Shelob
| House / Order | None (offspring of Ungoliant) |
|---|---|
| Race / Culture | |
| Status | Gravely wounded (fate uncertain) |
| Origin | Cirith Ungol, on the borders of Mordor |
| Born | Elder Days (descended from Ungoliant) |
| Died | — (grievously wounded, crept away into the dark) |
| Weapon | Venomous sting; great jaws; choking webs |
| Fate | Pierced and blinded by Sam with the Phial of Galadriel and Sting; crept away into the darkness to nurse her wounds |
| Portrayed by |
Shelob was a monstrous and ancient spider-creature who dwelt in the dark tunnels of Cirith Ungol on the western borders of Mordor. The last and greatest of the brood of spiders descended from Ungoliant, the primeval horror of the Elder Days, Shelob was a malice older than Sauron himself, serving no master but her own endless hunger.
Background
Shelob was descended from Ungoliant, the gigantic spider-being of darkness who in the dawn of the world had helped Morgoth destroy the Two Trees of Valinor and had devoured light itself. While Ungoliant passed out of the tales, her offspring lingered in the dark places of the world, and Shelob was the last of her great brood. For ages beyond count she had laired in the pass above Minas Morgul, in tunnels she had bored and webbed, growing vast and bloated on the flesh of Elves, Men, Orcs, and any living thing that strayed into her reach.
She was no servant of Sauron, though the Dark Lord knew of her and found her a useful guardian of that approach to his realm, leaving her to her hunting and even, it was said, feeding her with captives now and then. The Orcs of the nearby tower of Cirith Ungol named her "Her Ladyship" and lived in dread of her.
The passage of Frodo and Sam
Gollum, leading Frodo Baggins and Sam toward Mordor, betrayed them by guiding them up the secret stair and into Shelob's lair, hoping the spider would devour them and leave him the One Ring. In the choking dark of her tunnels, the hobbits were beset, but Frodo held up the Phial of Galadriel, which held the captured light of the star of Eärendil. Its radiance, hateful to the creature of darkness, drove Shelob back, and with the Elven-blade Sting, Frodo cut through her webs and won free for a time.
But Shelob, cunning, came at them from another way. She stung Frodo with her venom, and he fell as one dead, wrapped in her cords to be devoured at her leisure. Sam, believing his master slain, took up Sting and the Phial and stood against the monstrous spider alone. When Shelob bore down to crush him, Sam thrust Sting up into her, and as she pressed her own weight upon the bright blade she drove it deep into her belly, a wound such as she had never known. Blazing the Phial's light into her many eyes, Sam blinded and broke her, and the great spider, shuddering and grievously hurt, hauled herself away into the darkness of her lair to nurse her agony. She does not appear again in the tale, and whether she perished or survived to brood in the dark is left untold.
Character
Shelob is a thing of pure, ancient appetite, an evil that predates and stands apart from the wars of Sauron, embodying mindless devouring hunger and the darkness that hates all light. Her defeat at the hands of the humble Sam, armed with an Elven phial and a small sword, is one of the great moments of unlikely courage in the legendarium, the gardener-hobbit overcoming a primeval horror.
In the films
In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films, Shelob appears in The Return of the King as a fully realized giant spider, with her confrontation with Frodo and Sam dramatized closely after the books, though moved later in the sequence of events.
Appearances
- The Two Towers
- The Return of the King (mentioned)