I've been reading and rereading the chapter for quite some time now, and I have been unable to get anything from it (
Firefoot), except this: The three chapters involving the actual Ride of the Rohirrim (including the last section of the chapter before it, and the first section of the one after it) has always moved me to tears, ever since I first read them (on the first week of January, 2003). Something here stirs me, though I don't know what.
Just yesterday, I decided to drop the book (and the analysis of the actual text), and decided to look into me: What does it move? Where does it touch me?
I came up with this.
If
The Two Towers is a book about overcoming mistrust, then
The Return of the King is about friendship--in its truest form, the "lay down his life for his friends" type. The Rohirrim and Sam knows this type of love, and it moves them:
[Sam: ]I'll get [to Mt. Doom], if I leave everything but my bones behind. And I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart. So stop arguing!
LR VI 3
"Alas!" said Théoden. "Then Denethor has heard no news of our riding and will despair of our coming."
"Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never," said Éomer. "And mayhap in this time shall the old saw be proved truer than ever before since men spoke with mouth."
LR V 5
I have also been reading
UT III 2: The Chronicles and Cirion and Eorl (as support material for my aborted analysis), and I came across this:
. . . Cirion and Eorl were moved . . . by the great friendship that bound their people together, and by the love that was between them as true men.
UT III 3 iii
So, these two (the Dúnedain and the Rohirrim) have been bound by friendship ever since way back! Now I wonder, what happened to the Gondorians? Why did they despair? Did they really think that the Rohirrim would forsake them?
Of course, for a while, that thought entered Théoden:
A smell of burning was in the air and a very shadow of death. The horses were uneasy. But the king sat upon Snowmane, motionless, gazing upon the agony of Minas Tirith, as if stricken suddenly by anguish, or by dread. He seemed to shrink down, cowed by age. Merry himself felt as if a great weight of horror and doubt had settled on him. His heart beat slowly. Time seemed poised in uncertainty. They were too late! Too late was worse than never! Perhaps Théoden would quail, bow his old head, turn, slink away to hide in the hills.
LR V 5
Why did he not turn back? Hope?
Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering. Far, far away, in the South the clouds could be dimly seen as remote grey shapes, rolling up, drifting: morning lay beyond them.
ibid
Or was it because his friend was in danger?
But at that same moment there was a flash, as if lightning had sprung from the earth beneath the City. For a searing second it stood dazzling far off in black and white, its topmost tower like a glittering needle: and then as the darkness closed again there came rolling over the fields a great boom.
ibid
So I guess that was what moves me: A friendship, tested by trials, is proven true.