Breakdown: what matters and what's interesting

The climax of the first half of the book: the destruction of the Light of Valinor. Driven from Valinor after his lies are exposed, Melkor finds an ally — Ungoliant, an ancient being in the shape of a monstrous spider that devours light and weaves darkness. Together they steal up to the Trees during a festival. Melkor pierces Telperion and Laurelin with his spear; Ungoliant drinks their light to the last drop, draining their sources, and then wraps Valinor in the Unlight (a darkness that no light can dispel). In that same darkness Melkor goes to Formenos, kills Finwë (the first slaying of an Elf in Aman), and steals the Silmarils. After this crime Fëanor names him Morgoth, “the Black Foe of the World.” Melkor and Ungoliant flee to Middle-earth.

— Ungoliant — Sindarin for “spider of darkness”; the Quenya form is Ungweliantë. Her nature is a mystery: perhaps a fallen spirit (a Maia) who once served Melkor but became insatiable in her own right. Her hunger is an image of evil that in the end devours even its own. — Morgoth — “the Black Foe”; a curse-name given by Fëanor. From this point on the book mostly calls Melkor by this name. — The Unlight — not just the absence of light but an active, palpable darkness in which even the sight of the Valar drowns. The death of the Trees cannot be undone: Yavanna and Nienna can draw from the dying Trees only one last fruit and one last flower, the future Sun and Moon (chapter 11). All the old light now lives only in the stolen Silmarils. That is why Fëanor's refusal to break the jewels (Yavanna asked for their light to revive the Trees) is a moment of terrible cost.

— “Light devoured by darkness” is the central image. Ungoliant is the ancestress of the spiders of Middle-earth; her descendant Shelob in “The Lord of the Rings” likewise embodies blind hunger. The circle closes: the light of a Silmaril (in the Phial of Galadriel) will one day blind the daughter of the one who drank the Trees. — Evil's double betrayal. Later Ungoliant, mad with hunger, nearly kills Morgoth himself, demanding the Silmarils: evil turns against evil. This is a Tolkienian idea: darkness is self-destructive by nature. — First blood. The murder of Finwë is the first death by violence in the Blessed Realm; Aman's innocence is over. From here violence will only escalate (the Kinslaying at Alqualondë). — The name as a deed. Fëanor does not fight Morgoth with a sword; he strikes with the Word, giving the Enemy an everlasting name. In Tolkien's legendarium, names have power.