In the story, Gollum deliberately led the Hobbits into her lair, planning to recover the One Ring once she had consumed the hobbits. Sauron was aware of her existence, but left her alone as a useful guard on the pass, and occasionally fed prisoners to her. The Orcs of the Tower of Cirith Ungol called her "Shelob the Great" and "Her Ladyship", and referred to Gollum as "Her Sneak". Shelob's lair was Torech Ungol, below Cirith Ungol ("Pass of the Spider"), along the path that the Hobbits Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee took into Mordor, where Shelob had encountered Gollum during his previous trip to Mordor, and he apparently worshipped her. Her descendants include the Giant Spiders of Mirkwood defeated by Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. She is introduced as both evil and ancient: "But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness". Her main weak point is her eyes, which can be easily harmed or blinded.
Her hide is tough enough to resist sword-strokes, and the strings of her webs are likewise resilient to ordinary blades, though the magical Sting manages to cut them.
Unlike ordinary spiders, she uses a sting to inject her venom and paralyse her victims. Her exact size is not stated, but she is significantly larger than her descendants, the Great Spiders of Mirkwood, and her hobbit opponents. Although she resided in Mordor and was unrepentantly evil, she was independent of Sauron and his influence. last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world", living high in the Ephel Dúath mountains on the borders of Mordor. Shelob is described in The Two Towers as an "evil thing in spider-form. 3.3 Perversion of body, unlike Saruman's perversion of mind.Shelob's appearance in Peter Jackson's film trilogy was based on the New Zealand tunnel-web spider. Others have noted her opposition to the Elves, and in particular her adversary, Galadriel, whose light helps the hobbits to defeat her darkness. Several scholars, though not all, have interpreted Shelob as symbolising a sexual threat, noting her dark underground lair approached by tunnels, her "soft squelching body", and Shelob's thrusting herself down onto Sam's erect sword, amongst other sexual allusions. The plan is foiled when Samwise Gamgee temporarily blinds Shelob with the Phial of Galadriel, and then severely wounds her with Frodo's Elvish sword, Sting. The creature Gollum deliberately leads the Hobbit protagonist Frodo there in hopes of recovering the One Ring by letting Shelob attack Frodo. Her lair lies in Cirith Ungol ("the pass of the spider") leading into Mordor. Shelob is a fictional demon in the form of a giant spider from J. For the song Shelob's Lair, see Music of The Lord of the Rings film series.