[Spoiler alert for the book and movie]
Several years ago I got a nice hardback set of the Lord of the Rings books.
It was a long time before I started (re-)reading them though, and after the
first book the set stayed in a box for a while. I just finished The Two
Towers. I remember that it was never really my favorite, largely because it
starts with a huge departure from Frodo’s story, which was what I really wanted
to hear about. I guess I didn’t have much of a frame of reference for the other
stuff. I guess the movies helped me care more about Aragorn and company – in
fact, it found that I generally pictured the movie actors as the characters.
That’s not surprising, I guess, but I don’t necessarily do that with books I
read before seeing the movie. (For instance, when I reread Jurassic
Park, I didn’t picture the people like the actors.)
One thing Tolkien does really well is paint a very vivid picture of the
locations. I had a particularly vivid picture in my head of the whole Imlad
Morgul / Cirith Ungol part, and it fit pretty well as I read it again. (Side
note: I looked up pictures online, and some of the maps I saw were clearly
wrong: They had Minas Morgul on the north side of the river, and the road
crossed the river a couple of times.
Shelob is a cool enemy. It’s strange to say that, since I loath spiders.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that she’s a compelling enemy,
since nothing could be more terrifying than a giant spider lurking in a murky
cave. I may have pictured her a little differently this time, since the book
says that her eyes are “two great clusters of many-windowed eyes”. I think I had
missed the part about them being in two groups and pictured them in rows, more
like a normal spider. At first I thought that maybe Tolkien was saying that they
were compound eyes like a fly. That didn’t sit right though, and I think that’s
wrong: “Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with
purpose and with hideous delight” I don’t think that compound eyes could really
convey purpose or delight. Also, it says that they go out one by one as she
turns away from the phial of Galadriel, and Sam stabs one of them. So
they must be individual eyes.
Incidentally, Shelob’s face is one thing the movies get very wrong. Aside
from not glowing and being arranged in a random, asymmetrical way, the eyes are
just black dots that don’t really convey anything at all except nastiness.
Certainly not intelligence. I remember from the special features that Peter
Jackson showed a bunch of options to his kids and asked them which one was the
scariest. That was very much the wrong question. I also disagree with their
choice – nasty isn’t the same as scary.
One last thing – I’m not quite sure about the mechanics of on thing. When Sam
slashes at Shelob, he can’t damage her. But when she tries to crush him, she
impales herself. Yet, Sam manages to stay on his feet. It says this is because
Shelob’s own strength is driving her bulk down onto the sword, but I’d think
that it would drive Sam down before it would pierce her. But I think Tolkien has
earned the benefit of the doubt, so I’ll trust him on this.
Oh, one other really last thing: I missed that when Sam attacks Shelob, he
wields both swords at once. I thought that was pretty cool. Especially since he
has to wield Sting left-handed (since he doesn’t have time to switch them). Yay
Sam!
