What happenned of 🕷️Shelob

[pohuist]

From TTT, The Choices of Master Samwise:

Shelob was gone; and whether she lay long in her lair, nursing her
malice and her misery, and in slow years of darkness healed herself from
within, rebuilding her clustered eyes, until with hunger like death she spun
once more her dreadful snares in the glens of the Mountains of Shadow, this
tale does not tell.

Do other sources tell us anything?

 

[Khamul]

Well, I really havent read anything, but I doubt it really affects anything. No one will really ever return to Mordor to live there. It is too barren from all the years of evil that has dwelt there, and I am sure it would have no appeal, and thus Shelob would be left by herself and probably just had to look around for left-over orcs, and others who may wander the area.

 

[Gamil Zirak]

She would consume herself much like her ancester Ungoliant did.

 

[Lantarion]

Yes, I think so; if she didn't die of her wounds before that.

 

[YayGollum]

Poor Shelob. Not evil. Just hungry. I think she hung out in her nice tunnels for a while, got bored and hungry, and is now hiding out in Mirkwood with her little buddies.

 

[Bitternstorm]

I suspect she might buy a bicycle or small motor-bicycle

 

[pohuist]

Originally posted by Gamil Zirak
She would consume herself much like her ancester Ungoliant did.

Ancestor? Ungoliant was her mother!

 

[Gamil Zirak]

Originally posted by pohuist
Ancestor? Ungoliant was her mother!

Say's who?

 

[pohuist]

From the TTT, "Shelob's Lair"

But none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world.

 

[FarahSlax]

I think Shelob is still lumbering around Siberia somewheres, snacking on the occasional unwary hunter.

 

[Lantarion]

But then she stumbles upon Dersu Uzala, and gives it all up.

 

[Ceorl]

Pohuist, it is most likely that Tolkien was using child in a figurative term meaning one of her ancestors.

Think how a grandmother could say "come here my child" or think of Tolkien referring to the Children of Illuvatar. They weren't his children genetically but the term was used figuratively.

It is possible that Shelob was a direct child but just as possible that the term was used figuratively.

 

[Nahar]

its not really known if she dies from the wound sam gave her, or if she eventually recovered.

 

[pohuist]

Originally posted by Ceorl
Pohuist, it is most likely that Tolkien was using child in a figurative term meaning one of her ancestors.

Think how a grandmother could say "come here my child" or think of Tolkien referring to the Children of Illuvatar. They weren't his children genetically but the term was used figuratively.

It is possible that Shelob was a direct child but just as possible that the term was used figuratively.

I think the ol' professor had a good enough command of English to exactly express his thoughts. "my child" is usually said by priests, not grandmothers. Ungoliant doesn't qualify And yes, they were children of Illuvatar. He created them.

 

[Ancalagon]

Don't know if this will help shed light on the subject;

Shelob (English representing C.S 'she-lob' = female spider) is a translation of Elvish Ungol 'spider'. She is represented in vol. II p. 332 as descendant of the giant spiders of the glens of Nandungorthin, which come into the legends of the First Age, especially into the chief of them, the tale of Beren and Lúthien. This is constantly referred to, since as Sam points out (vol. II p. 321)4 this history is in a sense only a further continuation of it. Both Elrond (and his daughter Arwen Undómiel, who resembles Lúthien closely in looks and fate) are descendants of Beren and Lúthien; and so at very many more removes is Aragorn. The giant spiders were themselves only the offspring of Ungoliante the primeval devourer of light, that in spider-form assisted the Dark Power, but ultimately quarrelled with him. There is thus no alliance between Shelob and Sauron, the Dark Power's deputy; only a common hatred.
Galadriel is as old, or older than Shelob. She is the last remaining of the Great among the High Elves, and 'awoke' in Eldamar beyond the Sea, long before Ungoliante came to Middle-earth and produced her broods there. ....

Letter 144

 

[pohuist]

I have to agree that this letter seriously undermines my argument.

 

[Ancalagon]

Pohuist, please forgive me but that was not my intention

 

[pohuist]

Then, cite something that supports it.

 

[Ancalagon]

I really shouldnt put these 'spam-type' one word answers but; LOL

 

[pohuist]

There's a saying I like that loosely goes as "if something is forbidden but you want to do it very much, you should do it anyway"