Foreshadowing and Fear - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Perethil · 10-16-2003, 03:01 PM

maybe as an arachnophobiac Tolkien was uncomfortable even foreshadowing it .. hmm.
well it does seem odd, cos that was definately a skill of his. maybe what was intended was that feeling of shock to the reader - that he himself would have felt had he wandered into the cave-home of a gigantic man-eating spider.

it is sort of a miss tho, i think there was a lot of spook-potential there, and to me personally shelob didnt represent such a scary villain purely because of her sudden in-yer-face appearance. i know, for example that HP Lovecraft's best stories are the ones about his real life fears. would have been good if there was some more foreshadowing.

10-16-2003, 03:01 PM	#5
Perethil Pile O'Bones Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Istanbul, Turkey Posts: 21	maybe as an arachnophobiac Tolkien was uncomfortable even foreshadowing it .. hmm. well it does seem odd, cos that was definately a skill of his. maybe what was intended was that feeling of shock to the reader - that he himself would have felt had he wandered into the cave-home of a gigantic man-eating spider. it is sort of a miss tho, i think there was a lot of spook-potential there, and to me personally shelob didnt represent such a scary villain purely because of her sudden in-yer-face appearance. i know, for example that HP Lovecraft's best stories are the ones about his real life fears. would have been good if there was some more foreshadowing.