Cirith Ungol

Cirith Ungol is a Sindarin name made of two parts. The first element, cirith, denotes a cleft or a cutting through rock, and by extension a narrow pass. The second, ungol, means spider. Read together, the name describes a spider's cleft. This matches the English renderings Pass of the Spider and Spider's Pass. In the narrative the place is often called simply the Cleft, a plain English equivalent of its first element. Following the rule set out in the appendix on pronunciation, the initial C is always hard, so the name begins with the sound of k.1

The name belongs to a small family of related designations for the same place. The tunnel beneath the pass, where the spider lairs, carries its own Sindarin name, Torech Ungol, glossed in the text as Shelob's Lair. The fortress above the cleft is known after the pass as the Tower of Cirith Ungol. The same word for a pass also appears in Cirith Gorgor, the Haunted Pass at the northwestern corner of Mordor, so that both routes into the land are named by the dread attached to them. The name itself carries a warning. When Gollum names his intended route in Henneth Annûn, Faramir recognises it at once and grows visibly troubled, although he cannot say what exactly lies there.2

The element ungol also forms the name Ungoliant, the primeval spider-shape of the Elder Days who, together with Morgoth, darkened the Two Trees of Valinor. The connection runs deeper than the shared word. The narrative calls Shelob the last child of Ungoliant still troubling the world, so the pass is named for a creature of that same lineage. The glossary of name elements appended to the published Silmarillion lists ungol with the sense spider and links the two names. It likewise records the root behind cirith, meaning to cleave or cut through, which also appears in other clefts such as Cirith Ninniach and Cirith Thoronath.3

Cirith Ungol is a high, narrow crossing in the Ephel Dúath, the range that walls Mordor on the west. It does not lie on the main road into the land, which climbs past Minas Morgul to the Morgul pass, but on a hidden way that leaves the valley of Imlad Morgul to the north of the city. The approach is steep and long. A first flight of steps, the Straight Stair, rises up the cliff face, and a second, the Winding Stair, zigzags higher along the flank of the mountains. Both look down over the dead valley and the pale towers of the Morgul fortress. From these stairs Frodo watches the host of Minas Morgul march out towards Gondor.1

Above the stairs the way cannot be taken in the open. It passes through a long tunnel bored into the mountain, the lair of the spider, which is dark and fouled by a stench. Beyond the tunnel lies the Cleft itself, a narrow notch in the summit ridge set between jagged horns of rock. There the path crosses the crest and starts down its eastern side. Orcs from the tower use this route, which gives them a passage of their own between the lair and the fortress. This makes the pass a place where two dangers meet: the spider in the rock, and the garrison above.2

The tower stands on the eastern side of the ridge, just beyond the Cleft, built against a shoulder of the mountain and rising in stepped tiers. It faces into Mordor, not outward. Men of Gondor raised it to keep watch on the conquered land after Sauron's first overthrow, and it was meant to hold within whatever stirred there. From its walls the ground falls away to the valley between the Ephel Dúath and the lower inner ridge of the Morgai. Beyond these lie the plain of Gorgoroth and the fires of the Mountain. A road runs down from the gate to join the way that crosses from the Morgul pass. A walled court and a gate guarded by the Two Watchers, seated figures with a baleful will, shut off the entrance.3

The pass had a dweller before it had a name among Men. Shelob came to the mountains long before Sauron, earlier even than the founding of the Dark Tower. She had fled the ruin of the northern lands of the Elder Days, and she settled in the dark beneath the ridge. There she fed on whatever strayed into her tunnels, Elves and Men alike, and she grew bloated in the dark. The narrative presents her as serving no one but herself. Sauron, when he came to Mordor, knew where she lived and let her be. He was content that she guarded that way into his land better than any sentry he could post, and at times he sent her prisoners he had no further use for.1

The tower on the eastern side of the Cleft dates from the watch that Gondor kept on the empty land after the War of the Last Alliance, as the account of the place above already notes. It was one of several strongholds with this purpose. The towers of Narchost and Carchost at the Morannon, the Towers of the Teeth, served the same watch in the north. The fortress guarded a back way into Ithilien and formed an eastern outpost of that province's defences. For as long as the kings were strong it stayed manned. Throughout that time the spider in the rock below remained an older and separate danger.2

The watch failed in the course of the Third Age. According to the annals of Gondor, the Great Plague of the year 1636 so weakened the realm that the watch on Mordor lapsed. The fortresses guarding its passes then stood empty, and evil things were able to creep back into the land. In 2002 the Ringwraiths took Minas Ithil, which became Minas Morgul. From then on the whole Morgul Vale, together with the hidden way climbing out of it, was in the Enemy's hands. The narrative gives no date for the loss of the tower itself. It says only that vigilance failed there, as it did at the Teeth, and that treachery gave the fortress up to the Lord of the Ringwraiths. After that it was held by evil things for a long time. In 2951 Sauron declared himself openly and rebuilt his seat in Mordor. The tower then turned from a guard against Mordor into a guard for it, with orcs in its garrison under a captain of their own.3

Gollum first came to the pass around the year 2980. The Tale of Years places his arrival at the borders of Mordor and his first encounter with Shelob at about this time. Several years later he was taken in Mordor and questioned there, and after his release he knew the way over the Cleft. This knowledge shaped his plan in the War of the Ring. He would lead the hobbits into the tunnel and let the spider deal with them, hoping afterwards to recover the Ring from what she left. On 12 March 3019, after the host of Minas Morgul had marched west, he brought Frodo and Sam into the lair. On the following day Frodo, paralysed by the spider's sting, was carried off by orcs from the tower. Sam, alone, wounded Shelob with Frodo's sword and the light of Galadriel's gift, and drove her back into her holes. The narrative leaves open whether she died of her wounds.4

The seizure of the prisoner set off the tower's last crisis. Its garrison under Shagrat and a company from Minas Morgul under Gorbag fell out over Frodo's mithril coat. The quarrel turned into a fight that left almost all of the orcs dead. On 14 March Sam entered the tower, found Frodo in its topmost chamber and led him out in orcish gear. As they passed the Watchers, the gate arch broke behind them and part of the wall collapsed, while a winged Nazgûl came down on the tower in answer to the alarm. Shagrat escaped with the coat and the other spoils and carried them to Barad-dûr. At the Black Gate on 25 March these were shown to the Captains of the West as proof that Frodo had been captured. The story does not record what became of the tower once Sauron had fallen. It passes out of the tale in ruins.5

Cirith Ungol never had a settled people of its own. It was a place of passage and watch, and those who lived there were garrisons, not inhabitants in any wider sense. In the days of Gondor's strength the tower was manned by soldiers of that realm. The texts name no commanders from that period and say nothing of how the garrison was organised. After the tower passed into the Enemy's hands, it was held by orcs. The one creature that truly dwelt in the pass was the spider in the rock, who owed obedience to no one. Its rulers never governed her. They only reached a working arrangement with her.1

At the time of the War of the Ring the tower's captain was the orc Shagrat. His company took its orders from Lugbúrz, the orcs' name for the Dark Tower, and his soldiers wore the badge of the Red Eye. The garrison of Minas Morgul lay close by in the valley below. Its orcs bore the sign of the defiled Moon and answered to the Lord of the Ringwraiths. The two companies met at the pass because the tower's orcs used the tunnel and knew the spider's habits. They spoke of her with wary irony and treated her as a hazard of the post. The orders received from Barad-dûr at this time were strict. Any intruder was to be seized, stripped and held unharmed, and a full report was to be sent to the Dark Tower.2

This makes the pass a place where two dangers meet: the spider in the rock, and the garrison above.

The overheard talk between Shagrat and Gorbag, the Morgul captain, shows how brittle this order was beneath its surface. Both complained about their superiors, spoke uneasily of the Nazgûl, and toyed with the idea of slipping away to set up on their own with a few trusted followers. The rivalry between Eye and Moon was open, and suspicion ran in both directions. In the end, then, the pass was not held by any single, unified authority. It lay under the command of two jealous services of the same master, and the tower's end came from that division, not from any attack.3

In the structure of The Lord of the Rings, Cirith Ungol is the last threshold before Mordor and the hinge on which Book IV turns. During a pause on the stairs, Frodo and Sam talk about the old tales and wonder whether they have themselves fallen into one, and whether anyone will one day hear their story told. In that exchange the narrative briefly considers its own nature as a tale. The same halt also brings the moment in which Gollum might have turned back. Returning from a secret errand, he finds the hobbits asleep and reaches towards Frodo with something close to tenderness. Sam wakes, takes the gesture for sneaking and rebukes him sharply. The chance passes and does not come again.1

In the tunnel and at the Cleft the burden of the quest passes to Sam. Believing his master dead, he weighs his duty, takes the Ring and resolves to go on alone. Only when he overhears the orcs does he learn that Frodo is merely stunned, and he sees that he has misjudged the situation. Book IV breaks off at this discovery. The narrative then leaves the two hobbits for the whole of Book V and returns to them at the tower only when Book VI begins.2

Inside the tower the story tests the new bearer. The Ring offers Sam visions of power and of the dark plain made into a garden under his rule, and he turns them aside through a plain sense of his own measure. Searching the tower without result, he sings into the darkness and hears Frodo answer faintly. When Sam hands the Ring back, Frodo for a moment sees him as a grasping thief. The scene shows how strong the Ring's hold has grown on the one meant to carry it. Read in this way, the pass marks the point where the quest becomes the lonely endurance of two companions.3

In the manuscripts published in The History of Middle-earth the name usually appears as Kirith Ungol, with an initial K. The spelling with C was settled only later, and the draft chapters on the stairs, the tunnel and the Cleft are gathered under that older form. The spider guarding the pass took shape before the name Shelob did. In the outlines Tolkien made while planning the later course of the story from Moria onwards, the creature waiting for the hobbits is called Ungoliant, the name of the great spider of the Elder Days. Only later did the guardian become a separate being, descended from that ancient one. The published link between the two creatures thus grew out of an earlier idea in which they were the same.1

The orc captains of the pass also shifted during composition. Christopher Tolkien points out that in the first drafting of the scene at the Cleft the two names were assigned the other way round, with Gorbag in command of the tower and Shagrat leading the company from Minas Morgul. Tolkien then exchanged them, which gave the arrangement found in the published book. The rescue from the tower was likewise worked out over several drafts before it reached its final form. These texts, edited together with the chapters that open the last part of the story, show the tower episode being built up by stages, not written in a single pass.2

Peter Jackson's film trilogy brings Cirith Ungol to the screen, but its most visible change is structural. The novel ends its fourth book with Sam's discovery at the Cleft. The films move the entire episode of the stairs, the tunnel and the spider out of the second instalment and into the third, so that The Two Towers closes before the hobbits reach the climb. The Return of the King then follows the Morgul Vale sequence alongside the siege of Gondor. The adaptation also sharpens the conflict on the stairs. Gollum works to set Frodo against Sam, and Frodo sends his companion away, so that he enters the lair alone. Sam turns back and rejoins him only at the crisis. In the book the two are never parted before the spider strikes. Shelob herself appears as a computer-generated creature and has no speaking part.1

Further departures concern Gollum and the tower. In the film Gollum turns on Frodo near the lair and falls from a ledge in the struggle, whereas in the novel he fights Sam at the tunnel's mouth and slips away unharmed. The rescue from the tower keeps its outline from the book. Frodo is carried off by orcs, a quarrel over the mithril coat thins the garrison, and Sam goes in to bring him out, though the sequence is compressed. Ralph Bakshi's animated film never reaches the pass at all. It breaks off after Helm's Deep, and the second part that would have carried the story into Mordor was never made.2