of sneaking and calls him "villain" instead. It's Gollum who gives himself the name of Sneak, throwing it in Sam's face; maybe Tolkien is intimating that Gollum was more aware of the Orcs' knowledge of his presence than we might have thought, even having overheard the Orcs referring to himself.....?

[davem]

Kuruharan, I see what you mean, & I may have overstated the case - though I think there is a case to be made. Remembering Frodo on Amon Hen, caught between the Eye & the Voice, & eventually breaking through & surfacing - & feeling himself to be 'neither the Eye nor the Voice' - or something like that, I wonder about his freedom once he had accepted the task, & whether the powers that be took that into account. Did he have any freedom as far as they were concerned. I suppose one could ask whether he became not only their 'pawn' but rather the victim of 'fate', to be used for the greater 'good'. I wonder what this tells us about Tolkien's own attitude to the life & purpose of the individual. Perhaps we see Frodo's ultimate 'failure' again foreshadowed here - finally he is overwhelmed by an external power too great to be withstood. His selfhood is gradually broken down by these external powers making use of him for this 'greater good'. Yes, he agreed to take the Ring to the Fire, but did he agree in full knowledge of what he would become? He agreed to be an actor in the cosmic drama, but not a pawn in the 'game'.

But to move on...

Sam's relationship to Frodo is spelled out most strongly in this chapter. His defence of Frodo is likened to a creature defending its mate. He 'looks back' to where his life 'fell into ruin'. He desires, if he achieves the Quest, to return & die by his master. It seems Sam is like a lost soul once Frodo is gone & he has no thought of home, of Rosie, of the future. Frodo is the whole purpose of his existence & without him Sam feels life, existence, has no purpose. Even if he manages to destroy the Ring there will be no point in living.

What does this tell us about the difference between Sam & those 'powers' that are using him & Frodo? These Elves & Wizards seem to lack Sam's simple huma compassion. Perhaps this shows us why it is time for Men to take over & those powers to pass away. Yes, they will take the magic away with them, & everything will become mundane. The bright, sharp colours, tastes, smells, the extremes of light & dark, will pass from the world, but the simple love of one person for another will remain, even flourish, without all that. Sam is of the simple good green earth - its significant that he is a gardener not a 'wizard or a warrior'. He earths the Story & proclaims that simple humanity is superior to 'Fantasy'. Sam's simple love of his master is the higher virtue.

Finally, to your earlier jokey(?) comment:

Apparently the best way to deal with her is to trick her into jumping onto your sword.

Isn't that a theme that runs through the whole story - that evil si ultimately self defeating, & brings its destruction on itself. Good doesn't win out because its more powerful but because evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Shelob defeats herself through her pride & fury. Sauron plants the seeds of his ultimate destruction by his creation of the Ring, etc....

[Kuruharan]

finally he is overwhelmed by an external power too great to be withstood. His selfhood is gradually broken down by these external powers making use of him for this 'greater good'. Yes, he agreed to take the Ring to the Fire, but did he agree in full knowledge of what he would become?

Hmm, well...that is a difficult question. Judging from some of the things Gandalf said it would appear that Frodo did not. However, Gandalf also gives the impression that Frodo would have carried on anyway.

Not all the powers working on him were working for the greater good. I still think that his acceptance of the Quest implies a degree of consent to being temporarily dominated by things like the Phial if his life and Quest were in jeopardy.

I sense much potential for discussion fodder in the Mount Doom chapter.

that evil si ultimately self defeating, & brings its destruction on itself. Good doesn't win out because its more powerful but because evil contains the seeds of its own destruction.

But since Good does not self-destruct, doesn't that make it more powerful?

[Lalwendë]

Isn't that a theme that runs through the whole story - that evil si ultimately self defeating, & brings its destruction on itself. Good doesn't win out because its more powerful but because evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Shelob defeats herself through her pride & fury. Sauron plants the seeds of his ultimate destruction by his creation of the Ring, etc....

Yes, and Melkor is ultimately defeated because he has fallen so far into his evil ways that by the end of it he cannot even leave his throne room. Thinking this way, you might soon start to wonder why anybody ever bothered challenging evil, if it was doomed to self destruct in any case. But it always needs a helping hand in order to be destroyed or defeated. Shelob does land on the point of the sword, but if Sam had not dared to place the sword there then she would have eaten him.

Frodo gazed in wonder at this marvellous gift that he had so long carried, not guessing its full worth and potency. Seldom had he remembered it on the road, until they came to Morgul Vale, and never had he used it for fear of its revealing light. Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima! he cried, and knew not what he had spoken; for it seemed that another voice spoke through his, clear, untroubled by the foul air of the pit.

But other potencies there are in Middle-earth, powers of night, and they are old and strong. And 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.

I was interested how when Frodo speaks Shelob is not daunted. But when Sam speaks it seems to have more effect. What's the difference? Frodo appears to examine the Phial, even to use it with knowledge, as a weapon. But when Sam uses it, does he use it more innocently? It seems that the effect on Sam is to strengthen his own will, to make him more courageous; perhaps this hints at the fact that the Hobbits were not entirely under the control of another force. That would link to what I say above, that even though evil does sow the seeds of its own destruction, it still needs the courage of those who oppose it to destroy it.

As to how the Phial works, I have to admit I'm thinking along the lines of Sanwe again. :rolleyes: The Phial is a device of Light primarily, but it is when holding it and thinking of Galadriel that the Hobbits utter their invocations. Galadriel has filled the Phial with water from her fountain, which holds the light of Earendil, and she is the bearer of the Ring of Water. If, as I have pondered on before, the Three (and the other rings too) are invested with powers of sanwe, then the Phial could also hold this power along with its powers of Light. I think that both Frodo and Sam open their minds out to the Elves/Galadriel and that she or they answer through them. Note also that the One has a reverse effect when worn, seeming to convey fear instead, the sense that the mind is open and naked.

Is it good that Good forces have such an influence on mortals? Frodo and Sam have accepted the challenge of taking this burden to Mount Doom, and yet it is also semeingly fated that they should have to do this. I like to think of them as akin to Aragorn, who also is fated to take on a burden, and who like the Hobbits accepts his burden come what may. In fact, are many of the characters we meet in LotR truly free? Many of them seem to be fated to take their part in particular circumstances. Their freedom comes in with how they deal with the situations they are thrust into. Going back again to what I said about the destruction of evil, it cannot be defeated if it is just left alone, nor can any of the characters we meet play their parts if they refuse to take part in the first place.

I think that this is part of the nature of 'stories'. What would be the point of reading about an Eowyn who made the choice of stopping home in Edoras? Or a Sam who did not snoop at open windows?

Also notice the, well, almost providential manner in which this whole business falls out. Frodo and Sam were trapped between two large parties of orcs in unfamiliar territory with little potential for cover. They had One Ring to split between them. Chances are, had Frodo escaped Shelob unscathed, one or the other of them would have been spotted (whichever didn’t have the Ring obviously) and the Quest would have been in deep doo-doo. Instead, Frodo is poisoned and taken prisoner and Sam escapes through use of the Ring. However, Frodo is taken in the direction he was intending to go, into Mordor. Through the loot the orcs find on his body, the garrison of Cirith Ungol is destroyed, which would have been a terribly difficult obstacle for Frodo and Sam to get past had things gone otherwise.

As Kuruharan says, what happens to Frodo is ultimately a great stroke of luck. It couldn't really be otherwise or the story would turn out differently. I think where I've got to in all that I've said here is that yes, the characters are subject to fate, and yes, they must also willingly choose to follow that fate rather than stay at home with their feet up, but at the root of everything, they are indeed pawns, but they are Tolkien's pawns. I shan't say any more because that's a big hole I've climbed into.

[Formendacil]

But since Good does not self-destruct, doesn't that make it more powerful?

However, good is, by its very nature, forgiving and more naturally accepting of face value than evil. It might be more endurable, in the long run, but because of this inherent tendency to forgive rather than destroy, to accept rather than question, it is doomed to eternal conflict with evil.

And, to quote Gorbag in this chapter:

But they can make mistakes, even the Top Ones can.

A caution for both good and evil leaders.

[Kuruharan]

Good also has fewer tools at its disposal since deception and trickery are out of its arsenal. However, this may be only a short term disadvantage.

[davem]

Regarding the self-defeating tendency of evil (in Middle earth at least), this from Brian Rosebury's book - Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon :

..The defeat of the forces of evil should ideally appear, not as a lucky accident, or as a punishment inflicted from outside by a superior power (which deprives the actual process of defeat of any moral significance), but as the practical consequence of wickedness itself: Evil must appear as intrinsically self defeating in the long run. Sauron & his servants, despite their steadily growing superiority in crude strength & terror, are hindered by weaknesses which are themselves vices: their lack of imagination, the irrational cruelty which denies them the option of voluntary assistance (the victim must be made to act against his own will), & the selfishness which disables their alliances.

[Bêthberry]

Let me begin by thanking Estelyn for taking the time to start this thread even in the midst of her computer woes! Well might you have said, "Well, I'm back" because you are as faithful as Sam, Ghosted Princess!

I have a few points to offer which differ slightly from the topic developed here. I hope I have let that topic develop before I throw some other irons in the fire. With Fordim being absent so much from the forum, I think I am safe to offer these ideas without having Freud thrown back at me! ;)

The first point I noticed is how this chapter parallels the chapter which began The Two Towers, "The Departure of Boromir." In that early chapter it is Merry and Pippin who are dragged away by orcs; here it is Frodo himself. But what I find particularly interesting is how Aragorn's quandry is echoed by Sam's, not only in word but in rhetoric as well, for both heroes work through their decision by a kind of internal dialogue.


This is a bitter end. Now the Company is all in ruin. It is I that have failed. Vain was Gandalf's trust in me. What shall I do now? Boromir has laid it on me to go to Minas Tirith, and my heart desires it; but where are the Ring and the Bearer? How shall I find them and save the Quest from disaster?
. . .
He knelt for a while, bend with weeping, still clasping Boromir's hand. . . .

"Let me think!" said Aragorn [to Gimli and Legolas now.] "And now may I make a right choice, and change the evil fate of this unhappy day!" He stood silent for a moment. 'I will follow the Orcs,' he said at last. "I would have guided Frodo to Mordor and gone with him to the end' but if I seek him now in the wilderness, I must abandon the captives to torment and death. My heart speaks clearly at last: the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer. The Company has played its part. "

The cairn that they could not build for Boromir is reduced to two stones for Frodo, at his head and feet. When Sam recovers from his decent into the blackness of despair and loss, he begins his self-questioning, which is more extensive than that of Aragorn, but similar.


'What shall I do? What shall I do?' he said. 'Did I come all this way with him for nothing?' And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of the journey: I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand.'

'But what can I do? Not leave Mr. Frodo dead, unburied on the top of the mountains, and go home? Or go on? Go on?' he repeated, and for a moment doubt and fear shook him. 'Go on? Is that what I've got to do? And leave him?'. . . .

'What? Me alone, go to the Crack of Doom and all?' He quailed still, but the resolve grew. 'What? Me take the Ring from him? The Council gave it to him.'

But the answer came at once: 'And the Council gave him companion, so that the errand should not fail. And you are the last of the Company. The errand must not fail.'

"I wish I wasn't the last,' he groaned. 'I wish old Gandalf was here, or somebody. Why am I left all alone to make up my mind? I'm sure to go wrong. And it's not for me to go taking theRing, putting myself forward.'

'But you haven't put yourself forward; you've been put forward. And as for not being the right and proper person, why, Mr. Frodo wasn't, as you might say, nor Mr. Bilbo. They did't choose themselves."

And so Sam takes the Ring upon himself in order to fulfil the Quest. Of course, the chapter is not over, but the structural parallels between the future king's choice and the humble hobbit hero's are interesting, for they underscore, I think, one of the themes of LotR, that even the most humble may serve, and that all heroes have moments of deep distress where they must search for the right answer. And by the chapter's--and book's--conclusion, we know that Sam's choice was the right choice for he has saved the Ring from the clutches of the enemy, even at the terrible loss of his friend.

Or at least, we hope it is the right decision. No Hollywood cliff hanger in the old serials was more poignant than this break before the next chapter.

I am called away. My other observations must await a later post.

[Kuruharan]

Yet another cliff hanger? ;)

[Bêthberry]

Yet another cliff hanger? ;)

haha, Kuru! I wonder why the train barrelling down the track towards Pauline never merited a sobriquet like the cliff did.

The other point I want to raise about this chapter was prompted by my recent reading of the Narnia series, and thoughts about Lewis' White Witch. Clearly, our two Inklings had in mind ages-old stories about primitive evil, an evil which is gendered, a specifically female evil. I think Tolkien's use of the traditional mythology works better than Lewis' because Tolkien specifically did not give his evil goddess human form, but bestialised her. Thinking about Joseph Campbell's monomyth and the various stages the hero must endure also got me thinking about this.

We all know by now, I think, how in his later years Tolkien attempted "consciously so in the revision" to cast Galadriel as Mary, the spotless woman who redeems the sins of Eve, Adam's wife.

Eve, however, as not Adam's first wife. There are extant references in old mythologies, Talmudic lore, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and scattered medieval texts to a first wife (plus a naming in Isaiah), made possible by the confusion over the two creation stories in Genesis. This first wife was not formed out of Adam's rib, but in the same manner as Adam. Not from dust, though, but out of filth and sediment. Her name is Lilith, which some say derives from the Babylonian word lilitu, female demon or wind or Hebrew for 'night.' In Arab folkore, she is a hairy night monster.

Lilith was more disobedient than Eve. According to the stories, she refused Adam's demand that she take the supine position in sexual intercourse and in a huff of disagreement, left Adam to dwell with demons and monsters in The Red Sea, (sounds like an early Cannes beach scene) where she produced offspring at a startling rate (hundreds and hundreds). These nasty beings, lilin, were said to 'have their way with' sleeping men at night and also to kill newborns--the creatures get mixed in with tales of succuba. Although three angels were sent to Lilith asking her to return to Adam, she refused and instead said she would prey upon the descendents of Adam and Eve forever. Lilith apparently was not included in the apple rap which brought death into the world.

You can see where I am going with this, can't you? (Actually, I am curious why davem hasn't raised this, for with his love of mythology I'm sure he knows the legends.) I have no idea if Tolkien knew these legends. Yet the similarities to his Shelob are fascinating. The ancient legends focus upon the ugliness, stench, depravity and concupiscence of the foul female with her countless spawn.

Even the manner of Sam's defeat of Shelob fits the legend, for Shelob does herself in by taking the superior position and inflicting the prick of the blade upon herself. And I would argue that the sexual interpretation is suggested by the way Tolkien describes Sam's rage of defense for Frodo and the way Tolkien gives Shelob's point of view.


Sam did not wait to wonder what was to be done, or whether he was brave, or loyal, or filled with rage. He sprang forward with a yell, and seized his master's sword in his left hand. Then he charged. No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, along, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate.

Disturbed as if out of some gloating dream by his small yell she turned slowly the dreadful malice of her glance upon him. But almost before she was aware that a fury was upon her greater than any she had known in countless years, the shining sword bit upon her foot and shore away the claw. Sam sprang in, inside the arches of her legs, and with a quick upthrust of his other hand stabbed at the clustered eyes upon her lowered head. One great eye went dark.

Now the miserable creature was right under her, for the moment out of reach of her sting and of her claws. Her vast belly was above him with its putrid light, and the stench of it almost smote him down. Still his fury held for one more blow, and before she could sink upon him, smothering him and his little impudence of courage, he slashed the bright elven-blade across her with desperate strength.

But Shelob was not as dragons are, no softer spot had she save only her eyes. Knobbed and pitted with corruption was her age-old hide, but ever thickened from within with layer on layer of evil growth. The blade scored it with a dreadful gash, but those hideous folds could not be pierced by any strength of man, not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the hand of Beren or of Turin wield it. She yielded to the stroke, and then heaved up the great bag of her belly high above Sam's head. Poison frothed and bubbled from the wound. Now splaying her legs she drove her buge bulk down on him again. Too soon. For Sam still stood on his feet, and dropping his own sword, with both hands he held the elven-blade point upwards, fending off that ghastly roof; and so Shelob, with the driving force of her own cruel will, with strength greater than any warrior's hand, thrust herself upon a bitter spike. Deep, deep it pricked, as Sam was crushed slowly to the ground.

At this point, of course, it is remembrance of the Phial of Galadriel that saves Sam, and Shelob is repulsed by the light of the stars therein. Thank Eru one woman got it right, eh? Note, however, how Tolkien specifically refuses to foretell the end of Shelob's tale, just as Lilith does not die.

One last point in this very long post! And I will write it with economy. Joseph Campbell's monomyth in The Hero with a Thousand Faces suggests that the hero must past through thresholds between the world of his previous life and the darkness where he must defeat the forces of evil. Campbell describes clearly that passing over the threshold takes the hero into the realm of darkness. The Two Towers is bookmarked by threshold experiences. It opens with the crossing over of the Anduin, a river being a major symbol in the myths Campbell discusses for the threshold, and the death of Boromir and Aragorn's great dilemma and confusion over his leadership. It closes with this terrible passage through the dark tunnels of the mountains and a pseudo-death of Frodo. Can any of us not surmise that the Land of Shadow awaits Sam and Frodo?

I rest. No cliff hander this time, although perhaps I have lobbed a few explosives.

[littlemanpoet]

I think where I've got to in all that I've said here is that yes, the characters are subject to fate, and yes, they must also willingly choose to follow that fate rather than stay at home with their feet up, but at the root of everything, they are indeed pawns, but they are Tolkien's pawns. I shan't say any more because that's a big hole I've climbed into.

Indeed. :)

Your post was cause for me to change my sig.

Sorry if I'm repeating what others have said, since Lal's is the last post I've read so far, but there is one way that Evil can win over Good, and that is for Good to succumb to such vices as cowardice, pride, vanity, chosen ignorance; in a phrase, to refuse to do what it should when called upon. Authorial sovereignty? Into the big hole we go....

...perhaps I have lobbed a few explosives...

ha ha! "lobbed"? Surely that was on purpose?

The sexual undertones of Shelob's defeat at Sam's hands was not lost on me this time around. I found it interesting that our little hero has not lost his "sting". But where is Gollum? Hiding? Fallen? Why is he not anywhere to be found at this point, considering that he shows up again later?

[davem]

Well, yeah, but as Freud is supposed to have said, 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.'...

One could see phallic symbolism in Sam using a sword to pierce Shelob, but in that world what other kind of weapon would he use? A spear, an arrow? In other words, there are very few ways that Sam could have seen off Shelob that couldn't be interpreted 'sexually'. I suppose he could have tried setting her on fire... :D

Shelob is a force of evil & as Rosebury has pointed out it is necessary that evil be shown to carry the seeds of its own destruction - it is not an equal & opposite force to good, but rather a perversion of it without the power to sustain itself.

Perhaps Freud has gotten us all seeing things which aren't always there.

Or to put it another way, sometimes stabbing a giant spider is just stabbing a giant spider...

[Kuruharan]

I suppose he could have tried setting her on fire...

That would have been just fanning the flames of luuuve!!

Perhaps Freud has gotten us all seeing things which aren't always there.

Nice to see somebody besides me say this.

[Bêthberry]

You know, I specifically did not refer to Freud in my post because 1) I don't place much value in his kind of psychoanalytic psychology and 2) I don't think he has the final word on archetypes and 3)my argument was based on other criteria.

So, as a matter of fact, davem and Kuruharan, whether you are dismissive of the suggestion simply because you seem to dislike Freudian interpretations is irrelevant because it does not address the nature of my argument. I agree with you that many forms of supposedly Freudian symbolism is flimsy, particularly that which jumps on a supposed applicability without considering the context.

Meaning accrues not from dictionary definitions but from the basic way we make sense of language--from decoding the likeliest of possible meanings, for example: we make inference from the co-text, from how the words around a word suit and fit. Words of a feather fly together, you might say. Consider this sentence:

Father fell out of a tree and broke a limb.

'tree' and 'limb' belong to the 'tree' designation. 'fell', 'broke' and 'limb' belong to the 'bone injury' designation. Which designation does 'limb' belong to? It is ambiguous. This multiple desingation, the resonance and ambiguity, is what makes literary language in particular so rich with reflected meaning. (Comedy routines are of course notorious for exploiting this kind of ambiguity.) This power of designation or relationship is build on probablity, of course, but its power is determined by its uniqueness. Clichés have an inevitable collocation: bite the dust, fall in love, etc. But where collocations are not expected or habitual--well, there lies the kind of improbability upon whick literary meaning is built.

This collocation begins with the line about Sam defending Frodo as his "fallen mate", and continues through 'horn', 'the arches of her legs', the 'splaying legs'. Consider other meanings of 'impudent'--not just boldness, but also 'lack of modesty, shamelessness.' It would be possible to write this passage with other words which don't tend towards this reflected meaning.

But lexis is not the only argument. Shelob shares many physical charactertistics with the demon Lilith: stench, appetite, lust and lack of chastity in its wider and older form, number of offspring, cruelty. Lilith was said to murder infants and Jewish folklore included a number of amulets and sayings said to protect infant males from her in the days before the ritual of circumcision. What is the passive Frodo here but an infant swaddled in her web? (This, I admit, might be stretching things a bit.)

Why would both Tolkien and Lewis choose to depict a primeval force of evil as female? (Fifty-fifty, I guess, eh?) What might their similar ideas have been touching upon or drawn from?

Perhaps ideology might also play a part in interpretation here. Some might not be familiar with or might not accept the existence of a primitive form of evil in female form in the Christian tradition, a form which was overcome by patriarchial monotheism. When Mary is enthroned on a pedestal of virtue and honour, she overcomes earlier denigrating portrayals of the female aspect. It is almost a manichean kind of split. It makes perfect sense to me to have a repulsive female evil thwarted by the power of Galadriel--mythologic sense. How many mythologies contain stories of how female deities lost power and influence to male deities? Why wouldn't that aspect of mythologies be reflected in Tolkien's subcreation? If Goldberry can be related to celtic water spirits (as davem has pointed out), why is this reworking of old legend not possible?

And none of this in any way negates the concept that evil contains the seeds of its own downfall (no pun intended), a point which I have argued elsewhere here on the Downs some time ago.

So, you see, it is not a smoking cigar, but many pieces to a puzzle.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Hey -- you want Freud? What about the act of thrusting a finger into a Ring? Or how about a race of people who live in womb-like holes in the ground?

"Absent" indeed! Lurking, m'dearies, lurking.

[davem]

If I have a problem with this approach it is that it takes us out of Middle earth into a mythology of the primary world. I think there is another kind of mythological link being made here, & it is one that keeps us firmly within the secondary world.

In this episode I can't help thinking that Tolkien, having just mentioned Turin, wants the reader to be reminded of the way he killed Glaurung - remember, he hoped to see the Silmarillion published - preferably alongside LotR. Both monsters are 'finished off' by being stabbed in in the belly from beneath by a mortal hero with an Elven blade. Even if Tolkien had the story of Lilith in the back of his mind we mustn't, or we'll be dragged out of Middle-earth into the realm of comparative mythology or worse ;) ....

[Kuruharan]

'horn', 'the arches of her legs', the 'splaying legs'

Yeah, but how else would one describe a spider? I mean, legs are their most prominent feature (the awful, wretched things).

Why would both Tolkien and Lewis choose to depict a primeval force of evil as female?

Why not? They were equal opportunity villain creators. Besides, the White Witch was not the only baddie in the Narnian world. Tash was there. I wouldn't exactly say the White Witch lost her place to him.

[Bêthberry]

ha ha! "lobbed"? Surely that was on purpose?

The sexual undertones of Shelob's defeat at Sam's hands was not lost on me this time around. I found it interesting that our little hero has not lost his "sting". But where is Gollum? Hiding? Fallen? Why is he not anywhere to be found at this point, considering that he shows up again later?

Of course it was, lmp :D


Hey -- you want Freud? What about the act of thrusting a finger into a Ring? Or how about a race of people who live in womb-like holes in the ground?

"Absent" indeed! Lurking, m'dearies, lurking.

My amenable fellow, I must thank you for providing such examples as make a veritable operational definition of exactly what my examples are not. You do my work for me. :p



Yeah, but how else would one describe a spider? I mean, legs are their most prominent feature (the awful, wretched things).


Well, Kuru, either the words are a meaningful facet of his writing/art or they are forced upon him, with no credit to him. :eek:



Even if Tolkien had the story of Lilith in the back of his mind we mustn't, or we'll be dragged out of Middle-earth into the realm of comparative mythology or worse

So readers dare not go where only authors care to tread? Well, well. What are readers to do who see imagery and symbolism of the Virgin Mary in Galadriel, which was 'put there' "consciously so in the revision" by Tolkien's own statement? Are they to discount it as irrelevant intrusion of primary world? Why one and not the other? (oh dear, have reached my smilie limit.)

[davem]

So readers dare not go where only authors care to tread? Well, well. What are readers to do who see imagery and symbolism of the Virgin Mary in Galadriel, which was 'put there' "consciously so in the revision" by Tolkien's own statement? Are they to discount it as irrelevant intrusion of primary world? Why one and not the other? (oh dear, have reached my smilie limit.)

I think while we are reading the story we should try & leave behind primary world ideas & symbols - otherwise we risk having the spell broken. While reading the story Shelob should only be 'an evil thing in spider form' & Sam's method of dispatching her bring to mind things like the Turin/Glaurung & Earendel/Ungoliant battles.

Once we step outside the secondary world we can analyse it all as much as we want - though in that case we are doing what Tolkien condemned - breaking a thing to find out what it is made of, dismantling the tower to find out wherre the stones originally came from.

This is the real 'Freudian' approach which we're all (myself as much as, or even more than, others, I sometimes feel) in danger of falling into. The Freudian approach is essentially backward looking, asking 'what caused this, what is this made of?' The alternative, which I suppose we can call the 'Jungian' approach, is to ask 'What is this for? 'Where is this going?' rather than 'Where did this come from?'

As for the Galadriel/Mary connection, it is in there - quite blatantly some would say in the later writings - but its not there so strongly that it can't be ignored by those who want to, & its not necessary to know anything about the Virgin Mary
in order to understand the character & role of Galadriel. We may learn a lot about Tolkien by bringing Mary into our reading, but we won't learn much about Middle earth. We won't actually learn that much about Galadriel, either.

Letter 144:

Myth & fairy story must, as all art, reflect & contain in solution elements of moral & religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.

Having said all that, its difficult to seperate the creator from his creation, & Lilith may have been in the back (or even the front) of his mind when he was writing this passage - we'll probably never know.

[Bêthberry]

I think while we are reading the story we should try & leave behind primary world ideas & symbols - otherwise we risk having the spell broken. While reading the story Shelob should only be 'an evil thing in spider form' & Sam's method of dispatching her bring to mind things like the Turin/Glaurung & Earendel/Ungoliant battles.

Once we step outside the secondary world we can analyse it all as much as we want - though in that case we are doing what Tolkien condemned - breaking a thing to find out what it is made of, dismantling the tower to find out wherre the stones originally came from.

This is the real 'Freudian' approach which we're all (myself as much as, or even more than, others, I sometimes feel) in danger of falling into. The Freudian approach is essentially backward looking, asking 'what caused this, what is this made of?' The alternative, which I suppose we can call the 'Jungian' approach, is to ask 'What is this for? 'Where is this going?' rather than 'Where did this come from?'
. . .

Having said all that, its difficult to seperate the creator from his creation, & Lilith may have been in the back (or even the front) of his mind when he was writing this passage - we'll probably never know.

I am writing this in haste, but I do want to get something posted in reply as soon as possible.

First of all, what is this 'breaking the spell' and who says Shelob should only be a 'an evil thing in spider form'? And who says this approach is merely an archeology to determine original intent?

It seems to me impossible to dictate a right way and a wrong way of reading, first of all. Yes, some books do have ways to be read which are more rewarding than others, and some readings do become dead ends, but all in all reading is a creative process as well as writing, and why dictate that some things must be held off? Why must the right reading be a naive or virginal always 'first' reading that denies any other reading experience?

Possibly I put this entire discussion at odds with my joking reference to Fordim and his anti-Freudian take. (Hmm. Fordim, Freudim. ;) ) And I subsequently framed my points poorly by suggesting Tolkien's own knowledge of mythology. However, I did say initially that I don't know if Tolkien was familiar with the Lilith legends. And knowing me, you all ought to know by now that I don't think it necessarily important whether we can objectively ascertain that he did or not.

What matters to me is the possibilities for plenitude which the text holds out. I cannot separate Tolkien's wonderful depiction of Shelob from my knowlege of other reading: too many points are similar for there not to be some fruitful going forth here. I have already hinted at where my reading goes. The text, for me, enacts a story as old as the earliest narratives. That story bears upon the roles of characters here, especially Galadriel, Eowyn, Arwen, but not them alone. I leave it now for others to read my text with plenitude.

[davem]

I suppose in a way I'm 'arguing' in order to keep the debate going - I think this chapter thread alreay has over three times the number of posts the previous one got.

I don't want to imply that your approach is 'wrong' in any objective sense. I can see 'external' references which were probably put in deliberately by Tolkien - the line 'His weariness was growing but his will hardened all the more.' does seem to echo the famous lines from the Battle of Maldon:"Heart shall be harder, strength the keener, spirit shall be the stronger, as our might lessens." I suspect Tolkien was deliberately referencing this verse, & would have expected any reader who knew the Anglo-Saxon poem to pick up on this. If he was aware of the Lilith legend maybe that was also in his mind, but I see little connection between Lilith & Shelob in their backstories, only a vague similarity in the way they are described. If you make that connection that says more about you than about anything Tolkien was doing, consciously or unconsciously. As we see with some of the 19th century mythographers, virtually any myth can be reduced to a 'solar' myth (I'm again influenced by something Flieger has referenced in her latest book!). I think we have to distingiush between what was in the author's mind (whether he or she was aware of it or not) & what is in our minds as we read. We may bring things to the our reading of the text - its probably inevitable that we do - but we have to keep those things seperate from what the author put in there. Yet

Myth & fairy story must, as all art, reflect & contain in solution elements of moral & religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.

If the Lilith legend is an example of 'moral & religious truth (or error)' - ie if it has some 'archetypal' dimension or aspect then that may well have seeped in to the story Tolkien was writing without him realising it - or it may have been placed in there deliberately, as part of the 'consciously so in the revision' process. But either way it is not there 'in the known form of the primary 'real' world'. Shelob is not Lilith transported lock, stock & barrel to Middle earth, neither is Sam one of Beortnoth's retainers deliberately placed into that secondary world. What I mean is, if we take the approach Shelob=Lilith then we'll be neither in Middle earth, in the ancient Middle east, nor in our own 'primary' world, & our whole experience will crumble away before our eyes. Once we cloe the book & come back to our own world we can analyse & deconstruct to our hearts content, but while we're in Middle earth we have to let the story work on us, climb the Tower & look out on the sea. Within Middle earth at least Shelob is 'an evil thing in spider form', not a Middle eastern demon. In discussing The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe Flieger makes the point that when Aslan sacrifices himself in place of Edmund the story 'no longer has its own life but has been put in the service of another story.' I think this doesn't only happen when a writer deliberately writes allegory, but also when we bring too much of our own ideas & experiences to the stories we read - we put the story to to the service of 'another story' - our own.

Your turn.... ;)

[Celuien]

I'm pretty sure this has been discussed before, but what about the Galadriel/Shelob opposite pairing? Galadriel, as the lady of light, can be taken as the exact opposite of Shelob and her darkness (both female!). That could shed some "light" on Shelob's fear of the Phial and Galadriel over Earendil - it brings the two opposite halves of the pair into direct conflict. In the same way, it puts another twist on the idea that Galadriel is working through Frodo and Sam when they break into Elvish - again, are we actually seeing the opposites thrown into direct contrast?

[Lalwendë]

It seems to me impossible to dictate a right way and a wrong way of reading, first of all. Yes, some books do have ways to be read which are more rewarding than others, and some readings do become dead ends, but all in all reading is a creative process as well as writing, and why dictate that some things must be held off?

I agree that to read is a creative process, and we do bring to the text our own experience. I've said this before, but it fits in again with what is being said here. We all interpret what we read, and certain parts of a text will resonate more than others; to some extent, the readers construct meaning to a text. But this is not to say that what we read into the text is necessarily correct.

To take the current chapter as an example, I do not read Shelob as Lilith, rather I see her as an immense creature with all the nastier traits of female spiders magnified. To me, she is the ultimate in scary spiders. Relating her to non-arachnid comparisons, my own equivalent to what we see in Shelob would be the black hole, reducing matter to nothing (as Shelob does when she eats), indiscriminate in that she swallows anything just as a black hole does. Ungoliant, her mother, even swallows Light just as a black hole does.

The other example which I read differently is the passage about Sam challenging Shelob:

Sam did not wait to wonder what was to be done, or whether he was brave, or loyal, or filled with rage. He sprang forward with a yell, and seized his master's sword in his left hand. Then he charged. No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate.

Rather than suggest to me anything about Sam's feelings for Frodo, this instead seems to me to be a metaphor for Sam's courage. A small creature in comparison to Shelob, he is filled with rage as his companion lies apparently dead, and rage often does allow a small creature to launch a fierce attack on a much larger one. Here I see Tolkien bringing in a metaphor from the natural world to describe the ferocity and desperation of Sam's attack. This also serves to explain how Sam manages to pull off the deed. When I read this I often think of how a little cat when cornered by a big dog will suddenly transform from being a ball of fluff to a raging creature.

Just two examples of how the text might be seen differently. Much has also been said here of how Galadriel is equivalent to the virgin Mary, which is again something I do not pick up on. I can see why many parallels are drawn, and though I do not always agree with them, I do like to read what other people see. I suppose it would be impossible to always know exactly what Tolkien's intentions were, so we cannot expect to be reading the 'right' thing into the text all of the time.

From the other point of view, I can also see that it is not always good to delve too deeply; sometimes simple pleasure is what we ought to get from reading, to be carried along with the fantasy. I suppose that this is the danger with such in depth analysis as we have here, it is all too easy to spoil the pleasure of reading by extracting every last drop of meaning. I know for myself that to study literature brought me dangerously close to disliking reading altogether; it took me some years to shake off the theorising (funnily enough it was very much the fashion to look at texts from a Freudian perspective at the time, which is possibly why I dislike Freudian analysis of literature), and thankfully return to the simple pleasure of reading. Now I have a happy balance of being able to read for fun, and analyse when it suits me, and more importantly, find what meaning lies beneath a text for myself, and decide for myself if it is relevant. That's enjoyable, and why I like these discussions on the Downs - nobody is telling us we are wrong. ;)




More on Shelob now... How did she come into being? That she does not have the greed for Light that her mother had, suggests that she was not as powerful as her mother, perhaps the offspring produced when Ungoliant mated with a lesser male?

Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Duath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood.

From what is said about Shelob, she also mates, and her offspring have spread through Middle Earth. Do these males come seeking her, or am I correct to read into this that she could in fact have mated with her own offspring from time to time? It does seem that she killed, maybe even ate, her mates and her offspring.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Since a slowdown of the chapter discussions has been requested, I am postponing the next one for at least a week. You are cordially invited to continue posting on this thread or to catch up on previous ones. Thanks!

[Bêthberry]

I suppose in a way I'm 'arguing' in order to keep the debate going - I think this chapter thread alreay has over three times the number of posts the previous one got.

I don't want to imply that your approach is 'wrong' in any objective sense. I can see 'external' references which were probably put in deliberately by Tolkien - the line 'His weariness was growing but his will hardened all the more.' does seem to echo the famous lines from the Battle of Maldon:"Heart shall be harder, strength the keener, spirit shall be the stronger, as our might lessens." I suspect Tolkien was deliberately referencing this verse, & would have expected any reader who knew the Anglo-Saxon poem to pick up on this. If he was aware of the Lilith legend maybe that was also in his mind, but I see little connection between Lilith & Shelob in their backstories, only a vague similarity in the way they are described. If you make that connection that says more about you than about anything Tolkien was doing, consciously or unconsciously. As we see with some of the 19th century mythographers, virtually any myth can be reduced to a 'solar' myth (I'm again influenced by something Flieger has referenced in her latest book!). I think we have to distingiush between what was in the author's mind (whether he or she was aware of it or not) & what is in our minds as we read. We may bring things to the our reading of the text - its probably inevitable that we do - but we have to keep those things seperate from what the author put in there. Yet

Quote:
Myth & fairy story must, as all art, reflect & contain in solution elements of moral & religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.


If the Lilith legend is an example of 'moral & religious truth (or error)' - ie if it has some 'archetypal' dimension or aspect then that may well have seeped in to the story Tolkien was writing without him realising it - or it may have been placed in there deliberately, as part of the 'consciously so in the revision' process. But either way it is not there 'in the known form of the primary 'real' world'. Shelob is not Lilith transported lock, stock & barrel to Middle earth, neither is Sam one of Beortnoth's retainers deliberately placed into that secondary world. What I mean is, if we take the approach Shelob=Lilith then we'll be neither in Middle earth, in the ancient Middle east, nor in our own 'primary' world, & our whole experience will crumble away before our eyes. Once we cloe the book & come back to our own world we can analyse & deconstruct to our hearts content, but while we're in Middle earth we have to let the story work on us, climb the Tower & look out on the sea. Within Middle earth at least Shelob is 'an evil thing in spider form', not a Middle eastern demon. In discussing The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe Flieger makes the point that when Aslan sacrifices himself in place of Edmund the story 'no longer has its own life but has been put in the service of another story.' I think this doesn't only happen when a writer deliberately writes allegory, but also when we bring too much of our own ideas & experiences to the stories we read - we put the story to to the service of 'another story' - our own.

Your turn.... ;)


But this is not to say that what we read into the text is necessarily correct.

To take the current chapter as an example, I do not read Shelob as Lilith, rather I see her as an immense creature with all the nastier traits of female spiders magnified. To me, she is the ultimate in scary spiders. Relating her to non-arachnid comparisons, my own equivalent to what we see in Shelob would be the black hole, reducing matter to nothing (as Shelob does when she eats), indiscriminate in that she swallows anything just as a black hole does. Ungoliant, her mother, even swallows Light just as a black hole does.

The other example which I read differently is the passage about Sam challenging Shelob:

Quote:
Sam did not wait to wonder what was to be done, or whether he was brave, or loyal, or filled with rage. He sprang forward with a yell, and seized his master's sword in his left hand. Then he charged. No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate.


Rather than suggest to me anything about Sam's feelings for Frodo, this instead seems to me to be a metaphor for Sam's courage.

. . . .
I suppose it would be impossible to always know exactly what Tolkien's intentions were, so we cannot expect to be reading the 'right' thing into the text all of the time.

From the other point of view, I can also see that it is not always good to delve too deeply; sometimes simple pleasure is what we ought to get from reading, to be carried along with the fantasy. I suppose that this is the danger with such in depth analysis as we have here, it is all too easy to spoil the pleasure of reading by extracting every last drop of meaning. I know for myself that to study literature brought me dangerously close to disliking reading altogether; it took me some years to shake off the theorising (funnily enough it was very much the fashion to look at texts from a Freudian perspective at the time, which is possibly why I dislike Freudian analysis of literature), and thankfully return to the simple pleasure of reading. Now I have a happy balance of being able to read for fun, and analyse when it suits me, and more importantly, find what meaning lies beneath a text for myself, and decide for myself if it is relevant. That's enjoyable, and why I like these discussions on the Downs - nobody is telling us we are wrong.



Hmm. Let me point out that I have not made any kind of bald "Shelob=Lilith" equation such as both davem and Lalwendë assert. I praise Tolkien for not writing the kind of allegorical equations such as Lewis did in the Narnia series. I have simply suggested a conceptual framework in which to consider the character of Shelob. Nor did I say anything about Sam's feelings for Frodo when I quoted the "fallen mate" passage. I was discussing collocation of words.

I have yet to see any argument which convinces me that we must "stay in Middle-earth" as we read or risk destroying the truth. Where does one determine when reading/interpretation takes place--in the moment of reading or when one closes the book? It is, I posit, logically impossible to postulate such a split. Interpretation of meaning is an always ongoing process, not start and stop, for we are always reading ahead, to imagine where this leads, how the characters inter-relate.

But as for what an author can 'put in' or not, let me give a long quotation, as I know davem loves long quotations. It is about Shakespeare, so I suppose I am having a little bit of fun about Tolkien's opinion of the Bard. Because the idea belongs to George Steiner, I am going to use his words. And because this isn't Freudian, perhaps Lalwendë will forgive me for delving too deeply. Like Aiwendil, I do not believe that good art can be destroyed by too much thought.

First, let me quote the passage which Steiner discusses. It is Postumous's rant about the perfidious nature of women when he thinks that Imogen has betrayed him with Iachimo. Act II of Cymbeline.


Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd,
And pray'd me ofte forbearance: did it with
A pudency so rosy the sweet view on't
Might well have warm'd old Saturn; that I thought her
As chaste as unsunn'd snow. Oh, all the devils!
This yellow Iachimo, in an hour, was't not?
Or less; at first? Perchance he spoke not, but
Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one,
Cried 'O!' and mounted; found no opposition
But what he look'd for should oppose and she
Should from encounter guard. Could I find out
That woman's part in me--for there's no motion
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
It is the woman's part: be it lying, note it,
The woman's: flattering, hers; deceiving, hers:
Lust, and rank thoughts, hers: revenge, hers:
Ambitious, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
Nice longings, slanders, mutability;
All faults that name, nay that hell knows, why hers
In part, or all: but rather all. For even to vice
They are not constant, but are changing still;

Steiner's close reading (part of his argument that all language interpretation is essentially translation, even in the same language) begins by considering what the meanings of some of these words might have been in 1611. It the phrase 'yellow Iachimo' which is the most interesting. Here's what Steiner has to say:


Yellow Iachimo is arresting. The aura of nastiness is distinct. But what is being inferred? Though 'green' is the more usual appurtenance of jealousy, Middleton in 1602 uses yellow to mean 'affected with jealousy.' Shakespeare does likewise in The Winter's Tale, a play contemporary with Cymbeline, and in The Merry Wifes of Windsor (I.iii) 'yellowness' stands for 'jealousy' (could there be a false etymology somewhere in the background, associating the two words?) Iachomo is jealous, of Posthumus's nobility, of Posthumus's good fortune in enjoying the love and fidelity of Imogen. But does Posthumus know this, or does the dramatic strength of the epithet lie precisely in the fact that it exceeds Posthumus's conscious insight? Much later, and with American overtones, yellow will come to express both cowardice and mendacity--the 'yellow' press. Thought these two nuances are beautifully apposite to Iachimo, neither was, so far as we can tell, available to Shakespeare. What latent undertones in the word and colour give rise to subsequent, negative usage? Shakespeare at times seems to 'hear' inside a word or phrase the history of its future echoes.

I would suggest that Tolkien, as much a genius as Shakespeare in his own way, was able to hear inside mythology its latent echoes. It is like a tree falling in the forest. Who is there to catch that echo? No, no, not a personal imposition of "our own stories."

[davem]

I have yet to see any argument which convinces me that we must "stay in Middle-earth" as we read or risk destroying the truth. Where does one determine when reading/interpretation takes place--in the moment of reading or when one closes the book? It is, I posit, logically impossible to postulate such a split. Interpretation of meaning is an always ongoing process, not start and stop, for we are always reading ahead, to imagine where this leads, how the characters inter-relate.

Does this only apply to fiction, or to 'non-fiction' as well - say, for example, the posts on this particular thread? ;) Is it not possible to read other's posts without imposing our own individual - even idiosyncratic - 'reading' on them?

I mean, should we even bother trying to understand what the poster intended or should we simply take whatever 'meaning' we as individual readers happen to find in it... :p

Having said that, I do begin to wonder if Tolkien was able to foresee the way certain words would develop new or even alternate meanings - he did make a lot of use of the words 'gay' & 'queer' after all.....

[Lalwendë]

Shakespeare at times seems to 'hear' inside a word or phrase the history of its future echoes.

This is a fanciful. It does not seek to understand what the author intended, it simply notes odd word usage and makes links to today's language. It is about curiosities of linguistics, about changes in language, not about what the author intended. We can go looking through older texts for odd turns of phrase which have different meanings today and we could find them by the score, and that's interesting. But it tells us nothing about what the author meant when he or she used that word or phrase. It satisifes our own interpretations, but that's as far as it goes.

This is why I do not like much literary criticism or analysis, as it seems to me that the critic is simply pulling apart a text to find what they want to find. I want to know what the author intended, I don't want to reconstruct a text for myself, for my own meaning.

There are many echoes in Tolkien's work, but it is also important to bear in mind what Tolkien himself may have learned, experienced or thought about. If it was simply not possible that he could consider a matter then it is not possible it could pass into his writing, and when I come across an odd word or phrase which seems to have alternate meanings I stop to consider if that could be the case. It's often interesting to bring up such alternate and arresting meanings and consider them, but ultimately it is unsatisfying as to getting towards the deeper meaning. Sometimes what we find in a text says more about us than it does about the author.

[Bêthberry]

Does this only apply to fiction, or to 'non-fiction' as well - say, for example, the posts on this particular thread? ;) Is it not possible to read other's posts without imposing our own individual - even idiosyncratic - 'reading' on them?

I mean, should we even bother trying to understand what the poster intended or should we simply take whatever 'meaning' we as individual readers happen to find in it... :p

Having said that, I do begin to wonder if Tolkien was able to foresee the way certain words would develop new or even alternate meanings - he did make a lot of use of the words 'gay' & 'queer' after all.....

davem, you are being particularly naughty here. Steiner's observation was,


these two nuances are beautifully apposite to Iachimo

Are you saying the same about 'gay' and 'queer'? (Rhetorical question--you needn't answer obviously. :p )



This is a fanciful. It does not seek to understand what the author intended, it simply notes odd word usage and makes links to today's language. It is about curiosities of linguistics, about changes in language, not about what the author intended. We can go looking through older texts for odd turns of phrase which have different meanings today and we could find them by the score, and that's interesting. But it tells us nothing about what the author meant when he or she used that word or phrase. It satisifes our own interpretations, but that's as far as it goes.

This is why I do not like much literary criticism or analysis, as it seems to me that the critic is simply pulling apart a text to find what they want to find. I want to know what the author intended, I don't want to reconstruct a text for myself, for my own meaning.


This is your preference and of course you are entitled to it. It does not really well describe what Steiner is getting at here, as he is not one of these wild post modernists, but if you wish to characterise literary scholars--and remember that Tolkien was one--this way, that is your right here.

But this is bringing us back to the topic of the Canonicity thread and far away from the Chapter by Chapter reading thread, and so I would like to return to some specific comments about this chapter.

I would like to consider lmp's question about Gollem.


But where is Gollum? Hiding? Fallen? Why is he not anywhere to be found at this point, considering that he shows up again later?

It seems to me that Gollem's hand is played out in the preceeding chapter, having led Frodo to Shelob in the great betrayal and then having failed to get the best of Sam. Gollem slinks off, essentially demonstrating his coward-like characteristics.

In terms of plot, though, Gollem cannot stay around, for he could have turned matters against Sam. The battle must, in dramatic terms, be between Sam and Shelob alone. Nor would it suit Gollem's plans to call the Orcs in, for he has no say with them. He wants the Ring. I don't want to look ahead too far, but don't we need him offstage so we don't dwell on his betrayal? This makes his final appearance at Mount Doom all that much more powerful I think as unexpected drama.

Better for Gollem to withdraw and regroup methinks and better for the very dramatic eucatastrophe at the end. Any other thoughts?

[davem]

davem, you are being particularly naughty here. Steiner's observation was,

Quote:

these two nuances are beautifully apposite to Iachimo

But was that what Shakespeare meant by calling Iachimo 'yellow'. Yes, the current meaning of yellow may be apposite, but it is not necessary to our understanding of Iachimo's character, which Shakespeare makes clear to us in other ways. My question would be whether Shakespeare was using the term 'yellow' to tell us something else about his character. Now, not being familiar with Elizabethan english I can't say whether 'yellow' had some other meaning in that period, but if it did then we should try & find out what that meaning was & take that on board, because it may add more depth to the character & tell us more about him. The danger is that if we get too caught up with this 'coincidence' that 'yellow' 'currently' carries implications of cowardice, then we may miss what Shakespeare is trying to tell us. Steiner's observation is (perhaps) interesting, but it could lead us to miss something more important. In fact, just doing a quick search I find that 'the color was traditionally associated rather with treachery'. So, its quite possible that Postumous was here statingnot that Iachimo was cowardly or jealous, but that he was treacherous. If this was the case we learn a little more about both Iachimo and Postumous than the mere yellow=cowardice/jealousy tells us - which is, as I said before, something we already know about Iachimo because Shakespeare has already told us it in other ways.

My point about 'gay' & 'queer' was simply that words do change meaning over the centuries, even come to mean something quite different to what they originally meant. It was in response to Steiner's

Shakespeare at times seems to 'hear' inside a word or phrase the history of its future echoes.

& was merely intended to show that its possibly just a fluke that the current meaning of 'yellow' fits one aspect of Iachimo's character, & that if 'yellow' had developed a different meaning then Steiner's point would just collapse. In short, its hardly a case - as far as I can see - of Shakespeare being able to ''hear' inside a word or phrase the history of its future echoes' & more one of an interesting (if possibly misleading, as far as our understanding of the characters goes) co-incidence which has been made way too much of by someone who wants to impute some kind of 'psychic' power to his literary hero. What would he have made of the appellation if 'yellow' had come to refer in modern parlance to homosexuality? Would he have read some kind of gay subtext into the story, or just ignored the whole thing?

[Lalwendë]

This is your preference and of course you are entitled to it. It does not really well describe what Steiner is getting at here, as he is not one of these wild post modernists, but if you wish to characterise literary scholars--and remember that Tolkien was one--this way, that is your right here.

It is no personal preference that I would rather look for the author's meaning in a text, it is central to the purpose of reading that we look for this. Yes, we will add in and build meanings of our own, as I've said before a text can resonate in many different ways, but why read at all if we disregard what the author intended to say?

Tolkien was not a literary scholar, he was a scholar of language, and as such approached the meaning of texts from a linguistic background, seeking to find the original meanings of the words and forming his analysis of the meaning on this. In On Fairy Stories he states his case against those critics who seek to deconstruct in order to find evidence to suit their own theories.

[Kuruharan]

You two will have very interesting dinner table conversations I think.

Then again, on the other hand, you may use the BD to discuss brainy things and spend dinner discussing Monty Python and Blackadder. :D

[Bêthberry]

Well, well, throw a Downer a bone in the shape of a suggestion that not all of Tolkien's writing was consciously so and they will worry it to death! ;)

As I said in my previous post, I think this is getting off topic. That might be for the moderator to decide, but I will briefly suggest some thoughts here and then will retire to suggest that we hash out this particular aspect in PM.

As "we" have discussed elsewhere, Tolkien actually thought different things at different times about his Legendarium. Aiwendil argued rather nicely (was it on Canonicity or here in the Chapter by Chapter discussion of the Lothlorien chapters?) that there are three different stages to the characterisation of Galadriel, developed over a substantial period of time, with each stage suggesting rather different interpretations for LotR.

Then we have littlemanpoet's The Single Greatest (Publishing) Tragedy in Tolkien's Life thread where we are considering Tolkien's habit, later in his writing life, of revising in order to create an assumed consistency among all his vast works.

This is the difficult point about Tolkien and intention: he intended different things at different times in his writing, and each shift created little ripples in the fabric, sometimes requiring greater shifts and sometimes much dike-building.

Then there is his attitude towards applicability: Tolkien rejected allegory for the specific reason that it created a purposed domination of the author; in his chosen applicability lay the freedom of the reader ("Foreward to the Second Edition", LotR). (my bolding in place of quotation marks)

What was it Tolkien wrote in Letter #213, where he mentions the reader who deduced the similarity of Sam and Gimli's words about Galadriel to Catholic devotion of Mary, or the similarity of lembas under fasting to the Eucharist?


That is, far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story.

What would I give to be able to inquire of Tolkien his thoughts about Lilith and Shelob? About how the artistic structures of mythological narrative informed his imagination in fascinating and wonderful ways? Heck, even to be able to ask Christopher Tolkien these points. A very great deal. But alas I don't have that access.

So the issue is not that I would force my own idiosyncratic reading on a text that cannot bear it. The issue is a 'what if' and if so, how does this colour our understanding of this marvellous fantasy.

And, anyways, how sure are you, after all, that your denial of any applicability of the Lilith myth is in fact consistent with Tolkien, that he would have denied such applicability? How do we square "On Fairy Tales" with his later revisions? I don't think we can. Nor should we need to.

All I am saying is that my seeing 'applicability' of the Lilith legend to Shelob enhances my reading of Tolkien's myth-making. Just as the applicability of the hero's mystic marriage with the queen goddess brings richness to my reading of Aragorn and Arwen.

As an aside about the Steiner passage, davem, Steiner does mention Renaissance meaning in his reference to Middleton, which can be found in the OED. Your search that yellow was traditionally associated with treachery is interesting, but that is a meaning not found in the OED. (Despite Fordim's great admiration for that dictionary, and mine, I must point out that it is not infallible.) And, after all, Steiner was engaged in a large larger argument than that one passage can make clear. Perhaps your problems with the passage show something about interpretation: that context invariably impinges upon passages. This certainly is what happens when I read this chapter, I constantly cross reference it back to things I recall from previous chapters. And at this point, forward too, which takes me far out of bounds of that illusory, imaginary first reading.

But, shall we adjourn to PM so this thread can return to the chapter proper?

[davem]

All I am saying is that my seeing 'applicability' of the Lilith legend to Shelob enhances my reading of Tolkien's myth-making. Just as the applicability of the hero's mystic marriage with the queen goddess brings richness to my reading of Aragorn and Arwen.

I wouldn't deny your right to find any kind of applicability in the text. My point was that I can see more differences than similarities between Shelob & Lilith. They aren't at all the same kind of being, & their origins, motivations & 'fates' are different. What I'm saying is that first of all, as far as possible, we should read & experience the story as story & let it work on us. We should enter into the secondary world to teh fullest extent that we can, leaving as much baggage behind as we are able to. Second, we should attempt, just as objectively & without attempting to psychoanalyse him/her, to appreciate the story the author is telling us, what he wants us to know. Then, in the third stage, we can step back & psychoanalyse text & author (& ourselves if we wish), deconstruct, reconstruct, play around with, make guesses about it, draw on it, throw it around or set fire to it - because this is the least important, & least necessary, stage of the process. It breaks the spell, it is the 'breaking of the text to find out what it is made of.

Lilith carries too much baggage with her, & the danger of allowing that (inevitable?) mental connection to have its head is that we start seeing Shelob as 'nothing but' Lilith, or at least of having our appreciation of Shelob & what Tolkien was doing with her & saying about the nature (or one aspect of it) of evil.

Dion Fortune once said 'All the gods are one God & all the goddesses are one Goddess' which is absolutely true on one level, & completely wrong on another. The Romans had a tendency on encountering the deities of another culture, to declare them as being merely versions of their own gods. Any foreign god that might have had an association with battle was immediately declared to be a manifestation of Mars, of love a manifestation of venus, of Smithcraft, of Vulcan, etc. This lead to some complete misallocations & misunderstandings which went on to cause confusion among mythographers of later periods. What do you do with a goddess like Bridget, who is patron of poetry, healing & smithcraft, for instance?

I can't help feeling that if you could ask Tolkien about his thoughts on the Shelob/Lilith debate he would acknowledge some similarities, many differences, & then ask you how you felt reading the story he wrote - did it frighten you, inspire you, & most of all, did it 'enchant' you enough that you were 'in the moment' as you read it. If you weren't, if while reading of Shelob you were thinking of Lilith (or the shopping, or what you were going to watch on tv in half an hour) then he's probably feel he'd failed as a writer.

This certainly is what happens when I read this chapter, I constantly cross reference it back to things I recall from previous chapters. And at this point, forward too, which takes me far out of bounds of that illusory, imaginary first reading.


I don't think Tolkien would have had a problem with that - in fact I think that's what he would have wanted you to do. But in doing that you are mentally remaining within Middle earth, not tripping off to the ancient Middle east.

[Formendacil]

To quote from the Foreword (second Edition):

An author cannot remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.

Emphasis mine

There you have it. Tolkien himself admits that one's one life experience and knowledge affect what one writes. But as he states, the way in which it works is very difficult to track.

And personally, I am in agreement with that. So while it may be fascinating to read things in to what he wrote, we may be barking up the wrong tree, on the right track, or just plain confused. At the same time, things that, to Tolkien, were obviously drawn from his life, might well be missed by the whole devoted lot of us.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

This is a good place in the discussion to point out that we should take general considerations to the Canonicity thread and try to stay with the chapter at hand as much as possible - thanks! Though the posts are enjoyable to read, they are leaving the confines of the CbC discussion...

[davem]

Point taken.

Having said that, this thread, while it may have strayed off-topic, currently has 52 replies, while the one for the last chapter, which was strictly on-topic, only got 10......

[Lathriel]

I am going to sound extremely ignorant but who/what is Frued?

As for Sam's dependence on Frodo, I believe he actually becomes much more independent from Frodo as LOTR progresses.
Especially when Sam is left on his own and as Frodo is becoming increasingly influenced by the ring Sam has no choice but take up the leadership role. Certainly he seems lost, especially after he finds Frodo "dead". But no wonder, he is in a strange country and the quest is now truly in danger. In fact when I look at the whole book I believe that the quest could have the biggest chance of failing in this chapter. If Sam had decided to do something else other than what he did the quest could have failed and the ring could have landed in the enemies hands.
At this moment everything comes down to Sam and what he decides hence the chapters title.
The fact that Sam leaves Frodo to continue on to Mount Doom makes it clear that although Sam didn't know of the ring's full potential before, he does now and he understands that he has to go on. I think this is a very brave choice, to go into Mordor alone with no idea of what can happen. (That is of course untill he finds out that Frodo is alive)
In fact I think it is even braver when sam decides to rescue Frodo. However, it is also slightly foolish since he could have been caught. But that is for the next book.

[littlemanpoet]

For a quick and dirty on Freud (sorry about the pun!), go here (http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/freud.html). Otherwise, do a google on "Sigmund Freud".

[Bêthberry]

There is nothing wrong with asking questions, Lathriel!

lmp has given you some good suggestions. Here is another one: another helpful source is the Wikipedia online encyclopedia: go here for infor on Freud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud). The Wikipedia is useful for many other topics as well! Really worth bookmarking, I think.

[Guinevere]

I can’t say anything to the discussion above (never having heard about Lilith) but in general I agree very much with what Lalwendë wrote:
„This is why I do not like much literary criticism or analysis, as it seems to me that the critic is simply pulling apart a text to find what they want to find. I want to know what the author intended, I don't want to reconstruct a text for myself, for my own meaning.“

For me, this is the most dramatic, moving, heart-wrenching chapter – I remember so well how I was in tears the first time I read it. I really believed Frodo had died and I felt so much with Sam – his despair, the terrible weight of the choice he had to make, his reluctance to make up his mind resonate deeply with me. And Sam’s faithful, undemanding love for his master affects me more than any lovestory I have ever read.!
Btw Tolkien wrote in a letter to Christopher 1944 (#72):
„ …I read the last two chapters (Shelob’s lair & the Choices of Master Samwise) to C.S.Lewis on Monday morning. He approved with unusual fervour, and was actually affected to tears by the last chapter, so it seems to be keeping up.“
Perhaps because I myself hate nothing as much as making decisions, I can relate so well to Sam in this situation.
„what shall I do, what shall I do?“ „Why am I left all alone to make up my mind?“
What also strikes me in Sam’s inner debates is how he is so humble and not sure of himself, always doubting his own abilities.
When he takes the starglass he says „It’s too good for me „ and when he finally makes up his mind: „ But I’ll be sure to go wrong: that’d be Sam Gamgee all over.“
I wonder if that is because his father has called him too often a “ninnyhammer“ etc. in his childhood?
„You fool, he isn’t dead, and your heart knew it. Don’t trust your head, Samwise, it is not the best part of you.“ he says after the shock of hearing that Frodo is still alive.and „I got it all wrong, I knew I would.“
But instinctively he always does the right thing!
As Faramir already told him : „ If you seem to have stumbled, I think it was fated to be so. Your heart is shrewd as well as faithful, and saw clearer than your eyes.“


I was also very intrigued by the (untranslated) Elvish invocation Sam uttered. In time I found out the meaning, but it still is mysterious how this came to be.

About the Orcs: I noticed that their style of speaking seems quite modern , as opposed to the noble speech of the Gondorians and Rohirrim.

About spiders:
...Or was she (Shelob) simply a horrific childhood memory ‘mythologised’ (‘seen through enchanted eyes’ as John Garth put it)?
I don't think so, because Tolkien wrote in a letter that though he'd been bitten by a Tarantula when very small, he didn't remember it, and had only been told about it.
I do not dislike spiders particularly , and have no urge to kill them. I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!
Isn't that nice! That’s what I do too! :)

[Azaelia of Willowbottom]

Loved your post, Guinevere! I agree. I also found it interesting what you posted about Tolkien and spiders. I've heard over and over that it was due to his own fear of spiders that Shelob became what she was...But I think I like knowing that he didn't hate them the way I had thought!

This is one of my favorite chapters in the whole of Lord of the Rings. I still cry every time I read it. I know Frodo is not dead, but Sam's heartbroken reaction just gets me. He has to be my favorite character in all of Lord of the Rings...or if not THE favorite, very close...and this chapter is, in my opinion, his finest hour.

I love that he moved from being a character who takes a mostly-secondary role to Frodo, into a leading role here. That's certainly not to slight Frodo, or to say that I was glad that he was hurt...but it gives Sam his chance to shine. I could relate to him somewhat because I always second-guess my decisions as he does: "'I've made up my mind,' he kept saying to himself. But he had not...'Have I got it wrong?' he muttered. 'What ought I to have done?

It amazes me that he could manage to do something that was so against his nature and everything that he'd been at all: to leave Frodo behind and take up the quest himself. (and by "against his nature" I do not mean out of character...)The hobbit who was not meant fpr great things, as he keeps telling himself, had suddenly become a do-er of great things. That's true heroism.

...(I just realized how hard it is to post on this particular topic. There's so much I want to say, but it's difficult for me to find the words to say it, and it's very frustrating for me. I'm going to take some time to gather my thoughts and maybe continue again later...*sigh*)

[Bêthberry]

I can’t say anything to the discussion above (never having heard about Lilith) but in general I agree very much with what Lalwendë wrote:



Guinevere, I enjoyed your thoughts about this chapter very much, particularly your thoughtful comments on Sam. It doesn't really matter that you don't know anything about Lilith. You can enjoy the chapter very much as it is without that layering of possibilities; in fact, you provide other, equally rich possibilities.

However, in case you are interested in other fantasy writers and in the legend of Lilith, you might want to take a look at George MacDonald's book, Lilith. MacDonald was a powerful influence on C.S. Lewis, less so on Tolkien himself, although Tolkien acknowledged him. MacDonald's interest in the imagination and fantasy anticipates that of Tolkien and Lewis. In many ways, he was a precursor. Readers don't have to know MacDonald's ideas to appreciate Tolkien's, but knowing MacDonald's thoughts on how our imagination creates meaning provides a wonderful context in which to consider Tolkien.

Tolkien mentions both MacDonald and Lilith in his famous essay, "On Fairy-Stories".


Even fairy-stories as a whole have three faces: the Mystical towards the Supernatural; the Magical towards Nature; and the Mirror of scorn and pity towards Man. The essential face of Faërie is the middle one, the Magical. But the degree in which the others appear (if at all) is variable, and may be decided by the individual story-teller. The Magical, the fairy-story, may be used as a Mirour de l'Ommen; and it may (but not so easily) be made a vehicle of Mystery. This at least is what George MacDonald attempted, achieving stories of power and beauty when he succeeded; as in The Golden Kay (which he called a fairy-tale); and even when he partly failed, as in Lilith (which he called a romance).

Just for the sake of historical accuracy, Tolkien also refers to MacDonald in his Letters. The first is in Tolkien's reply to a Letter published in the Observer and signed by "Habit".

Letter #25

As for the rest of the tale, it is, as the Habit suggests, derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story -- not, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George MacDonald is the chief exception. Beowulf is among my most valued sources; though it was not consciously present to the mind in the process of writing, ....

The second is from Tolkien's long letter to Naomi Mitchison who had sent him questions as she read over page-proofs of LotR.

Letter #144

Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be 'corruptions'. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in.

So there is Tolkien's statement on one of the imaginative influences of MacDonald, which Tolkien was later to repeat in Letter #151 to Hugh Brogan.


Your preference of goblins to orcs involves a large question and a matter of taste, and perhaps historical pedantry on my part. Personally I prefer Orcs (since these creatures are not 'goblins', not even the goblins of George MacDonald, which they do to some extent resemble).

Later, Tolkien was asked by Pantheon Books to write a preface to their edition of MacDonald's The Golden Key. According to Carpenter, Tolkien never did write the preface but "the result of his beginning work on the preface was the composition of Smith of Wootton Major, which began as a very short story to be contained within the preface". Now, there's a very tantalising bit of imaginative stimulation, particularly since it involves the question of why Tolkien wrote an allegory, a genre he did not like!

Letter #262

I should like to write a short preface to a separate edition of The Golden Key. I am not as warm an admirer of George MacDonald as C.S. Lewis was; but I do think well of this story of his. I mentioned it in my essay On Fairy-Stories...

I am not at all confident that I can produce anything worthy of the honorarium that you offer. I am not naturally attracted (in fact much the reverse) by allegory, mystical or moral. But I will do my best...

This is all by way of preface to my thoughts about Shelob. I think these passages from the Letters show that MacDonald was for Tolkien some kind of imaginative spice that went into Tolkien's own cauldron of story-soup. And that Tolkien was at least familiar with the Lilith legend as MacDonald had explored it.

I will begin by pointing out that dragons are absent from LotR, but that for Tolkien, dragons were formidable creatures of great evil. In fact, Tolkien's ground-breaking essay on Beowulf owed much to his insistence upon the profound importance of dragons in our imaginative lives. Here's a passage that bears some thinking about in terms of Shelob.


Beowulf's dragon, if one wishes really to criticize, is not to be blamed for being a dragon, but rather for not being dragon enough, plain pure fairy-story dragon. There are in the poem some vivid touches of the right kind... in which the dragon is the real worm, with a bestial life and thought of his own, but the conception, none the less, approaches draconitas rather than draco: a personification of malice, greed, destruction (the evil side of heroic life), ... Something more significant than a standard hero, a man faced with a foe more evil than any human enemy of house or realm, is before us, ...

Tolkien even reminds us of Shelob's difference from dragons and of his earlier tales of dragons, that she is even more terrible and less vulnerable than they were. Only by herself can she be beaten--as, in fact, is MacDonald's wicked Lilith overcome: she herself must open her hand to accept her death. So I think in part Shelob's attributes derive from this concept of the worm of great evil. But that concept is made much more original and unique by clothing it in traditionally conoted female attributes.

Those attributes derive from a long history of misogyny, a history which is predominate in literature of the middle ages, but not limited to that time. Most of the attributes refer to bodily functions in their most repellant aspects, such as the stench, the uncontrolled appetite, the vast breeding, the voracious feeding upon others, the despicable way they uspet man's self-control. The Lilith legend is part of this, (although, as I say, MacDonald's Lilith is not given the extensive sensory imagery which Tolkien gives Shelob, even though MacDonald's Lilith has a fearful animal form. MacDonald's Lilith is Victorian, which Tolkien's is not. The Angel in the House cast a long shadow). Tolkien I think was brilliant in clothing this legendary aspect of early literature in animal form and not in human female form, but the tradition of fear of the female body is nonetheless made available in his story.

I'm not by any means saying that Tolkien's Shelob = MacDonald's Lilith. There are great differences! Yet the concept of the loathsome, self-loving and self-serving female who describes all manner of evil self-indulgence and threat to lawful order links the two.

Why does this matter to me? What does it add to my understanding of Tolkien? It allows me to see how his ideological framework works its way out in LotR. In that ideology, the pure, beautiful, and muse-like female, worshipped on the pedastle, counterbalances the disgusting, fearful female of chaotic impulse. Does Tolkien's Shelob have to be read this way? By no means! Yet for me this supplies another layer of wonder to the richness of Tolkien's imaginative creation. This is, to me, thoroughly in keeping with Tolkien's thoughts about how the imagination gathers, chooses, combines material to bring forth new revelation.

[Firefoot]

This is definitely one of my favorite chapter. I was absolutely stunned the first time I read it. After all, how could Frodo be dead? (Of course, being the fairly gullible reader I still am, I fell for it, even after Gandalf turned up alive...) Then, to my great relief, Frodo is still alive... but then what!? I was fortunate enough to have taken both TTT and RotK out from the library at the same time, but that didn't help, as the storyline switched back to the other characters to my disappointment. Anyway.

Some comments on Shagrat and Gorbag. Up until this point, there hasn't been a lot to say that Orcs are any more than basically evil beings, mostly characterized by greed, selfish ambition, cruelty, (in some cases, intelligence, though in itself this is neither good nor evil) and loyalty to his own respective (bad) side, whether Saruman, Sauron, or themselves as is the case with the Moria Orcs. Basically your ordinary, evil minions of the bad guy (very simplified, I know). In Shagrat and Gorbag, however, we see two fairly reasonable characters. Though they do exhibit a few of the aforesaid traits, all each of them is doing is looking out for his own skin. They clearly have no particular affinity for either Sauron or the Nazgûl, and even though their service is more or less willing, what they really want is to "set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads... and no big bosses." The only reason they would seem to want to win the war is because if Sauron is done for, so are they. Lalwendë's comparison (post #7) to middle-managers is a good one, I think - they don't really know what's going on, and can't really affect it, but they're concerned about it in how much it affects them. From what we can see of these two from this chapter, they seem to be of a fairly decent sort, even likable.

On to Sam. This really is Sam's chapter. We've had glimpses into Sam's character, and we have a pretty good idea of Sam's personality, but this is a great chapter. Frodo is a very passive character in this chapter, and this shifts all the light onto Sam, who has hitherto always been rather in the background, both in the writing of the story and in his own actions - after all, his whole purpose for even being there was because of his loyalty to Frodo. So now, Sam is in the limelight and we get to see him at his best, despite his honest mistake of believing Frodo dead. We are told once again that Sam does not have and has never had any real hope, but his will, determination, and loyalty are enough to keep him going. Let there be no doubt: Sam's subservience to Frodo is not because of weakness of character.

This just occurred to me: in many ways, Sam is very like to Faramir. Consider this quote of Faramir's: "War must be while we defend our lives against a destroyer that would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor." Now consider Sam. Sam is not one to go seek war and glory by victory, though not for lack of courage. His love and loyalty is to Frodo, and to defend what he thinks to be Frodo's dead body he is completely willing to take on some eighty Orcs - despite certain death to him and a failure of the Quest.

[davem]

Those attributes derive from a long history of misogyny, a history which is predominate in literature of the middle ages, but not limited to that time. Most of the attributes refer to bodily functions in their most repellant aspects, such as the stench, the uncontrolled appetite, the vast breeding, the voracious feeding upon others, the despicable way they uspet man's self-control. The Lilith legend is part of this, (although, as I say, MacDonald's Lilith is not given the extensive sensory imagery which Tolkien gives Shelob, even though MacDonald's Lilith has a fearful animal form. MacDonald's Lilith is Victorian, which Tolkien's is not. The Angel in the House cast a long shadow). Tolkien I think was brilliant in clothing this legendary aspect of early literature in animal form and not in human female form, but the tradition of fear of the female body is nonetheless made available in his story.

Sort of. It has to be pointed out here that there is a strong pre-Christian tradition of the 'dark Goddess', which derives from matriarchal cultures, & has a profound mystical/psychological meaning. The Dark Goddess is a figure who presides over initiation & transformation, & her 'loathly' aspect is merely the way we encounter her in our initial confrontation. There are some very valuable insights into this tradition to be found in stories like the Hanes Taliesin in the Mabinogion, the Marriage of Sir Gawain, & the Irish tales of the Lady Sovereignty. In short, we're not dealing with simple 'mysogyny', but with an ancient tradition which has been 'spun' in large part by the political church. Its dangerous to take ancient lore & interpret it in the light of modern feminist theory. One thing that should be borne in mind is that these female archetypes, Lilith included, were either originally beautiful & became ugly, or originally ugly & became beautiful. This has nothing to do with any kind of 'punishment' or 'reward', as originally the transformations were entirely under the control of the Goddess herself. We have to keep in mind that the versions we have were originally set down in writing by the monks & scribes of the early church, who either had their own axe to grind, or simply didn't understand the meaning of the stories. There is a male equivalent in the 'wild man' figures (ie Lancelot, or Merlin in the Vita) who are originally handsome warriors, but are transformed by traumatic experiences into wild figures, running mad in the forests or wilds, unrecognisable as the persons they had been, & often 'magically' covered from head to toe in hair. Suffice to say that the principal way in which Shelob differs from Lilith, & her 'sisters' is that she has never been 'beautiful' or 'wise'. She lacks not only that aspect, but also, & most importantly, the power to change her loathly aspect. She is what she appears, & nothing more. What she lacks, principally, is 'mystery'.

Why does this matter to me? What does it add to my understanding of Tolkien? It allows me to see how his ideological framework works its way out in LotR. In that ideology, the pure, beautiful, and muse-like female, worshipped on the pedastle, counterbalances the disgusting, fearful female of chaotic impulse. Does Tolkien's Shelob have to be read this way? By no means! Yet for me this supplies another layer of wonder to the richness of Tolkien's imaginative creation. This is, to me, thoroughly in keeping with Tolkien's thoughts about how the imagination gathers, chooses, combines material to bring forth new revelation.

Of course, Shelob could be seen as the 'Shadow' of Galadriel. As Jung pointed out, the brighter the light, the darker the shadow it casts. Shelob may be interpreted as an amalgam of all the 'female' (or perhaps better, the human)aspects of Galadriel, which have been sacrificed in her 'deification'. But, at least in her LotR manifestation, Galadriel is far from a 'goddess'. She is a fallen penitent, fighting the long defeat.

It is quite possible to view Shelob/Galadriel as the light & dark aspects of the Goddess (Lilith or one of her sisters), as it is possible to see in the Gandalf/Sauron pairing the twin aspects of Odin - wandering wizard//necromancer, but this leads to confusion, in my opinion, because just as Gandalf & Sauron are autonomous figures, with histories & motivations which do not correspond in any way to the history & motivations of Odin, so Shelob & Galadriel do not partake of the myth of Lilith in any significant way.

Shelob is, first & foremost, a big monster, & the role she plays is not that of Lilith, but of the 'killer' of Frodo & the nemesis of Sam. She is made as ugly & threatening, as monstrous in every aspect, as possible - mostly, I would say, for very simple reasons - the main one being that the confrontation with her creates a magnificent climax to the Frodo/Sam/Gollum storyline. Yes, Shelob is female, but that was dictated, I think, by Ungoliant being female. Ungoliant was the manifestation of 'unlight', of the void, that which consumes & absorbs into itself all light.

But, it could be argued, that's only pushing the Shelob/Lilith 'equality' back a stage, & that it actually strengthens the argument of equivalence by 'doubling' it. Perhaps. But there is a very ancient tradition that the deity that initiates the apocalypse is female. This can be seen in the Prophecies of Merlin in Geoffrey's History of the Kings of Britain, where the Goddess 'Ariadne' 'unweaves' the cosmos she created in the beginning & takes back everything into the void. She creates (or 'weaves) all things into being at the Beginning, & destroys ('unweaves') all things at the End. So, we have both aspects of the primal Goddess manifest, the creator & the destroyer, the one who builds up & the one who breaks down. Ultimately She manifests the forces of both anabolism & catabolism. This also accounts for 'her' association with the spider.

Now, Tolkien has presented us with multiple 'light' 'goddesses', principally Elbereth & her 'avatars' Galadriel & Melian, & also with 'dark' goddesses, again principally Shelob & Ungoliant. As with Odin, these 'Light' & 'Dark' aspects are split off, & seen from that perspective both aspects lose somthing of the depth, conflict & mystery of the original archetypes, but this is what we have from the hand of Tolkien. As I said in another thread, Shelob & Galadriel (as Gandalf & Sauron) must stand by what they are within the world they inhabit. The more external, primary world, input that is necessary to elucidate them the less effective they are as characters in their own right, & the more they become cyphers or 'allegories'.

Now, it could be argued that the root cause of this 'split' was Tolkien's own attitude to death, his desire to understand & make sense of the 'gift' of death. Death becomes a problem to be solved, or at the least an ugly thing which must be explained & shown to have purpose in a universe created & ruled over by a loving God. The original myths from which the Lilith stories derive saw life & death as aspects of each other, with the Goddess standing at each 'gate', giving life & being & taking it away. Once the division of life=good & death=evil comes into play such archetypes fragment & no longer serve a useful purpose.

So, there you have it - my interminable ramblings on why Lilith isn't Shelob - which I know isn't what you claimed at all, but I'm posting it for what its worth...

[Formendacil]

A rather flippant, and to me amusing, thought occurred to me in reading this thread.

Perhaps the reason that Shelob is a she-lob (female spider) has to do with the simple fact that in nature, the female spiders are the larger and more dangerous ones, often eating their own mates.

Perhaps Galadriel was female for the same reasons: Celeborn could not be married to a male elf. :p

[Bergil]

In both the books and the movies, the "duel" between Sam and Shelob is my favorite part. there's also somthing very interresting in the description of the fight (not that, you freaudian dignified pervs). there's a lot of superlatives and "never before"s, not what you' expect in the Sam and Frodo story arc. Why? perhaps Tolkien realized that book four would be a long drout for the fight-thirsty, and worked to find a way to fit in a fight at the end, perhaps there's some other reason, perhaps I'm just looking deep in shallow water.

[littlemanpoet]

I bet Tolkien put in a fight because it was the only way they were going to survive Shelob.

[Bergil]

I mean Shelob herself.

[Formendacil]

It's fascinating to me that this thread focuses mostly on Shelob when I find Shagrat and Gorbag to be at least as fascinating. When much younger, I didn't think much of them: they were just Ugluk and Grishnakh 2.0, but that doesn't really fit to me anymore: Shagrat and Gorbag have personalities as distinct from each other and from Ugluk and Grishnakh as much as Merry and Pippin do from each and from Frodo and Sam. And their relationship (though it goes elsewhere in the RotK) is far more genial, if one may usr that word of orks.

The Ring is also fascinating here. Because of its inherent dangers, we so rarely see it used, and all our other experience with it is with Frodo (Bilbo in The Hobbit really doesn't count). Seeing it here, after so long AND being used by someone else, is almost like a revelation of what a powerful magic object it is. And it's really the Ring's last hurrah as anything other than a burden and psychological pressure.