Why is Shelob considered evil?

Question

Shelob is an "evil thing in spider form," according to Tolkien. Now, we know that she is the "last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world," we know that she is fairly deficient in charm, and that she is quite capable of catching and eating a person.

What I would like to know is whether there is anything else to her that would make her actually evil. As far as I understand, she keeps mainly to herself, doesn't work for Sauron, hunts prey that is appropriate for her size, and does not engage in wanton destruction of sacred trees the way her mother did. She seems about as dangerous as a huge spider should be, but more big and carnivorous than evil. Is there something more to her that Tolkien may have mentioned?

Answer 1

"Is there something more to [Shelob] that Tolkien may have mentioned?"

There's a lot more and it tends to meander into some rather esoteric territory, so bear with me...

The ahem inklings of an answer begins, quite literally, in what inspired Tolkien to write LotR: the enigma of éarendel from Cynewulf's Crist.

éalá éarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended

(hail earendel brightest of angels
above middle-earth sent unto men)

Reno E. Lauro states that "[a]rguably, Tolkien's life work can be summed up in one question, "who, or what, was éarendel?"

To understand the concept of 'evil' in Tolkien requires seeing beyond definitions of evil and to understand evil's place and function in his larger cosmological legendarium.

In this way two concepts are critical: Tolkien as a philologist as influenced by Owen Barfield's 'archaic semantic unity' (in his Poetic Diction) and Tolkien's interpretation of the medieval concept of the 'theory of light'.

Basically (and this is an oversimplification), the former stresses the importance and complexity inherent in the roots of "modern" words. The latter, in the place light has in the medieval world's concept and practice--in art and craft--of the 'good' (note: this involves both sacred and secular understandings).

Tolkien presents readers a world fractured as light is re-fractured. Here denizens present across a spectrum--each fractured as it were--from light to dark, but all as a whole awaiting unity.

The role or purpose of the characters is try to return the world to a semblance of unity which, of course, some see as light and some of darkness, yet some force striving for whole and, therefore, all characters playing a part.

Tolkien's story is, then, aimed toward a recovering of "an originary, undivided and mythic sensibility of light" (Reno, p. 54; see also Verlyn Flieger).

Tolkien believed that we (the characters) "can imaginatively craft the world into forms of beauty and harmony or bend, twist and consume it in the service of immediacy and power" (Reno, p. 64).

It is necessary to understand this to be able to adequately answer your question: "Is there something more to [Shelob] that Tolkien may have mentioned?"

In the end, although Tolkien stated that Shelob is 'evil', it is more important--and interesting--to understand her function as one of the fractured creatures on one side of the entire spectrum of light within Tolkien's world.

For Tolkien, creatures like Shelob demonstrate the part that evil necessarily inhabits within the whole of the spectrum: without having hope of redemption the world cannot return to being whole.

With this in mind, think of Shelob in light of Gollum's more major--but not dissimilar--part in LotR:

Gandalf: "...Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many."

References for further reading:

1. The Mirror Crack'd: Fear and Horror in JRR Tolkien's Major Works, Lynn Forest-Hill (Eds.)--especially 'Reno Lauro's 'Of Spiders and (the Medieval Aesthetics of) Light: Hope and Action in the Horrors of Shelob's Lair' and Rainier Nagel's 'Shelob and her Kin: The Evolution of Tolkien's Spiders'
2. Tom Shippey's 'Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien's Images of Evil' IN Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien, Tom Shippey.
3. Patrick Grant's 'Tolkien: Archetype and Word' emphasized text IN Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism Rose Zimbardo and Neil Isaacs (Eds.)

Answer 2

Per Two Towers, Shelob isn't just an unthinking spider, feasting on prey, she's an intelligent creature that is actively seeking out other sentient intelligent beings to murder and eat.

But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness. Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Dúath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood.

Additionally, she's not above entering into a criminal conspiracy with Gollum to bring her more tasty food, having grown tired of eating orcs.

Already, years before, Gollum had beheld her, Sméagol who pried into all dark holes, and in past days he had bowed and worshipped her, and the darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of his weariness beside him, cutting him off from light and from regret. And he had promised to bring her food. But her lust was not his lust. Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life. Alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her.

Answer 3

Tolkien's works reflect his personal Catholic theology.

• In Catholicism Satan is seen as the source of all evil, and he introduced evil into God's perfect world by tempting Eve to eat the fateful apple. Catholics see all the evil in the world as being descended (i.e. traceable to) that one original sin.

• In Middle Earth Melkor is the counterpart of Satan. He introduced discord into the Music of Ilúvatar. He did not know it at the time, but the Music was the creation of Middle Earth, and the discord created evil. When the Ainur went to live into Middle Earth Melkor took his hubris with him, and thereby made real in Middle Earth the discord/evil he had wrought in the Music.

Just as Catholics see evil as being traceable to original sin they see Satan as being incapable of creating anything but evil. So it is with Melkor: because he tries to make himself greater than Ilúvatar he cannot make anything good (in either sense of the word) because it is all corrupted by his built-in evil.

The origins of Ungoliant are unclear, but she seems to have come from the Darkness, which in turn was created by Melkor when he introduced discord in the Music. Hence she was irredeemably evil, a product of discord and darkness who hated harmony and light. This nature was inherited by her offspring, including Shelob. Hence she can never be anything other than evil. Here Tolkien departs from Catholic theology, which holds that Satan and his demons were originally created good by God but then fell, while Ungoliant seems to have been some kind of primal creation by a mindless "Darkness". This also turns up in Gandalf's passing reference to the terrible creatures he encountered in the depths of the earth while fighting the Balrog.

This account of evil as a kind of infectious natural force seems rather strange to modern liberal ears. The modern view is, roughly, that there is no such thing as "evil": bad things happen due to individual or collective human failings, but these are merely mistakes which can be corrected. To put it crudely, when a war happens or a bridge falls down the modern liberal view is that we should seek the political or engineering mistake that led to the disaster and learn from it. On the other hand the Catholic view is that the mistake was made in the Garden of Eden, and hence we should seek to be more perfect in our practice of faith in order to reduce the influence of the evil which leads to such disasters.

Answer 4

The first question is What kind of being is Shelob? Since she is "in spider-form", she is clearly not an actual spider. She may be some other animal which is similar to a spider, but Tolkien has ways (as we see in his treatment of the flying mounts of the Nazgûl) of suggesting that animals are similar, but not quite the same. Further, his phrasing "in spider-form", rather than "most like a spider" or some such, suggests that she is not an animal at all. Tolkien's work allows for purely physical beings (such as animals and plants), beings that are a union of spiritual and physical (elves, men—including hobbits, dwarves, probably Ents), purely spiritual (the Ainur), and others of unclear status. Do we need to know which of these Shelob was?

No. It is enough to know that she, like every other living being, has a soul. Tolkien was a Catholic, and his works are shot through with Catholicism. In Catholic theology, all living beings have souls. There are three types of souls: vegetative (plants, of course), animal, and rational (humans, angels, and devils). Only rational souls are capable of thought, reason, or free choice (that is, will); and therefore only they are capable of sin, and of being evil.

But Shelob clearly has will, and the ability to know and to reason based on knowledge:

The darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of [Gollum's] weariness. ... But her lust was not his lust. Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life.

The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, Chapter 9,"Shelob's Lair"; emphasis added

I've marked out the phrasing that indicates Shelob has will (the ability to choose rationally and independently) and rationality.

Shelob is, therefore, a rational being, who is capable of choice as well as desire, and who desires (and tries to achieve as far as she can) the death of all other living beings, taking their life to be her own. But the desire of a rational being for the death of an innocent other is sinful ("you shall not murder"); and the desire to have a good thing belonging to another because you don't want them to have it is another sin ("you shall not covet your neighbor's goods"). Because Shelob is capable of choice, and because the desires she chooses to guide her actions by are sinful, not only her actions but she herself is rightly called evil.

Answer 5

Evil isn't an alignment to J.R.R. Tolkien, it is a characteristic

The use of evil in this question, and in some of the comments, includes an anachronism. You appear to be trying to use actions to determine alignment as one would in Dungeons and Dragons, rather than to view this through the lens of the author and his context. (That the D&D alignment system is a mess for describing moral systems is beyond the scope of this question and answer).

Tolkien's work covered a lot of ground, but it had not yet been influenced by the moral relativism that we see in so much modern literature, nor was his approach to his characters as nuanced as that of so many mid-to-late 20th century writers. The anti-hero and the 'bad guy as good guy' had not reached the popularity they later did as a story form. (The song Sympathy for the Devil had not yet been made popular by the time this story was written, though doubtless Professor T would have found that song in poor taste).

Monsters and wild beasts in European mythic and legendary traditions had a long history of being portrayed as evil: the wolf at the door (archetype/trope) was seen from the perspective of the farmer trying to keep his family and his sheep alive, not from the perspective of the wolf as a victim of humanity's inexorable spread.

Shelob is evil because Tolkien described her as evil, since Tolkien needed an evil presence in that location to fit his narrative, and largely due to him appending human attributes to an arachnid. By providing a spider with a personality (an actual spider has not got that higher brain function) the reader is presented with the following habits of this person in the narrative:

• She poisons wanderers in her area, and then hangs them up in her webs and later eats them. Were a human character to do this, you'd describe them as evil. Shelob, as written, is hard to characterize otherwise.

  Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life. (LoTR, Two Towers, "Shelob's Lair")

  Any human, elf, dwarf, goblin, or hobbit so described would come across as evil. So too this character.

  And as for Sauron: he knew where she lurked. It pleased him that she should dwell there hungry but unabated in malice, a more sure watch upon that ancient path into his land than any other that his skill could have devised... Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better uses for: he would have them driven to her hole, and report brought back to him of the play she made. (LoTR, Two Towers, "Shelob's Lair")

  Her torture of prisoners sent to her would be further confirmation of her evil character.

Answer 6

Shelob is not evil because she's a spider - she's a spider because she's evil

“There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form..."

-The Two Towers

Tolkien envisioned a primordial spirit who existed to kill, devour, and destroy all things light and happy. He then imagined what sort of physical form that sort of spirit would take.

As you noted, killing and eating anything smaller that it (and sometimes things that are larger than it) is natural behavior for a spider. Therefore, a spider form is a natural choice for a being that exists to do these things.

Answer 7

Evil is fighting against the will of Creator

First thing we need to understand is that Tolkien, as devout Catholic, made God of his universe, Eru Ilúvatar, very similar to the Christian God. Eru has his own Satan, in the image of Melkor/Morgoth. Similar to Satan, Melkor rebelled against Ilúvatar. Particular instance where it happened was Great Music of Ainur, event which shaped Tolkien's world (Eä). As the story goes, Melkor tried to insert and force his own themes into the music created by Eru and was followed by other Ainur. He was not entirely successful, and in fact his attempts somehow become part in Ilúvatar's grand plan. But, he managed to create certain discord, and from that discord Darkness arose as manifestation of evil. Therefore, for Tolkien, evil = disobeying Creator (Eru).

Now, from what we know, first and greatest among Great Spiders, Ungoliant, mother of Shelob, came directly from that Darkness. Although some claim she is Maiar or even Valar, that seems unlikely. At the height of her power she defeated Melkor, something that Maiar could not do. As for Valar, all of them except Melkor remained loyal to Eru. Anyway, Ungoliant, although sentient herself was driven by her insatiable hunger and destructiveness. Same could be said about her descendant Shelob. Both spiders hated the light, hid in dark places and created darkness themselves, and both spiders hunted and killed sentient beings.

While hating light (created by Valar, therefore in extension created in the name of Eru) and liking darkness (which came from opposing Eru's will) could be considered as sinful and evil, these two are overshadowed by third and greatest sin - killing of Children of Ilúvatar. We must remember that Eru himself created both Elves and Men. No Valar could repeat such thing, not even Melkor, because they lacked Secret Fire. Children of Ilúvatar had Fëa made of that Secret Fire, therefore by God himself. Shelob is describing as wanting death for all others, mind and body, therefore she went directly against Eru's creation and design. Therefore, by criteria of Tolkien, she was born of evil (darkness) and did evil.

Answer 8

Shelob: a killer of light, mind and soul

I can't take credit for this answer: a lot of it is taken from an informed by this very serious and thoughtful essay by Professor Krishnan Venkatesha at Saint John's College in Santa Fe: https://kappatsupatchi.wordpress.com/category/shelob/. I have tried to add some thoughts of my own, but this is really his work.

As Professor Venkatesha notes, in the middle of this suspenseful scene of an escape from a monster, Tolkien ends a paragraph, breaks a line and then shifts to a third party omniscient viewpoint. This is rare for Tolkien, and it's a signal: things are very serious now and the reader must understand something important. That thing to understand is in the first line following: in this cave lives "an evil thing in spider form." Not a spider, of course, as many have said. An evil "thing" that does not kill just for food. This is a being that "only desired death for all others, mind and body." Certainly Tolkien could have shifted and shown the point of view of a hunting animal, or simply described the spider and its attack. But Tolkien didn't do that -- he takes time to explain her desires: "death to all, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone ...".

If death of the mind as her desire is not enough to convince you that this being is evil, Tolkien gives us examples: eating Elves and Men until the city in the valley went dead, making "play" of captives that Sauron had driven to her hole for his amusement, mating with and then killing her own young ... ("...her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew ...").

And now imagery: the hole in which she lives is a dark, stinking pit where time seems to stop and there is "sense of lurking malice." Nothing is visible. No light. "Sound fell dead." "Even the memory of colours and of forms and of any light faded out of thought." "After a time their senses became duller, both touch and hearing seemed to grow numb...". It's a place of despair.

This is a being of the greatest kind of evil: a killer not just of life but of mind. Of soul. Smeagol/Gollum is an example here. "[T]he darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of his weariness beside him, cutting him off from light and from regret." And so Smeagol's own mind is subverted, killed by "her evil will" -- even to the point where he is beyond regret of luring Frodo (the only person to have ever shown him kindness) to a grisly death.

I don't want to ruin it for you, so read Professor Venkatesha's essay. I will let you know that it explores some of the things this chapter implies about this creature and poor Smeagol's soul. It's horrible.

Answer 9

The thought has occurred to me that possibly in Shelob's case evil might mean bad for people.

For example, a disaster might be described as an evil event, or a day when a disaster happens might be described as an evil day, even though events and days are not persons and thus cannot be ethically good or evil.

In The Return of the King, Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers, I The Numenorean Kings, ii The Realms in Exile, (iv) Gondor and the Heirs of Anarion, mentions evils that happened to Gondor. I put the words in italics.

Nonetheless, it was not until the days of Valacar that the first great evil came upon Gondor: the civil war of the Kin-strife, in which great loss and ruin was made and never fully repaired.

The second and greatest evil came upon Gondor in the reign of Telemnar, the twenty-sixth king, whose father Minardil, son of Eldacar, was slain at Pelargir by the Corsairs of Umbar...Soon after a deadly plague came with dark winds out of the East. The king and all his children died, and great numbers of the people of Gondor, especially those that lived in Osgiliath.

The third evil was the invasion of the Wainriders, which sapped the waning strength of Gondor in wars that lasted for almost a hundred years.

Getting killed and eaten by Shelob was definitely an "evil" that happened to various persons, so Shelob could be considered to be herself an "evil" that happened to people, just as Smaug, who could talk rationally with people, described himself as "the chiefest and greatest of all calamities".

Answer 10

Can You Blame Frodo for Holding a Grudge?

Remember who wrote The Red Book of Westmarch.

If we take the Literary Agent Hypothesis (that Lord of the Rings was supposed to be a translation of a recently-discovered work of history) seriously as something Tolkien tried to give verisimilitude, that story comes from Sam and Frodo. They see Shelob as evil because she's a giant spider who ambushed and wanted to eat them while they were trying to save the world. Sometime later, the narrator interpolates a religious backstory that presumably came from the Elves of Rivendell, and Sam and Frodo did not know at the time, about how she’s really a demon connected to their legendary primordial enemy, along with some details about Gollum that it’s hard to fit into this theory because he couldn’t possibly have confessed them before he died. So we’d have to read those as Sam and Frodo filling in the gaps. As a classicist like Tolkien well knew, this was common practice for ancient historians who did not have access to sources on the other side.

In addition to the other factors people have mentioned, the narrator does consistently describe powerful, terrifying monsters who live in darkness and attack Hobbits on sight as Evil. Enemies from a species that Frodo and Sam know are not all like that go into a different category of Fallen-but-potentially-redeemable, and deserving of mercy. (This is one instance, though, where Tolkien justifies calling someone evil: Shelob is no mindless animal, nor even killing only to survive.)

There are quite a few stories written around the premise that Tolkien was just biased and his villains are misunderstood.

Answer 11

While discussing her intentions or actions can be ambiguous in some cases, here is one that is not. She was literally covered in evil, so much evil that is was literally impenetrable to the strongest craftsmanship of the elves and the strongest Men to have ever lived. If a being made of evil doesn't make you an evil creature, then I don't think that anything can be considered evil.

But Shelob was not as dragons are, no softer spot had she save only her eyes. Knobbed and pitted with corruption was her age-old hide, but ever thickened from within with layer on layer of evil growth. The blade scored it with a dreadful gash, but those hideous folds could not be pierced by any strength of men, not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the hand of Beren or of Túrin wield it. She yielded to the stroke, and then heaved up the great bag of her belly high above Sam's head. Poison frothed and bubbled from the wound. Now splaying her legs she drove her huge bulk down on him again. Too soon. For Sam still stood upon his feet, and dropping his own sword, with both hands he held the elven-blade point upwards, fending off that ghastly roof; and so Shelob, with the driving force of her own cruel will, with strength greater than any warrior's hand, thrust herself upon a bitter spike. Deep, deep it pricked, as Sam was crushed slowly to the ground.

Answer 12

Was it Shelob or Ungoliant (or both) that mated with and then consumed her own offspring? That seems a trifle bit evil, albeit not incredibly outlandish in the insect/arachnid world. But I think what defined Shelob as evil was her unsated thirst that she inherited from her mother. We already know Ungoliant's idea was basically to consume everything, the entire world, or at least every last bit of light within it. That's pretty evil. Shelob was somewhat more reserved, but it's also said that in her insatiable hunger, she eventually consumed herself.

I think it's not so much the actions of Shelob (although eating elves, men, and your own children isn't very nice) but rather her nature that makes her evil. She has no desire to do anything virtuous. Her only desire is to consume. And mind you, you compared Shelob to the average lion, which typically only has the desire to eat and procreate also; but remember in Tolkien's world, beasts and birds are much more virtuous than they are in our world. There were good beasts and birds, that served Gandalf, Radaghast, Beren and the likes; and there were evil ones that served the lords of darkness. Shelob may have only served herself but in Tolkien's world, every evil character is evil because he or she has no other interest than in serving oneself. Sauron was only less evil than Melkor in that for a time, he served another.

Answer 13

Shelob is literally unholy. Her reaction to a bit of silmaril light establishes that. A tiger would not react in at all the same way because a tiger is a natural entity that is simply too dumb to know or care whether its prey is a person. Shelob isn't that dumb. She's smart enough to recognize that Gollum is a person and to spare him for no other reason than because he could and would bring her more people to eat. That makes her also a person in her own right, but a person who is inimical to all other persons. And that's what "evil" is. Knowingly inimical to people.

Answer 14

Shelob is considered evil because...:

• she seems disgusting to the protagonists;
• she wants to eat the protagonists (and if you're my enemy, and I'm obviously good, then you must be evil);
• her progenitor is deemed to be evil;
• she's dark-colored, or black. And dark things and people are evil while light things are good;
• she's in the way of activities furthering what's considered good.

So, objectively and to be honest, I agree with you, OP, that Shelob is not evil* - despite Tolkien's "decision" for her to be evil.

... But if you go down that road you'll start asking yourself why all the Southrons and Haradrim are supposedly evil; and whether you can trust the Valar-followers' version of history; and why the Valar are letting so many people suffer and die when they could very well send out their host and fix things; and so on. And then you would be a bad Catholic :-)

_{* - She is bad news and quite terrible, though.}