![]() Which is just as well, as the betrayal, so long foreseen, comes. ![]() In the darkness, Frodo and Sam reach out to each other to guide their way safely through this den: Gollum is forgotten about. Aside from re-emphasising the nature of their friendship, it’s also a symbolic severing of the trio that has previously made up the bulk of Book Four. It is in the darkness, this all-encompassing bleakness of a seemingly supernatural origin, one that will last until the ending of the world if the above paragraph is any indication, that the duo reach out and hold hands. Night always had been, and always would be, and night was all. They walked as it were in a black vapour wrought of veritable darkness itself that, as it was breathed, brought blindness not only to the eyes but to the mind, so that even the memory of colours and of forms and of any light faded out of thought. Here the air was still, stagnant, heavy, and sound fell dead. There, there were airs moving, and echoes, and a sense of space. Not since the lightless passages of Moria had Frodo or Sam known such darkness, and if possible here it was deeper and denser. In a few steps they were in utter and impenetrable dark. Out of it came a stench, not the sickly odour of decay in the meads of Morgul, but a foul reek, as if filth unnameable were piled and hoarded in the dark within…Drawing a deep breath they passed inside. Big, big moments of tension, as we await the inevitable appearance of the titular monster, built up so subtly in the previous chapters: They have blundered into the darkest of the dark places, guided by a creature they are all but sure is about to turn on them. We can sense the encroaching darkness, smell the reeking stench of death and decay, feel the ever-present peril that is all around the two hobbits. It is Tolkien’s great skill, the great skill of any writer, to make the reader feel the sensations that are being described, and Tolkien is in top form here. The atmosphere is set from the off in the tunnel. And judging from the surroundings, you can guess that she’s gonna be a whopper. Of course, those familiar with ye olde English will be able to spot what is coming, though the wording also appears in The Hobbit: “Lob” is an old term for spider, from “loppe”. Spiders have been a common source of horror in fiction since humanity was first creeped out by the little crawlers, and The Lord of the Rings goes into that theme in a big way here, in another of the story’s most famous segments. It is an odd coincidence though, suffering such a nasty attack, and then, in later life, creating arguably the most famous fictional villainous arachnid to ever grace the pages of a book. Baboon spiders have a painful venom but aren’t considered lethal: Tolkien claimed that he couldn’t even remember the incident, and had no especial distaste for spiders growing up. ![]() When he was just a small child, no more than three, J.R.R Tolkien was playing in a garden in South Africa, when a “baboon spider” – a species of tarantula – bit him. ![]()
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