She Had Many Exits From Her Lair - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 8

Hello and welcome to Myth Makers. Myth Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today we have one of our sidecasts as we take an author's journey through The Lord of the Rings. And as an author I'm looking at what I think J.R.R. Tolkien is doing with this story from the point of view of craft. We've got quite a long way through because we have reached chapter nine in book four of The Two Towers. And the chapter title is Shelob's Lair. So we're in for a very dark time indeed. Now, this chapter is relatively short. And if you're looking at it structurally, it is structured by the journey. They approach and go into the tunnel. they have this nightmarish time. Inside the tunnel, there's a kind of false dawn and a final battle on the other side of the tunnel. So it's basically in those three blocks here. Before we get to the tunnel, though, how the chapter starts is we have this kind of nightmarish landscape that Tolkien is describing as they reach the top of the stairs. And what I want to sort of draw out here is notice how he is depriving us of so much. This whole chapter is about deprivation until the point at which light bursts in. It's that contrast which is key. Yeah. And so we have an opening paragraph describing a place that has no color, other than sort of gray and black, no sound. And even the view is shut out. So it's like we're entering into this gray box. What we do get is smell. And that smell, which becomes synonymous with a spider and with malice, is key in this chapter. So when they get to the tunnel entrance, um, we have a very ominous note here because Gollum is speaking softly. It's a very sinister touch. A whispering villain is in many ways far more sinister than one who shouts at you. If you think about how Voldemort, for example, is characterized. It's that high whispery voice that is used. The person who bellows, orders at you and shouts is far less scary. We have in this particular passage a rare editorial sort of interpolation. So we are told something that Frodo and Sam are not. So Gollum says where they are, but he did not speak its name. And then the editorial touch here is Torech Ungul Shilab's Lair. Actually, Torek Ungul means, in translation, tunnel of the spider. Now, obviously, because they speak a bit of Elvish, Ify had said that, it sort of connects back to that missed moment in the Faramir section, where they talk about the Ungul is mentioned and nobody picks up on it. Here, it's sort of better handled because they don't know the name of the tunnel. If Gollum had said, oh yeah, we're going down the tunnel of the spider, they'd say, what do you mean? I'm not going down there. So they withhold that knowledge. But the conceit is that This is put together afterwards by Frodo and with the help of the other Hobbits and his friends. So that editor in that framing device is, of course, the later Frodo, but we're not told he survives at this point. So that's just what's going on there, a sort of a nice bit of meta-framing. What I like here as well, just before we enter the tunnel, is the way that Gollum, who disappears shortly, is still doing a wonderful deflection of what he's really up to by playing the martyr. He tries to make everybody, or particularly Frodo, feel that he is the victim. So he has a final flourish of his full wonderful Gollum-ness. Now we get a line break before we actually embark. And in fact, it's done with drawing a deep breath they passed inside. It's, in they go. The weird thing about this section, a weird memory of it coming up in an English exam of all things, where we had to comment on this passage of English prose, And I came across this and it really threw me because I already knew the passage really well. And it's the first time I'd ever found that. So whenever I read that, my own association takes me back to that young person of, I suppose I was 16, writing their O-level exam. And even then, what I remember writing about is how this passage of description is noteworthy for all the things it takes away from you. So how does he do that? Well, the first of all is Tolkien has been ringing the sort of similarity between places all the way through. Here, what he reaches for is Moria. The last time they were somewhere so dark was in Moria. But of course, they had the fellowship with them at that time. And Tolkien goes on to say, there, there were airs moving and echoes and a sense of space. Here, the air was still stagnant, heavy, and sound fell dead. So if you look at the structure there, you've got this mirroring structure. Over there, it was like this, but here it's like that. And this chapter is full of these mirrors between light and darkness, but this one is between two kinds of darkness. And I really like the touch here that he makes you think of what the space around you is. And there's a kind of revving up Tolkien's prose here. It's really worth going back and reading all the way through. Because he sort of starts going into this language about how it was veritable darkness. And it ends with this, this little parable ends with this phrase, Night always had been and always would be and night was all. There's a vegetarian cadence to that. There is a religious cadence to it too. It feels like a kind of litany. So sort of very heightened language here. What is this doing as an author? Well, I think it's underlining again and again, and yet again, and I'll do it a bit more for you as well, that this is an extraordinarily dark, tough place. I'm going to tell you it every way I possibly can. And that's why I think we can really remember it for that. If I had asked you, what do you remember about She Loves Lair? One of the, you might have said, the smell, and it was dark. And we really are plunged into it by the way the language kind of wraps around us in the same way as the experience is wrapping around the characters. So whilst we've got the sort of description of just the bleak, you know, the darkness and the smell, we also have got the way the characters respond to it in the way that their own senses are being stripped away. It's like a cumulative effect and it sort of builds and it builds. I'm looking at page 327 for those of you who are reading along with me. And it builds until this point where they almost break with it. But how long was it? How much more of this would they have to endure or could they endure? So he doesn't say that at the beginning, he's leading us through and he's putting that question in at the point where we are kind of feeling it's got too much as well. Don't forget if you're writing to add in your foreshadowing and where we get it here is this extremely creepy hint of the long tentacles or hanging growths, perhaps. When I was reading this, because I've been doing a lot of screenwriting recently, it reminded me of how you would structure a horror sequence. Or a passage from Dante, one of the circles of hell. Because there is this feeling of it gets bad and it gets even worse and it gets worse again. There's this sort of build and then we're coming to it, but then there's also false relief before the really big scare. It's like a breadcrumb trail that we are led on. So here we go. And still the scent grew. It grew until almost it seemed to them that smell was the only clear sense left to them. And that was for their torment. That's Dante momentary. The things that happen to the circles of hell is that the one thing becomes your torment. The one thing you can experience is your torment. So it's a very bleak place we have reached. So how do the hobbits respond to this? Well, one of the things I really want to highlight here is this tender relationship between Frodo and Sam. They respond by moving together and holding hands. There's something innocent, something human about this. And also, as much as Peter Jackson does many things right, he puts Frodo here alone. That's not how it happens in the book. They are there together. And the reason why that is important is Frodo here is... it's that maturity of Frodo that's absent from the film. He's going to have an amazing moment of being a brave hobbit and putting them together when he feels responsible for Sam is part of that. So we get the underlining after that that the reek and the malice are one. And we reach this beat of the most intense physical expression of as they reach this opening from which the smell seems to emanate. And this is where you get the horror sequence because passing that they think, okay, not exactly, they're not exactly relaxing, but they think the worst is behind them. And this is what you do before you give the jump scare. You know, it's the sort of, you go into the room. is actually empty, but then you see the reflection of the creepy clown in the mirror. You know, it's that. You stack it up like that. You don't just open the door onto the creepy clown. That is more scary because we're anticipating something awful happening. We get them calling for Gollum or Smeagol. Frodo is kindly still trying to call him Smeagol. And then the sort of, in this deprivation chapter, we're now deprived of him. There was no answer, not an echo, not even a tremor of the air. And of course, Sam goes straight to the point. He's really gone this time, I fancy. I don't think Frodo disagrees with him. Frodo has always been saying, if his force is force. So. yeah they realize they have been left and this is what all of those fears have been adding up to but they still don't quite know the whole of it do they Because at this point, when they're abandoned, alone, and they are without any of their senses, except this very distressing one of smell left to them, that's when we get some of them creeping back in along with Shelob. It's worth looking at the architecture of how Shelob approaches. First of all, we get sound. So sound comes back into the picture. And it's not a reassuring sound, it's a gurgling, bubbling with a venomous hiss. And they are in pitch darkness and Sam touches, so we've got touch. He touches his blade, which he got from the barrow, which Tom Bombadil gave him on that previous experience of a dark and scary moment. And this by connected thoughts leads him to remember the light. It's worth just reading that because, um, it shows how Tolkien works. So first of all, Sam thinks, I wish old Tom was near us now. Then it's like he's almost invoked the memory of Tom. Then as he stood, darkness about him and a blackness of despair and anger in his heart, it seemed to him he saw a light, a light in his mind, almost unbearably bright at first as a sun ray to the eyes of one long hidden in a windowless pit. Then the light became colour. So we've got colour coming back in. Green, gold, silver, white. All the colours that aren't there. Far off, as in a little picture drawn by elven fingers, he saw the Lady Galadriel standing on the grass in Lorien, and gifts were in her hand. Again, it feels like a religious moment. The touch on the sword leads to the thought of Tom, which leads to the thought of light. It is like the answer to a prayer, in a way, which leads us to the Lady Galadriel and the memory of the starglass. So in a way we've been led down into darkness and we're being led back up to a memory of light. And Frodo, who is overwhelmed by this malice, when Sam prompts him, he says, and now indeed light alone can help us. The prose of the passage that follows as he pulls out the star glass comes as a huge relief. You've got to remember this mirroring effect in this chapter. So we had that sort of heaviness of the descent into the tunnel. Now we've got this lifting up into the light and it builds beautifully. Doesn't come all at once. Slowly his hand went to his bosom and slowly, so that's repetition of slowly there, he held aloft the file of Galadriel. For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists. You've got to earn this moment. It's all the better when it comes if it's earned. And then, as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo's mind, it began to burn and kindled to a silver flame, a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Eärendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow. And So it's a pinprick of light, but it associates itself with one of the greatest stories, Erendil and the Silmaril, who is the star in the sky. That's where one of the Silmarils ends up. So it's both small and vast. And this prompts Frodo to sort of cry out in Elvish, Eyar Erendil, Elion and Kalima. Sorry if you're a pure speaker out there, that's my approximation. And Tolkien himself links this to a line of Anglo-Saxon poetry that started off this whole Middle Earth project. a line which I really need Simon Horobin here to read because he does it beautifully. But, um, in his letters, he mentions it's derived at a long remove from Ela Earendil Engla Biotast, sorry about my old English pronunciation, which is from an old English poem, Christ. And it was that mention of Earendil there that led Tolkien to write a poem. about Middle-earth, which in turn led him to following his philological interest, then the rest is Middle-earth history. So, it is a moment charged with all sorts of weight. Remember the discussion in the last chapter about how they connect to tales? We understand that what we're witnessing is not a small story of two hobbits. It is a story that connects these larger tales and has gone back to one of the greatest myths and legends history of Middle-earth because, of course, Erendil is Elrond's father. So he's both a mythic and a historical figure. So there is lots going on. This is what I love about looking deep, deeply into Lord of the Rings. And what I hope you're also enjoying is how it feels like you, if you do scratch the surface, you don't reach, you know, some cheap surface, you reach further depths. There is yet more beneath the surface. And we have this sort of summation here, Frodo gazed in wonder at this marvelous gift that he had so long carried, not guessing its full worth and potency. So he has touched the file of Galadriel before and it helped him drive away the black rider, but this is the first time it's really shone out in this way. And here we've got that old adage of Chekhov's gun. If you give a gun in the first act, you must fire it by the third. And also that elvish phrase, is experienced by Frodo as another voice speaking through him. It's like a counter to the malice from Shelog. Frodo's openness and liberty is a sort of channel for the goodness. That's why the light shines brightly in his hand. And perhaps that's a sense of a kind of spiritual quality in him, where powers beyond him are using him or helping him, perhaps we should say. So unfortunately, what this beautiful light reveals is a horrendous spider-like creature. And the first thing that is noticed is the compound eyes. So the point is made, I think Tolkien pointed this out, that Shelob is spider-like, not a spider, because I don't think spiders have these kind of eyes. But anyway, scary enough, we know what he's getting at. And, but this, seeing this actually gives Frodo his bravest moment since the barrow. We've had the barrow just sort of, um, evoked in Sam touching the sword that he got there. And he does hear what he did back in the barrow. He chooses not to run. He actually turns and says, running is no use. And we get a heroic climbing of the language describing this little hobbit's moment. It falls on page 330 if you're following along in a book. And again, it's slow. He's not this sort of Superman type thing who's just able to whip into action. He has to fight against his instinct to run. Galadriel, he called, and gathering his courage, he lifted up the file once more. And so it goes on and then you get this wonderful image of him. Then holding the star aloft, that's the file, and the bright sword advanced, that's the sword sting, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes. It's his greatest moments in some ways. He has many great moments, but this is pure pluck. And it's no surprise that Sam's response to this is to connect again to the story making, which they were considering in the previous chapter. He says the elves should make a song about it. And he hopes to live to hear it, which of course is why the Fields of Komalin is such a, it's the crescendo of the book for Tolkien. Okay, so going back to this idea that Tolkien is structuring this like a horror film, but we get now the false escape. So there's several of them in quick succession, actually. So they run because Shelob has backed away from the light and they hit the webs over the exit. And Sam tries three times, rule of three, to get through and fails and says, oh, it's, you know, no use. And then this is where sting is brought out. Sting is the finer weapon. And the lineage of it is evoked here because Frodo says that in the dark ravines of Beleriand, there were spiders and this was made in Gondolin, which is, it's all part of that early history of Middle-earth. So, you know, they, the people who made it, the elves that made it would know of this kind of web. And here he is acting as mentor to Sam, the comforting commanding officer. He gives him orders, here, take the star glass, do not be afraid. Really important in telling Sam to not be afraid, hold it up and watch. I don't think he means just watch me do this brave thing. I mean, he means keep watch. And he, of course, his sword manages to get through the webs. But Frodo, for having been this brave person who faced the danger, forgets his own wisdom because he is struck by a fae mood. That's never a good thing. It's a sign of losing it in Tolkien. He thinks that it's just a short race, a sprinter's course, and he would be through. He feels he's almost at the end of his journey. And it's Sam who is now the one who is wary. And you get, just before another ominous line break, the narrator agreeing with Sam that she, she-lob, had many exits from her lair. Now, you would expect it to go straight on at this point. But one of the things that you notice in horror films or any sort of scary passage in that kind of screenplay situation is you sometimes do a cutaway to make the suspense even more excruciating. It's the filmmaker or the, in this case, the novelist torturing the reader a little bit and here we go back, we cycle back, we get the history of She-Lot. and how she relates to Ungoliant. Ungoliant, the spider, absorbed the light of the trees, the sort of wonderful light of the Undying Lands, destroyed that age of, one of the early ages of Middle Earth. This spider hates the light, so the lesser offspring, but she's pretty bad. It's a bit like... Melkor to Sauron, or Morgor of to Sauron. It's that kind of thing that mythic characters are even worse, but we've got a pretty bad one present in our time as well. And we don't just get the description of how she came here. We also get a description of what she's about and an evil thing in spite of form. And Tolkien actually knew that this character was intriguing lots of people and he has a sort of letter where he says it's fine if people think that his she-lob was down to the fact that he was bitten by a tarantula when he was little in South Africa. But he does go on to say that he doesn't actually have anything against spiders and he rescues them from the bath when he finds them there. So yes, I think all of us would be scared of a spider if we were bitten by a tarantula. So we can allow that to happen. But I don't think it was any particular phobia of Tolkien. At least he's saying it isn't. Anyway, so that's the spider, spider-like thing. But we also get Gollum's point of view and what he's been thinking, how he's been experiencing this journey with Frodo and Sam. So remember our framing device. This is a story put together later. So let's imagine in this. this sort of creation of how this story is written, Frodo and Sam are saying what Gollum thought, or it's just straightforwardly the narrator talking. But we see his point of view, how he's been plotting, and how he thinks he can use the spider. There's this triangle here. So we've got... Gollum thinks he can use Shelob. Shelob understands Gollum. Sauron thinks he can use Shelob. And Shelob thinks she can use Sauron. So there's this sort of little smug little triangle of evil using each other. And in the case of Shelob and Sauron, The narrator says, so they both lived, Shelob, Sauron, delighting in their own devices and feared no assault, no wrath, not any end of their wickedness. That goes back to the idea that evil cannot imagine what it's like to be the other. That's their fatal flaw. Sauron assumes that Shelob is his pet. She is independently evil. And Gollum is sort of picking up his own agenda as well, which is to get the ring, which is of no interest to Shelob. In a way, in that sense, Shelob is like the dark version of Tom Bombadil, who also had no use for the ring, who might have thrown it away because it didn't matter to him. Anyway, with all this going on, we go back to Sam. And here we've got that stance where it's like watching an accident happen before you and the powerlessness, the dreamlike dread that you can't stop it. He's seeing his master run off. He sees the spider come between them, but he can't get there. And he's trying to say, it is like a nightmare, isn't it? He's trying to say, watch out. And then Gollum leaps on him. This is necessary, isn't it? Because they've been rubbing up against each other, battling all the way through since he joined them many chapters ago. And they're finally coming to blows. And it's actually an extended fight scene here. A very well-described tussle. Do go back and read it. Action is really hard to describe. Yeah. And Tolkien does do it very well, the way he explains where everybody is, how the weight shifts between the two of them. And in fact, Sam resorts to a wrestling trick from the Shire, good old Shire, and falls back on Gollum. And there's this phrase of having a sturdy hobbit land on you, which puts Gollum out of the match. But how does the chapter end? Well, it's got a terrible end. Not terrible as in badly written. I mean terrible as in frightening. Because by the time Sam has overcome Gollum, he turns back. We just get this sentence. He was too late. And we now have reached the final chapter in this book, which is The Choices of Master Samwise. Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast. Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, In Person Stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide.