LogFAQs > #956410707

That entire section should be removed. I bet the "sources" are all blogs.

You made me curious so I went to check.
A couple of the sources are from the 70's and 80's (one was reprinted in the 2000s, I think). The newest one is from 2013. They all have ISBNs. I'd guess just based off of the citations that they're from collections of themed literary lenses, since most famous works get picked apart through pretty much every framework imaginable.

But yeah, I don't see this one. Like... yes, Sam killed her with a sword. He also killed several orcs with a sword... because his weapon is a sword. Like... none of these analyses touch on the most important parts of the encounter with Shelob, like the Phial of Galadriel, the choice to make Shelob a spider of all creatures, the fact that she is guarding an entrance to Mordor, Gollum luring them to her, etc... it's all the most insignificant details... "oooh tunnels." :-/

What's odd is that even within the citations at least one of them points out that Sam defeating Shelob is comparable to the slaying of monsters in stories like that of Sigurd, but then mentions Ariadne, who has absolutely nothing to do with this scenario... it comes off as just shot-gunning possibilities. Well, it's hard to tell without reading the full text in question, which I am, uh, not going to do.

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Hi