Foreshadowing and Fear

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

My first reading of Shelob's Lair was extremely forshadowed, but that was only because my fool of a brother [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] kept telling me things like "You're going to be scared... don't read it before you go to sleep." At the time, the only things I got nightmares from were spiders, snakes, and vampires (recurring nightmare from when I was about 4). Since I'd never happened across Tolkien writing about giant snakes or vampires, I had to assume my brother meant there was a spider involved. Remembering the Mirkwood spiders, and Bilbo's shouts of "lazy lob", I put She and Lob together, got a spider, and jumped to the [accurate] conclusion that there was a she-spider in the cave somewhere. Even with all of that foreshadowing, I still freaked once I got a good vision of what She herself looked like. Tolkien did make vague allusions to Shelob, but now that I think of it, he did skrimp on the foreshadowing...

Fea