What was Shelob, and more importantly, what was Ungoliant?

[Lalwendë]

Now, building on what Legate and Lommy have said, you have to pose the question, if Eru was The One and was Omnipotent, then he must also have created the darkness from which Ungoliant may or may not have stemmed? So in whatever conclusion, Ungoliant was created by Eru.

That of course makes you think of Ye Olde Chicken And Egg Question. Eru must have made himself. Aaargh, I feel about 14 again and wondering what all this stuff about God was and how he could possibly have made himself! Taoism...?

*shakes head*

Now, Illuvatar as Light and Ungoliant as Unlight - you only have to look at their names to see the poetic correspondence, Illuvatar is very similar to illuminate, no? But even laying that aside, we have the powerful idea of Eru as the Secret Fire which lies at the very heart of Arda. That to me is enough to forever link the character with Light and Life.

We still cannot rule out the chance that there are other existences than Arda, which may have been created by Eru. After all, not all the Ainur came down to Arda, and we have no concept of how many remained with him, nor do we know if he even needed any Ainur to build worlds. Eru could have created other existences outside the Ainur and the Music (that's a good idea, Legate!).

And now to this thorny matter:

Originally Posted by Legate

Yes, but as you see, I touched this matter in my post above. We have two possible points of view: one, all these books are a story written by Tolkien, the world is created by him. Second, all these books are simply a recounting of a story, Tolkien is not the creator, but he recounts something that happened elsewhere. In that case, there is no Tolkien above Eru, but Eru is the One, the One that was before everything else was in that "long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" about which Tolkien is giving us his report. You understand me? If we look from the "inside" point of view, we cannot say there was any Tolkien. The answer to what Ungoliant was from the first point of view is easy and creates no problems. The second one seems not as easy (though I still believe she was simply an Ainu ).

Now of course Tolkien was the creator of Eru as he wouldn't have existed if Tolkien had not dreamed him up and committed him to paper. But is that too simple? If you completely give yourself up to the story then Tolkien was not the creator, he was merely telling it. Yet can we do that? Can we as modern readers with critical minds ever truly think that this has a separate existence to Tolkien? I feel the Four Horsemen of Critical Theory coming over the horizon there so I'm not going to think on that one any more tonight...