What was Shelob, and more importantly, what was Ungoliant?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

An interesting rather Gnostic-Manichaean idea, but:

1 "First of all" Iluvatar made the Ainur, "who were with him before aught else was made"

2 In Tolkien's very monotheist worldview, there was nothing before Eru, and nothing which Eru did not create

3 Eru has no equal. By definition. Besides, would Eru have been driven off by a few Balrogs?

Tolkien's treatment of Melkor is characterized by a *heavy* emphasis that this is *not* a dualist universe: Melkor is constantly being reminded that he is a created being (which he hates, and which drives him mad). Ungoliant does seem to be some sort of darkness-elemental, and a deliberate enigma. Tolkien doesn't want us to know exactly what she was, and perhaps never worked it out for himself_ but then (as with Bombadil) he was aware that in the 'real' world there are always bits that don't seem to fit: total systematic consistency is a hallmark of the artificial.

Originally Posted by Legate

Whatever the case, I wanted to say that the "laws of the universe" do not seem to apply in the case of these characters or things (which, in fact, could even allow the "outside the One" possibility, but in the meaning that they don't have anything to do with the created universe itself and are "aliens" in the whole story, which could be applied very well in TB's case), but if we want to take Middle-Earth, resp. Arda, resp. the Void and everything around it as a consistent world (with inner consistence, and not a world from a story from the outside point of view), and we do not want to accept these characters as belonging to any of the known classes, we have to say, together with the Prof, that even in this world there are some mysteries and these are some of them. Which is not much of a help, definitely, but what can we do.

And there's the rub.

Tolkien deliberately leaves her origins a mystery. If she comes from Eru then he made her what she is. If she does not, then where does she come from? Your guess is as good as mine Whatever, it only deepens the mystery of the whole creation to have enigmas like Ungoliant and Tom wandering about. Tom is less difficult in that he is generally a good guy, Ungoliant is very difficult indeed as she's so shadowy, both literally and metaphorically.

Still, you cannot deny that there is something extremely powerful in the metaphorical contrast Tolkien sets up between Illuvatar/Light/Life and Ungoliant/Unlight/Death.

I don't have quite such a problem with accepting that there is the possibility that there is another existence besides the one Eru creates. We are told Eru is The One and is Omnipotent, and that is correct, but it might mean that he is Omnipotent within this creation. It does not mean there cannot be other creations, maybe created by Eru. Maybe not.

One thing you can say about characters such as Tom and Ungoliant is that there is someone above Eru. And that's Tolkien. He had the power to drop in these enigmatic characters, to create and destroy far more than Eru did. In answering the question "Well, who made Eru?" your answer is "Tolkien did". These enigmas are Authorial interventions made tangible. They certainly bring a large helping of irony into the work as their very existence calls into question the very cosmological structure Tolkien set up; he is the one who has the power to include or exclude them, they bring questions to his creation, but he still includes them. They also smell strongly of metafiction as they are stories within stories, characters which seem to exist outside this creation but which in reality can only be found within it...Tolkien the Postmodernist...