Shelob

Shelob is a fictional monster in the form of a giant spider from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Her lair lies in Cirith Ungol ("the pass of the spider") leading into Mordor. The creature Gollum deliberately leads the Hobbit protagonist Frodo there in hopes of recovering the One Ring by letting Shelob attack Frodo. The plan is foiled when Samwise Gamgee temporarily blinds Shelob with the Phial of Galadriel, and then severely wounds her with Frodo's Elvish sword, Sting.

In the Vinony graph

Within Vinony's link graph, Shelob is referenced by 317 other articles, and connects out to Mordor, Middle-earth elf and list of Middle-earth weapons and armour.

Vinony files it under Female characters in film, Female literary villains and Fictional spiders.

Its subject is documented across 23 Wikipedia language editions.

Key facts

Character.name: Shelob
Character.series: Tolkien
Character.race: Spider
Character.lbl24: Book(s)
Character.data24: The Two Towers (1954)
Character.lbl25: Film(s)
Character.data25: The Return of the King (2003)

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Gender: female organism
Mother: Ungoliant

Show 3 more facts

Commons category: Middle-earth characters
from narrative universe: Tolkien's legendarium
present in work: The Lord of the Rings

Sources (1)

wikidata.org

via Wikidata · CC0

~11 min read

Encyclopedic overview

11 sections

Contents

Fictional history
Name
Analysis
Darkness opposed to the light
Insatiable evil
Sexual monster
Adaptations
References
Primary
Secondary
Sources

Some scholars have stated that Shelob is in the literary tradition of female monsters. Others have interpreted her as symbolising a sexual threat, with multiple sexual allusions. Scholars have noted her opposition to the Elves, and in particular her adversary, Galadriel, whose light helps the hobbits to defeat her darkness.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Shelob” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.