What I'm going to say is not exactly new - in fact is has to do with the quote that you all have more or less, touched upon and which seems to underline the main theme of the chapter:
Eomer, bewildered by what he calls strange happenings in his time, asks how shall a man judge what to do in such times. The wording of this attracts my attention, in that he does not say: "How shall I judge" but how shall a man judge -it's as if he's asking Aragorn for advice and Aragorn does give precious advice. [Insert the well known quote here.] It is my conviction that Tolkien himself uses Aragorn, a character whom most readers admire and look up to, to give the world in which he lived in, advice on the matter. Tolkien was less a preacher than Lewis was, but this very thing makes his moral statements, cloaked in narrative charm, even more effective.
Aragorn's advice, this moral statement is one of a world long gone, ruled by honesty and a clear cut, sometimes too harshly drawn (some may say) line between good and evil. In modern times, good and evil, like so many things are relative to the speaker. You have a different reality that is your own and therefore a different idea of good and evil than mine, and we try not to step on each other's toes, and tolerate each other's separate realities. Which all seems very nice and proper.
Here's another quote from a similar period in time and which is closely related to the discussion. It's from the Bible:
Quote:
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"It is better to be hot or cold than lukewarm."
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A 'lukewarm' Eomer tells Aragorn at the beginning of the meeting:
"We do not serve the Power of the Black Land far away but neither are we yet at open war with him."
Later Aragorn reveals himself as 'hot' (and, er, I hope I won't be quoted with this out of context
) and orders Eomer - foreshadowing indeed the great leader he is gradually becoming - to "Choose swiftly!"
Eomer chooses to aid him, persuaded by both the truth in his words and the majesty of his appearance - To note, that it is not only Aragorn's 'charisma' that persuades Eomer, it is the clarity of his reasoning and his truthfulness (*hums "Symphony of Destruction" to illustrate the effect of only Aragorn's charisma, or 'light' or any other supernatural element convincing Eomer to join him). - And in discussing the previous chapter, The Departure of Boromir, so many of you expressed the same wish, to aid Aragorn. Who wouldn't? To paraphrase Fordim, aiding Aragorn means fulfilling the very powerful wish of seeing clearly the path of good and following it with a little more than blind faith:
"This is my choice. (...) In this I place myself and maybe my very life in the keeping of your good faith. Do not fail."
Eomer's decision is of course made more difficult by the fact that the law would dictate him to thwart Aragorn. His is a difficult choice, but is not ours, and Tolkien himself saw it as he wrote these lines, an even more difficult one? Consider this quote, this time by Tolkien the author himself:
Quote:
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"of course the Shadow will arise again in a sense (as is clearly foretold by Gandalf, but never again (unless it be before the great End) will an evil daemon be incarnate as a physical enemy; he will direct Men and all the complications of half-evils, and defective-goods, and the twilights of doubt as to sides, such situations as he most loves (you can see them already arising in the War of the Ring, which is by no means so clear cut an issue as some critics have averred): those will be and are our more difficult fate. But if you imagine people in such a mythical state, in which Evil is largely incarnate, and in which physical resistance to it is a major act of loyalty to God, I think you would have the ‘good people’ in just such a state: concentrated on the negative: the resistance to the false, while ‘truth’ remained more historical and philosophical than religious."
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As I said.