9. Shelob's Lair
As they approach the cave of the Terrible Mother, the landscape becomes distinctly masculine, in a way reminiscent of the terrain around Moria. Cliffs and stone dominate, weathered rock formations rise like columns, and so forth. Yet, at the same time, there are also – as was so pronounced in Moria – ravines, fissures, and hollows. Themes recur constantly in our story. For instance, they ascended the Barrow-downs and entered a burial chamber; they climbed the Misty Mountains and ventured into the mines of Moria; they scaled the stairs of Cirith Ungol and entered Shelob’s lair; they will ascend Mount Doom and enter its core. Simultaneously, we have seen how horrors are replaced by elves or other representatives of the Good Mother: After the encounter with the Black Riders, they are led to safety by the elves in the forest; after the encounter with the Nine at the Ford, they are brought to Rivendell; after the encounter with the Balrog in Moria, they arrive in Lothlórien; after the hopeless, Hades-like environment around the Black Gate, they meet Faramir and are taken to his safe refuge in the beautiful Ithilien.
But it is not a matter of “the same thing” being repeated; rather, there is a development. The impersonal Mother in the Shire is replaced by the personified but somewhat infantile Goldberry, who gradually evolves into the wise Galadriel; the giggling elves of the Shire are replaced by the solemn and wise Elrond; the timeless and ethereal elves of Lothlórien are replaced by Faramir and his serious, grounded men, and so on. In a corresponding manner, the Black Riders become the terrifying Nazgûl on winged beasts; the barrow that Tom Bombadil leads them to develops into Moria, which Gandalf guides them to, which in turn becomes Shelob’s lair and its fatherless vulnerability.
We have also seen how one place foreshadows another, such as how the bowl-shaped ridge with the obelisk on the Barrow-downs anticipates Isengard, the Mirror-lake outside Moria’s eastern gate foreshadows Galadriel’s mirror, the spider-like Gollum descending is a premonition of Shelob, and so forth.
In other words, the story forms a spiral. Frodo returns to specific themes time and again, but each time on a new level. This is characteristic of the inner journey, as illustrated, for example, in dreams. Jung writes:
“The way to the goal seems chaotic and interminable at first, and only gradually do the signs increase that it is leading anywhere. The way is not straight but appears to go round in circles. More accurate knowledge has proved it to go in spirals: the dream-motifs always return after certain intervals to definite forms, whose characteristics it is to define a centre. ... As manifestations of unconscious processes the dreams rotate or circumambulate round the centre, drawing closer to it as the amplifications increase in distinctness and in scope.”[1]
Regarding the final sentence, that as the spiral approaches its goal, the images become stronger and sharper: In our story, we can note how the Good Mother is entirely abstract in the Shire, yet omnipresent; she is the earth, the field, the food, the safety, and the party tree. After several turns in the spiral, she is finally concretized as Galadriel, high up in a golden tree, a figure with whom Frodo establishes a conscious relationship. On the other hand, the Terrible Mother is concretized in the devouring and twisting Old Man Willow, reappears as the writhing and grasping “serpents” in the lake outside Moria, which also seek to drag Frodo down into the water, only to become fully explicit in the spider-monster that paralyzes and binds, with the intent to devour.
The spiral that the story traces, with recurring images that evolve with each turn as the protagonist approaches the goal, once again demonstrates the author’s intuitive writing. The recurring yet transforming reflects the unconscious’s indirect progression, in contrast to the linear development of the conscious mind that most novels adhere to, where the author's ego “invents” what happens.
This discussion brings us back to Gollum. It is evident to us that he symbolizes Frodo’s shadow. But just as the Black Riders have a certain symbolic significance at the Brandywine River, another at the Ford, and yet another on winged beasts above the river Anduin, this fact is not the whole story. We must now allow ourselves to consider the symbol from another perspective. We will see that this does not do violence to the symbol as Frodo’s shadow but merely develops it. This is typical of symbols in the saga, though rarely as explicit as in the case of Gollum.
At this stage of the story, it becomes clear, if it wasn’t before, that Gollum belongs to Shelob. He has met her before, they have made agreements even historically, and they can apparently, though not entirely predictably, communicate with each other. Their respective eyes are described in a similar manner, and indeed, the eyes of both are recurring and prominent in the story. The hobbits often see only Gollum’s eyes in the darkness, and in Shelob’s lair, they see only her eyes while everything else is black.
We have repeatedly touched on the fact that Gollum is “spider-like.” The very first description of Gollum in the story, at least on this side of the river, is Sam’s: “Like a nasty crawling spider on a wall.” We have also seen how the author consistently likens Gollum to a spider. In this chapter, Gollum first enters the spider’s lair; then the spider-monster emerges; thereupon Gollum hurries back into the lair, and Shelob follows. It is entirely clear that, from a symbolic perspective, Gollum himself is a spider-monster; he is something of a hypostasis of Shelob, that is, an actual part of the Terrible Mother.
We have repeatedly discussed how the saga’s dynamics largely revolve around the Great Mother, who, on an unconscious level, dominates this universe while the concretely feminine is repressed, resulting in the Mother being abstract yet omnipresent, while actual women are absent. The repressed feminine takes on a dark quality, not only due to its unconsciousness but also because the desire for, and even indulgence in, the gifts of the Good Mother is compensated by its opposite, the Terrible Mother. This archetype is associated with images of devouring, paralyzing, binding, and so forth, but also with being trapped in a negative fate. All of this is encapsulated in the spider motif, which is why the Terrible Mother, in her most concretized form, appears as Shelob in this saga’s universe. She is also the saga’s only explicitly feminine monster. While Old Man Willow was given a masculine guise, as we discussed in “The Old Forest,” to conceal the terrible truth that the still mother-bound (in a symbolic-psychological sense) Frodo was not yet ready for, the veil is finally swept aside, and the truly terrible is revealed.
The spider-monster represents the collective shadow in our saga. We previously touched on how ancient monsters in the story represent archetypes, those that have existed since time immemorial and are not tied to an individual’s unique life; Old Man Willow, the creature in Moria’s lake, Shelob, and so forth, are not individual psychological challenges, like the personal shadow, beyond the fact that it is a particular individual’s fate to encounter them and thus be required to take a stand.
The personal shadow, of course, arises from our personal life, our experiences, and our identity. But the shadow as a complex has an archetypal core, “it is in part descended from a numinous collective figure,” as Jung says.[2] As we have tried to illustrate, the collective shadow in our saga is heavily colored by the archetype of the Terrible Mother. We could deduce this already when we read the “Prologue” to The Lord of the Rings, about Frodo’s conscious world, and it has since been demonstrated in countless ways throughout the saga and, hopefully, illuminated in our commentary.
Thus, while Gollum/Sméagol initially represents Frodo’s shadow, the figure takes on an increasingly collective character the deeper Frodo ventures into the darkness of the unconscious. His personal shadow is no longer as relevant, aside from the experience itself, since he has already accepted Sméagol and learned to live with him. But in the saga, the personal shadow literally leads him to its archetypal core. It is more than Frodo can handle.
“‘This is the way in,’ said Gollum softly. ‘This is the entrance to the tunnel.’”
The hobbits protest – the stench is already so utterly repulsive at the entrance. It is not the same odor of decay as at Minas Morgul, but this is described as a “foul reek, as if filth unnameable were piled and hoarded in the dark within.” The description of this stench brings to mind excrement, perhaps the most repulsive thing we wish to hide from ourselves and others, both as individuals and as a culture. At the same time, it is a natural part of us as humans, or animals, and thus becomes an excellent symbol for our collective shadow. One could say that Frodo descends into the sewer of culture, where all our collective filth has been hidden away. In our dreams, filthy environments with excrement on walls and floors often appear as symbols of the personal filth we have repressed and naturally do not wish to confront.[3]
They enter the lair, as there is no other way. Almost immediately, they find themselves in an impenetrable darkness, possibly even denser and deeper than that in Moria; and just as in Moria, the path leads upward. But unlike the subterranean dwarf-realm, the journey here is constantly upward; in this context, a symbol of their need to escape this dreadful underworld, up to the other side and toward the tower beyond.
The stench is so overwhelming that it causes the memory of colors and shapes to vanish from the mind; that is, the very air in Shelob’s lair blurs boundaries, having a dissolving effect; the conscious mind’s ability to differentiate ceases. All senses grow numb here, and the hobbits immediately lose their sense of time.
They cannot see their guide, but at first, they hear his feet and hissing ahead of them. Frodo and Sam hold each other’s hands to avoid getting separated. As they walk, they brush against long tentacles or hanging plants; they do not know what they are, but the writhing presence of the Terrible Mother manifests here as well. They feel rising fear and increasing nausea.
Frodo and Sam reach a fork in the tunnel and realize at the same time that they do not know where Gollum is or which path he took. He is gone. As they stand there, they begin to feel watched, and then they hear a gurgling and bubbling sound accompanied by a prolonged, venomous hissing. (What is happening here is that Gollum is replaced by Shelob; later he will replace her; he is she, and vice versa. This underscores that they are aspects of the same symbol, in line with what was said above.) The gurgling and bubbling may remind us of other environments dominated by the Terrible Mother, such as the “boiling” and “stinking” lake outside Moria or the “bubbling cauldron” that Isengard became. On top of this, we have the venom-laced hissing, which we recognize from the Ringwraiths’ appearance at Weathertop. The author’s descriptions are strikingly consistent with our understanding of the saga’s symbolic content.
Terrified, Frodo and Sam stand staring into the darkness. Suddenly, Sam has a vision – he sees Galadriel giving her phial of starlight to Frodo; “a light when all other lights go out.” At the same time, Frodo is drowsy (sleep is always close to the Mother, as we have seen), but Sam rouses him and urges him to take out the starlight. Frodo wonders how he could have forgotten Galadriel’s phial. It is likely that the darkness of the unconscious is so dense and the archetypal presence so strong in this lair that his conscious light is nearly extinguished. But once again, Sam saves him, for without this light, they would undoubtedly have fallen victim to the Spider. “Now it’s really only light that can help us,” says Frodo.
He holds up the phial, which at first shines only like a star, but its strength increases, and the darkness recedes as the hand holding the phial glows as if with white fire – hand, light, and fire, as we have seen, are symbols of consciousness. Only by summoning consciousness can he be saved. He invokes Eärendil with a chant he did not know he knew, but once again, it is as if another voice speaks through him. This voice comes to him in, so to speak, life-defining moments, as when he declares at Elrond’s council that he will take the Ring to Mordor, or when he removes the Ring at Amon Hen as Sauron is about to fixate on him.
But the monster approaches regardless, so ancient that not even Eärendil’s starlight – or, for that matter, Frodo’s consciousness – frightens it. Then they see the monster, but only as glowing eyes. We noted earlier how the luminous eyes of Shelob and Gollum suggest their close symbolic kinship.
After a brief flight, they realize they cannot escape. Frodo stops and raises the phial again, now invoking Galadriel and drawing Sting; with unimaginable courage, the hobbit advances toward the monster, wielding the sword forged by elves thousands of years ago in his right hand and the phial of starlight that Galadriel made for him in his left. A flicker of doubt appears in Shelob’s eyes, which darken, and the monster retreats!
The hobbits turn and run, still upward, and reach the exit. But it is blocked by thick spiderwebs. Sam cannot cut the strands with his sword from the Barrow-downs, but Frodo can do so with Sting. This invaluable sword, as we know, was given to him by Bilbo, who used it to slay giant spiders in Mirkwood; one could thus say that Frodo wields his Father’s blade. This ability proves absolutely crucial. Had Frodo lacked either Sam (his connection to his own instincts), Galadriel’s phial (the light of consciousness), or Sting (the Father’s differentiating power), he would not have made it through the Terrible Mother’s lair; it would have been too great a trial.
The hobbits seem to escape as they flee along the cleft of Cirith Ungol. Here, the author makes a digression to tell us more about Shelob and Gollum. These are quite remarkable descriptions. We learn that Sméagol (sic), “who rooted in all dark holes,” had bowed to Shelob and worshipped her. It is difficult to comprehend that the Gollum we have come to know would “worship” this ghastly monster. With a rational perspective that reads and understands the text literally, it is indeed incomprehensible that the creature Frodo tamed and who was so glad to follow the kind hobbit would simultaneously worship a spider-monster. This must be understood symbolically, in line with our earlier discussion, that Gollum/Sméagol reflects Frodo’s personal shadow in Emyn Muil, at the Black Gate, and in Ithilien, while he represents the collective shadow in Cirith Ungol. As a representative or hypostasis of the Terrible Mother in her spider form, it is reasonable that he is subservient to her.
The author tells us that Shelob’s dark evil shields Gollum from light and remorse. We will not dwell on this again, but we believe there was some light and human emotion while Gollum/Sméagol accompanied Frodo, though we understand that these traces are gone in his role as Shelob’s hypostasis in Cirith Ungol. What we wish to highlight here is the question of guilt. We touched on this in our commentary on “The Breaking of the Fellowship,” where we briefly noted (and elaborated slightly in a footnote) that guilt is a prerequisite for consciousness. One who feels no guilt is unconscious; admitting a sin is the first step toward consciousness, and – as pointed out – something that characterized certain initiation rites. Guilt belongs to the shadow, as the awareness of guilt is a conflict between the person one wishes to be and the person one proves to be. Jung writes:
”The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one who holds aloof from the world and refuses to pay his tribute to life, for in him the dark God would find no room.”[4]
We have also discussed how Jung considers confrontation with the shadow a “therapeutic necessity.” Frodo, who represents consciousness and the individuation process, has, as we know, endured this conflict. (“I hate the whole business.”) Gollum, as Shelob’s hypostasis, can no more feel guilt than she can, or remorse, to use the author’s term, simply because he is unconscious and lacks the potential for development. We note that the author states that Gollum, as Shelob’s servant, is cut off from “light and remorse.” In this context, light and remorse are synonymous, as both denote consciousness.
In the same passage, we learn that both Gollum and Shelob are driven by desire (or “lust”). While Gollum’s desire obviously pertains to the Ring and the omnipotence it seems to offer, Shelob desires the death of others; she wishes to devour others to the point that she swells until she becomes too large for her own lair. We see once again not only how desire is a recurring theme in the saga but also how it is a central characteristic of the Terrible Mother. Shelob can never get enough; she is always hungry. She mates with “wretched males” only to kill them afterward, just as she eats her own offspring. The Terrible Mother as an archetypal image is fully unveiled in Cirith Ungol.
Speaking of desire, it is thus Gollum’s plan to give the hobbits to the monster and then take the Ring from their remains. “And when we’ve got it safe, then She’ll know it, O yes, then we’ll pay Her back, my precious. Then we’ll pay everyone back!” This notion not only illustrates how the Ring absorbs desire and fantasies of power but also reveals Gollum’s ambivalent relationship with the Terrible Mother. We have just learned that Gollum and Shelob have a functioning collaboration, but now we are told that Gollum wants to pay her back as if she had wronged him. What is this about? One might speculate that he knows “She” made him the monster he is. While he “worships” her, he also hates her, just as the Ring is his “precious” while it has destroyed him. When Gandalf described Gollum to Frodo in Bag End, he said that Gollum hates everything – he, like Shelob, is a creature filled with hatred. Likely, he hates himself, the murderer, which could hint at the hell he lives in and explain the desire, the betrayal, and the ultimate fate.
We learn that Shelob is older than Sauron – she was here before him. Sauron, symbolically speaking, emerged when Bilbo found the Ring and will disappear when the Ring is gone again; but Shelob – the archetype of the Terrible Mother – has always been here and will continue to be here, regardless of this story’s beginning and end. But then the author reveals, as far as we can see, another unexpected association: Sauron calls Shelob “his cat.” Why in the world would the Dark Lord call this ancient spider-monster, which even he can barely control, a cat?
We can approach this with both a rational and a symbolic understanding. The rational view would be that Sauron regards Shelob as a kind of pet, since it serves his purposes to have her there, yet she is independent and does not obey any commands, should he give them. So, indeed, like a cat. At the same time, a cat is, in this context, a harmless, feminine animal. One could thus see Sauron’s epithet as ironic or even sarcastic, merely a whimsical notion by the author. But we cannot help but fixate on this whim, if that’s what it is, because Sauron’s own eye at Amon Hen was described as a cat’s eye; and now we learn that the Dark Lord calls Shelob “his cat.” Evidently, there is a subtle cat motif associated with Sauron. We are not entirely certain how to interpret this, but we propose that the author’s intuition subtly portrays Sauron, the warlord embodying yang, as containing an element of yin – a feminine, neutral indifference within his darkness, captured through the symbolic association with the cat; that within the darkness, there is a neutral, feminine indifference to human endeavors.
We return to the plot. Frodo has cut through Shelob’s web and emerges on the other side. Then he runs as if in panic toward the tower. This panic is familiar from the Old Forest and the encounter with its version of the Terrible Mother. He runs blindly. Sam follows, but he is wiser. He pauses to think, tucking away the star-phial that Frodo handed him when he was to cut through the spiderweb. But Sam’s thoughtfulness also means that Frodo grows ever more distant.
Shelob emerges from a hole to the left. Once again, her eyes are primarily described. The monster sets off after Frodo. Sam tries to warn his master, but then he is attacked from behind by Gollum; Gollum places one hand over the hobbit’s mouth, the other around his neck, while, characteristically, he slithers his legs around Sam’s – both strangling and writhing, once again. But Sam becomes beside himself with rage, breaks free, and a scuffle ensues. Sam gains the upper hand and strikes Gollum with his staff. Gollum “slithers” away quickly like a “snake” and disappears into the cave.
Sam runs after Gollum, eager to kill him. Unlike Frodo, he has never accepted the little monster and has always had a feeling that Gollum would betray them (instinct). And now, with that matter settled, Sam wants to punish him once and for all. But the stench from the cave makes him pause, and thanks to this distraction, which causes his rage to subside, he remembers Frodo. He turns and runs toward him. But it is too late.
Footnotes
[1] Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, par. 34.
[2] Jung, “On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure”, CW 9i, par. 469.
[3] Hillman, Animal Presence, p. 111.
[4] Jung, "Answer to Job," CW 11, par. 745.