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Originally Posted by davem
Of course, the Rohirrim are a very narrow minded bunch - Fangorn may be on the borders of their land, & Lorien not too far distant, yet they are as dismissive of the idea of 'walking trees' as any Hobbit, reject Galadriel & the Elves as 'net weavers & sorcerers' & Hobbits as figures out old stories. Basically, whe confronted with anything 'out of the ordinary' their response seems to have been to disbelieve it if they could & to attempt to destroy it if they couldn't.
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Even Aragorn is forced into having to show Eomer who he is; of course at this point he is all apologies.
Tolkien was again developing the character through reported speech instead of interior monologue.
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Originally Posted by davem
And it seems they themselves were hardly viewed as ideals of virtue - the suspicion that they were in league with the enemy must have come from somewhere & had some justification. The Rohirrin were an illiterate people, handy in a fight, but hardly the most intelligent, compassionate or enlightened group in M-e.
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Yet the intelligence of Gamling shows they could change, as they do by the end of the story; they are very much like the pre-Literary Saxons in this respect, moving from being mere mercenaries into being an established culture. I've wondered about Faramir's words before now, and now I can see what he meant, that the Rohirrim were not as developed in their attitudes as the Gondorians were. Of course the Gondorians' ancestors were the Numenoreans who allegedly have shared Numenor with a few of the Woses (fate unknown) so they have the knowledge of these people. There's something sad in what Faramir says, that the Gondorians in a way are in danger of descending to the level of some of the unenlightened Rohirrim.
I'm beginning to wonder if the escape of Merry and Pippin was not just necessary from a plot point of view in that they eventually meet with Treebeard, but that they also had a lucky escape as they also risked being hunted down by Eomer's men!