The Great Tolkien Reread: The Riders of Rohan

Illustration by jorahh, 2025

'What do you know of these horsemen, Aragorn?' [Gimli] said. 'Do we sit here waiting for sudden death?'

'I have been among them,' answered Aragorn. 'They are proud and wilfull, but they are true-hearted, generous in thought and deed; bold but not cruel; wise but unlearned, writing no books but singing many songs, after the manner of the children of Men before the Dark Years. But I do not know what has happened here of late, nor in what mind the Rohirrim may now be between the traitor Saruman and the threat of Sauron.'

The second chapter of The Two Towers carries forward many of the preoccupations of the first. The three companions' pursuit of the orcs who have captured Merry and Pippin comes down, once again, to questions of logistics—should they stop to sleep in the dead of night, giving the orcs a chance to widen the distance between them, or risk losing sight of the trail in pitch darkness? Aragorn continues to be riddled with self-doubt. And hints of a story the reader has yet to learn continue to be discovered along the way, forming a riddle to which the companions apply their tracking skills.

The sense of urgency and forward motion that suffuses this chapter serves to conceal an uncomfortable truth: the pursuit is a failure. Whether or not Aragorn was right to fear losing the orcs' trail, stopping for sleep allows the gap between the three companions and their quarry to widen insurmountably. And, as Éomer points out when he learns of the companions' quest, this is perhaps for the best; three warriors were never going to defeat, much less wrest living captives away from, a battalion of orcs. Aragorn's response to this—"In such a need a man that has no horse will go on foot, and he will not ask leave to follow the trail. Nor will he count the heads of the enemy save with a sword"—is poetic and badass, but does not exactly give an answer to Éomer's point. For all that Éomer later praises their physical accomplishment ("This deed of the three friends should be sung in many a hall. Forty leagues and five have you measured ere the fourth day is ended!"), it does not change the fact that if their fate had been left in the hands of their friends, Merry and Pippin would have ended up dead or worse.

The purpose of this chapter, then, is less to advance the story of Merry and Pippin's capture, as to introduce us to Éomer, and through him, to the Rohirrim, who will play such a crucial role in Book Three and beyond. It is the first time that our heroes have encountered a figure who has not already bought into the struggle against the Enemy and the quest to destroy the Ring, but who still considers themselves part of the fight. Much of Aragorn's exchange with Éomer revolves around the Rohirrims' growing anxieties—over Saruman's increasing belligerence and the rumors of darkness returning to Mordor, as well as, though we have not yet seen the full extent of it, the effect of these forces within Rohan's royal court—and his attempts to persuade Éomer to commit himself to the fight.

All of this makes Éomer seem like a more important figure than he will actually end up being. In the context of the book as a whole, his role is largely a transitional one, to bring Aragorn, Gandalf, and Merry in contact with characters—Théoden and Éowyn—whose stories are more complex and more compelling than his own. He is, like Aragorn, a king in waiting, but in practice what this means is that his role is to plug a hole, to take up Théoden's banner after the older man dies, and serve as Rohan's ruler after the story ends (because no one is going to let Éowyn do this, even though they should).

In the context of "The Riders of Rohan", however, Éomer functions as an echo—by no means the last that we will encounter—of Boromir. Despite his death, Boromir has continued to show up in the narrative and the three companions' conversation—once again, one senses the discomfort of remembering the positive traits of a person who annoyed you while they were alive. The fact that they are now traveling in his old stomping grounds, in the context that made and shaped him, only intensifies this sense of his lingering presence, which is explicitly recalled when Éomer arrives on the scene.

'Who are you, and what are you doing in this land?' said the Rider, using the Common Speech of the West, in manner and tone like to the speech of Boromir, Man of Gondor.

If we remember Boromir more clearly than the misty watercolor memories that the narrative now permits us of him, this evocation might raise some concern. Éomer, like Boromir, is a man of action rather than knowledge. Like him, he is accustomed to things being a certain way, and baffled when the rules according to which he's lived his whole life no longer seem to hold sway. He even, as nearly the first thing he says to the three companions, repeats Boromir's slander against Galadriel, calling her a witch—a slander that outraged Legolas then, and which outrages Gimli even more now. The stage is set, then, for a resurrection of the same friction that made Boromir's presence in the fellowship so increasingly untenable. Except that Éomer is a power in his own right, one whose alliance the companions, and the greater cause of the fight against the Enemy, desperately need.

Right away, however, we sense that the narrative regards Éomer much more positively than it did Boromir. His mistakes are not met with the kind of sighing exasperation that Boromir's were. There is something almost friendly, for example, about Gimli's threat to teach him a proper appreciation of Galadriel, especially when compared to the unspoken tone of "you fucking idiot" that underpinned many of Aragorn and Gandalf's reactions to Boromir. He is also allowed to be right, to give good advice and valuable information, to insist on his own authority, and the values and customs of his people.

This difference between how the two characters are treated is, partly, simply the soft bigotry of low expectations. Éomer is not of the blood of Númenor or the ruling family of Gondor; his people are "unlearned, writing no books". The fact that his knowledge of the world comes from lore and rumor is no more than we can expect of him. There is, also, the simple matter of moral luck. Unlike Boromir, Éomer was never taken outside his familiar context, never brought into contact with the Ring, never tempted by it to betray his most cherished values and oaths.

The more we get to know Éomer in "The Riders of Rohan", however, the clearer it becomes that there is more to the difference between him and Boromir than mere happenstance. Unlike Boromir, Éomer listens and learns. He accepts with good humor Gimli's correction about Galadriel ("So many strange things have chanced that to learn the praise of a fair lady under the loving strokes of a Dwarf's axe will seem no great wonder"). But he also accepts, with grave resignation, the news that the world has changed, and that he must change with it. "The world is all grown strange," he observes. "How shall a man judge what to do in such times?" Aragorn's reply is what he should, perhaps, have said to Boromir.

'As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.'

Though we will not discover the full extent of it for several chapters, there are enough hints in "The Riders of Rohan" for us to understand that Éomer is struggling not just with the changes to his world, but with a conflict between what he knows to be right, and what he has been ordered to do by a king who can no longer be trusted. This, too, is a difference between Boromir and Éomer. Boromir fucked off to Rivendell before the full extent of the rot in his nation's leadership was revealed; Éomer is smack dab in the middle of that rot, trying his best to deal with it without violating the norms of his society. Though for the rest of the novel his role will be a more utilitarian one, Éomer's choice in this chapter, to follow his heart and his core values rather than the letter of the law, permitting the three companions to continue in their quest, will not only prove decisive in itself. It will set a benchmark that other echoes of Boromir will be measured against.

Next time: On October 6th, we switch points of view to discuss "The Uruk-Hai". Looks like meat's back on the menu, guys.

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