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Volume 4 Issue 3 Article 1

Fall 10-15-1970

Tolkien and Spiders

Bob Mesibov

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Recommended Citation Mesibov, Bob (1970) "Tolkien and Spiders," Tolkien Journal: Vol. 4 : Iss. 3 , Article 1. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/tolkien_journal/vol4/iss3/1

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tolkien Journal by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm

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Abstract Considers both spiders and spider-imagery applied to other characters in The and . Published prior to Carpenter’s biography, it makes no reference to Tolkien’s childhood encounter with a spider.

Additional Keywords Spiders in J.R.R. Tolkien; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Spiders

This article is available in Tolkien Journal: https://dc.swosu.edu/tolkien_journal/vol4/iss3/1 Mesibov: Tolkien and Spiders

Professor Tolkien dislikes spiders. When asked In her purity of purpose and consummate malice she is by Richard Lupoff whether She lob derives from the ’s peer: "apts" of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tolkien replied, So they both lived, delighting in their own I did read many of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ear- devices, and feared no assault, nor wrath, lier works, but I developed a dislike for his nor any end of their wickedness. Tarzan even greater than my distaste for spi- ders. Spiders I had met long before Burroughs The spiders of Mirkwood are somewhat less malevo- began to write, and I do not think he is in lent. Their motive in capturing the dwarves, as the any way responsible for ShelobJ following exchange demonstrates, is hunger:

Readers of The Hobbi t and The Lord of the Rings have "It was a sharp struggle, but worth it," already found evidence aplenty for Tolkien’s arano- said one. "What nasty thick skins they have phobia, and should hardly be surprised by this admis- to be sure, but I’ll wager there is good sion. Spiders are easily the least-loved animals of juice inside." "Aye, they’ll make fine eating, Middle Earth. Consider the elves of Mirkwood, who when they’ve hung a bit," said another.9

were reasonably well-behaved even to their Their willingness to eat sentient creatures is not to worst enemies, when they captured them. The their credit, of course. They are, like their mother, giant spiders were the only living things uncompromisingly bad. Something of their creator’s that they had no mercy upon. taste is revealed in this aspect of their characters. The feelings about spiders inspired by the char- The arch-arachnid She lob even makes an ore uncomfort- acterizations of and the Mirkwood colony are able. When Gorbag complains of life in Lugburz, reinforced by Tolkien’s effective use of spider imagery. Shagrat retorts, "You should try being up here [Cirlth There is, for example, the character-typing of indi- Ungol] with She lob for company."-^ And with what viduals as spiders, by which neither the referents nor curious lust Bilbo dispatches the spiders of Mirkwood! their representations rise in our esteem. suffers worst in this regard. "Look at him! Like a His little sword was something new in the way nasty crawling spider on a wall,"^ says Sam as Gollum of stings for them. How it darted to and fro! descends a cliff in the Emyn Muil. The climb ends It shone with delight as he stabbed at them.^ with Gollum falling, and "as he did so, he curled his legs and arms up around him, Iike a spider whose It would, of course, be foolish to claim that the descending thread is snapped."^ Shagrat describes unpopularity of Shelob and her children is merely a Gollum to Gorbag as a "...little thin black fellow; reflection of Tolkien’s prejudice against spiders. In like a^spider himself, or perhaps more Iike a starved ii 12 the story as told, they deserve all the antipathy they frog And at one point, before reaching Cirith inspire. Shelob, for instance, fairly radiates evil. Ungol with the , In Torech Ungol, Sam and Frodo find an a green glint flickered under Go I I urn’s heavy opening in the rock far wider than any they lids. Almost spider-1 ike he looked now, had yet passed; and out of it came a reek so crouched back on his bent limbs, with his foul, and a sense of lurking malice so in- protruding eyes.^ tense, that Frodo reeled.^ Gollum isn’t alone in having spiderish qualities Less sensitive visitors to her Lair get the same general attributed to him. "sat in a grey gloom, impression from her eyes: like an old patient spider"^ when Pippin approached him to learn the duties of his service. Speaking of Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bes- his imprisonment by , tells of being tial and yet filled with purpose and with "...caught like a fly in a spider’s treacherous web! hideous delight, gloating over their prey Yet even the most subtle spiders may leave a weak trapped beyond all hope of escape.^ thread."'^ Sauron abandons "his webs of fear and treachery"^ when Frodo claims the Ring at Orodruin. She is, to put it mildly, self-centered. Her guiding The Mouth of Sauron makes a pointed reference to Gan- ambition is dalf, , and the other captains when, at the Black Gate, he warns of doom "...to him who sets his death for all others, mind and body, and for foolish webs before the feet of Sauron the Great.” ^7 herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till Even is typed as a spider, when Wormtongue the mountains [can] no longer hold her up and charges that "...webs of deceit were ever woven in the darkness [can] not contain her.7 Dwimordene." Spiders are associated with unpleasantness in

Published by SWOSU Digital Commons, 1970 1 Tolkien Journal, Vol. 4, Iss. 3 [1970], Art. 1

...behind her short staIk-Iike neck was her other contexts as well. Frodo slices at a ghostly huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying wrist while trapped in the crypt of a barrow-wight, and sagging between her legs.-^ and as he leaves he thinks he sees "a severed hand wriggIing sti I I, like a wounded spider.” '9 In a poem There is an interesting factual error in.this in The Adventures of , the horrid Mewlips description, if Shelob indeed exhibits "spider-form." are reached by passing "through the spider-shadows..."20 Spiders have no necks. The head and leg-bearing por- And spiders add to the flavor of slow decay in "The Sea tion of a spider’s body are constructed in one piece, Bell," another poem in that collection: with no visible evidence of separation. To the rear of this section (the cephalothorax) is attached the For a year and a day there must I stay: often-buIbous structure containing stomach, silk glands, beetles were tapping in the rotten trees, reproductive organs, etc. (the abdomen). The bulk of spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving a spider’s body hangs behind, not between, its legs. puffballs loomed about my knees.2 ' Tolkien also speaks of Shelob's "two great clusters of many-windowed eyes"^6 with their "thousand facets."” Tolkien’s giant spiders and spider imagery are Spiders do not have multi-faceted eyes. Their eyes are successful; their effect on his readers is strong and simple, usually unclustered, and never more than eight unambiguous. Why? Why is Tolkien’s distaste for in number. Tolkien seems to be describing, not the spiders so readily communicated? Why are we so willing form of a spider, but the form of an insect, which to put spiders down? Let’s consider three possibilities. would exhibit both the complex eye structure and the The first is that no one likes a predator, and segmentation of the body he specifies. In support of spiders are notoriously predatory. Worse yet, they this idea, Bilbo is said to be "standing...in the middle prefer living food. Thus Bilbo is attacked by a spider of the hunting and spinning insects"-^6 while beginning which tries "to poison him to keep him quiet, as small another taunt in the battle with the Mirkwood spiders. spiders do to flies."22 Sam abandons Frodo and becomes Why does Tolkien apparently confuse spiders with Ringbearer because he doesn't realize, as Shagrat does, insects? One might argue, of course, that he doesn’t, that She lob "...doesn’t eat dead meat, nor suck cold that he introduces the error deliberately to avoid con- blood.”2^ Tolkien's spiders, and the spiders of our tributing too obviously to the already bad press about nightmares, hold commissions in that army of monsters spiders. This is a weak apology. One could as well bent on gobbling up the unwary. The danger in Torech claim that Sauron isn't depicted as being particularly UngoI and the webby darkness of Mirkwood is the danger reptilian because snakes inspire enough fear already, of being eaten. But no one expects to be eaten by a or that the language of is only slightly Slavic real spider. And perhaps the most neutral reference because Tolkien finds anti-Russian prejudice rampant to spiders in Tolkien’s work takes their predatory in the West. Tolkien himself suggests a better reason: nature for granted. I refer to the treetop lookout in Mirkwood, where Bilbo "found spiders all right. I was eager to study Nature [as a child], But they were only small ones of ordinary size, and actually more eager than I was to read most they were after the butterflies."24 fairy-stories; but I did not want to be A second reason for disliking spiders is their quibbled into Science and cheated out of sinister armament, the poison and the cunning snares Fa&rle by people who seemed to assume that with which they capture their prey. Even the giant by some kind of original sin I should prefer spiders of Middle Earth are skilled at spinning. In fairy-tales, but according to some kind of their eagerness to trap Bilbo, the spiders of Mirkwood new religion I ought to be induced to like close off his retreat with a web, "but luckily not a science...there is a part of which is not proper web, only great strands of double thick spider "Nature," and which therefore is not obliged rope run hastily backwards and forwards from trunk to to study it. and is, in fact, wholly unsatis- trunk."26 By implication, they're usually better fied by it.*9 weavers. Shelob's art is on view at Torech Ungol, where "across the width and height of the tunnel a Did Tolkien leave off his education in natural history vast web was spun, orderly as the web of some huge before the lesson on spiders? A third, and much simpler spider."26 It should be noted that Sam was unimpressed explanation for his erroneous description of the form by the d i sptay. of spiders is that he is that sort of aranophobe who cannot tolerate the sight of a spider. Being afraid Sam laughed grimly. "Cobwebs!" he said. "Is of their appearance, he has never looked at spiders that a I I?"27 closely. In agreement with this suggestion is the fact of his accuracy in describing spider behavior Black spinning talents are suggested in epithets and (poisoning to paralyze, folding limbs while falling). metaphors in Tolkien's works as well, as noted in the In all of this Tolkien is in sympathy with the arano- discussion of character-typing above, and in the fol- phobic majority of his readers, who can readily recite lowing couplet from "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun": the sinister aspects of a spider’s activities, but who are at a loss to draw one. (How many legs does a A witch there was, who webs could weave spider have?) To snare the heart and wits to reave.26 It's a curious truth that the spiders and spider metaphors that add so much to the richness of Tolkien’s Yet Tolkien frequently refers to webs as things of writings rely for their effect on a prejudice that is beauty. On Frodo's first visit to "the in no small measure dependent on authors like Tolkien woven nets of gossamer twinkled on every bush,"29 and for its perpetuation. I only hope a similarly self- on his return there there was "a frost in the night, sustaining cycle is operative for the goodly virtues and the cobwebs were like white nets.'^O Leaving Crick- Tolkien also champions. hollow, the hobbits "saw the Hedge looming suddenly ahead. It was tall and netted over with silver cob- NOTES web'Sv"-5 And from Bombadil’s window could be seen "a clipped hedge silver-netted."-^2 ^R. A. Lupoff, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adven- A third common complaint about spiders is that ture (Ace: New York, 1968), pp. 276-277. they are ugly, and on this point Tolkien's feelings 2J . R. R. Tolkien, (Ballantine: New York, are apparently unmixed. In She lob, Sam sees "the most 1966) (cited below as H), p. 166. loathly shape he had ever beheld, horrible beyond the horror of an evil dream."33 Her maleficence is com- (Ballantine: New York, 1965) (cited pounded because she is "an evil thing in spider-form."^4 below as LotR II), p. 441. What is that form? 4H, p. 160. 4

https://dc.swosu.edu/tolkien_journal/vol4/iss3/1 2 Mesibov: Tolkien and Spiders

5Lo1ft II, p. 416. 6LotR 11, p. 419. /LotR II, p. 423. 8Lo +R II, p. 424. 9H, p. 155. HJLoJS. 11, p. 278. 1’LotR II, pp. 279-280. 12Lo +R II, p. 442. ISl oW II, p. 411. 14j, R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. Part Three: (Ballan+ine: New York, 1965) (ci+ed below as LotR III), p. 95. 15J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rinas. Part One: The Fellowship of the Ring (Ballan+ine: New York, 1965) (ci+ed below as Lo+R I), p. 342. I^LotR. III, p. 275. 1?Lq +R Ml, p* 203. 18Lo+R I I, p. 150. 19Lo+R I, p. 197. 20J. R. R. Tolkien, The Adven+ures of Tom BombadiI. reprin+ed in The Tolkien Reader (Ballan+ine: New York, 1966) (ci+ed below as ATB), p. 46. 21ATB. p. 59. 22H, p. 154. 23Lo +R I I, p. 444. 24H, p. 147. 25h , p. 158. 26Lq +R I I, p. 420. 27Lo+R I I, p. 420. 28"The Lay of Ao+rou and l+roun," Welsh Review IV (December, 1945), p. 254. 29Lo+R I, p. 315. 3°Lo +R III, p. 327. 31Lo+R I, p. 155. 32Lo+R I, p. 179. 33Lo +R I I, p. 425. 34lq+R I I, p. 422. 35Lo+R I I, p. 425. ERRATA TO ORCRIST NO. 3 36lq+R II, p. 419. 3/Lo+R I I, p. 419. p. 2, col. 1, 1. 5: "January, 1970" should read "Spring- 38h , p. 158. Summer, 1969" 39j. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy S+oriest in The Tolkien p. 2, col. 1, 1. 15: dele+e "plus +wen+y-five cen+s Reader (Ballan+ine: New York, 1966), p. 78. pos+age" p. 8, col. 2, las+ line: "page 22" should read "page 23" p. 10, col. 2, 1s+ paragraph, I. 17: add a comma so +ha+ i+ reads "Swif+)," p. 10, col. 2, las+ paragraph, 1. 2: change +he period +o a comma: "romance," p. 10, col. 2, las+ line: "page 14" should read "page 15" p. 11, col. 2, 1. 3: "rejec+ion" should read "rejec+- ing" p. 15, col. 1, cen+er: "page 9" should read "page 10" p. 17, col. 1, 2nd paragraph, 1. 11: add "i+" so +ha+ +he reading is "Apparen+ly he would no+ have made i +" p. 18, col. 1, 1s+ paragraph, 1. 17: +he second pair of quo+a+ion marks for "calling" were omi++ed, and "Middle Ear+h" should be "Middle-ear+h" p. 23, col. 1, cen+er: "page 7" should read "page 8" p. 24, col. 1, 1s+ i+em, 1. 4: "Colision" should read "Col I is ion" p. 24, col. 2, 7+h i+em, las+ line: "Ballen+ine" should read "Ballan+ine" p. 24, col. 2, 8+h i+em, 1. 3: "au+hors" should read "au+hor"

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