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Originally Posted by obloquy
By positioning Ungoliante in opposition to Iluvatar you appeared to be implying that she was the Bad to his Good. If you intend merely to define her without judgment as Unlight (stripping away also the judgment of Iluvatar as Good) then my disagreement is lessened, but I agree with Thinlo and Legate and believe that you accord her more importance than she is due.
It's not a bad point for discussion, however, since it creates an interesting trinity in Iluvatar, Melkor, and Ungoliante: Iluvatar and Ungoliante at opposite ends as Light and Unlight, and Melkor all over the middle, not as Darkness (sorry Legate), but rather as Nihil: creative power inverted. Still, I think that defining Melkor in this way creates an overlap with Ungoliante's status as Unlight and the exaggeration of her importance begins to show more clearly. Melkor is the Enemy, not Ungoliante, and I think that describing Ungoliante as "unlight" without judging her evil is glib: Light and Life go hand-in-hand, as you point out; so, then, do Unlight and Death. If Melkor was evil, it is because of his extinguishing of light and life, and therefore Ungoliante too must be evil as this is her sole purpose.
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Now I also do not position Ungoliant as some kind of opposite to Eru in terms of Good/Evil. That's far too reductive and also I think simply wrong. In essence you are coming at it from the same approach as I don't think we can possibly say Eru=Good, certainly not in mere human terms. Why? Because if Eru is omnipotent then we must also accept that it was he who produced Melkor and hence what Melkor did has its roots in Eru...and if you look at what is said about Melkor's deeds, this is perfectly acceptable even to those who want to see Eru as 'perfect' as Melkor's deeds result in greater deeds which end up to the glory of Eru. Etc etc...I've been over that one many a time
Ungoliant as Unlight and Eru as Light does not merely boil down to one being bad and one being good. Life itself in Tolkien's creation is tied up with a lot of 'darkness' in that Elves are doomed to be tied to the world as long as it lasts and Men must accept their doom in the form of Death. Ungoliant may or may not symbolise this fate, this counterpart to Light/Life, and not as a bad thing, but as a necessary thing. Where Melkor comes into this is that he tries to exploit that in his destructive aims, and note that Ungoliant in the end abandons him. It's important to note that Melkor seeks to corrupt and to create as well as destroy - whereas Ungoliant merely seeks to feed, not to make a mockery of Eru and the creation he and the rest of the Ainur conjoured up, even if it is Light which she finds so tasty.
Perhaps another idea to pursue may also be found in the law that every action has a reaction, and in Eru's use of Light to create life and existence he may also have created Unlight or negation. It may even be a necessary thing if he hopes one day to turn the Light off at Dagor Dagorath, which is referred to as the Unmaking of Arda if I recall correctly? Unmaking suggesting more than merely smashing it up into bits in a celestial temper but actually making it cease to exist entirely.
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Originally Posted by obloquy
Either we view Tolkien's world as a living thing, the histories of which Tolkien merely transmitted to us, leaving open all kinds of possibilities that he neglected to mention, such as the possibility that "there are other existences than Arda...created by Eru." Or we view it as a finite story, complete despite gaps in our knowledge because what we have is all that Tolkien wrote, in which case there is no possibility of "other existences than Arda..." because Tolkien never directly created them or even implied them.
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Seeking to apply theory to Tolkien's work is not mere clever-dickery in this case, it has a real application
The major conceit of the stories is that they have been translated from existing texts. In which case we have to ask who wrote them. Elves in the case of what we have in the Silmarillion? In which case haven't we got an Elves' view of things? Elves who admittedly had no concept of where Ungoliant may have come from and what her purpose was apart from ruining their Trees? What would their ability to imagine the purpose/nature of Ungoliant be?