Early in this gargantuan chapter, as the tattered remnants of the Fellowship start to lose the Orc trail in the dark, Gimli exclaims, "Would that the Lady had given us a light, such a gift as she gave to Frodo!"
Aragorn swiftly responds, "It will be more needed where it is bestowed...With him lies the true Quest. Ours is but a small matter in the great deeds of this time. A vain pursuit from its beginning, maybe, which no choice of mine can mar or mend."
The question then naturally begs itself: if this quest is so small and vain, why are we following them in the first place? Wouldn't we rather learn the fate of the Ring Bearer now, instead of in Book IV? If Aragorn thinks so little of his role, then why should we?
The first, most obvious answer is that Aragorn is plain wrong: this seemingly-little sidequest actually purports great things. Pippin and Merry's escape to the Ents, as we all know, will serve as the catalyst and decisive factor in the eventual victory over Sarumon. The titular Riders of Rohan, too, will turn the tides in the Battle of Helms Deep. And this side-quest is what will put them into direct contact with Gandalf the White. From small events come big results. And other cliches.
But before Aragorn can realize this, he must first learn something about Aragorn. And Aragorn's regal demeanor before the Riders (a sudden transformation where he almost appears already to be wearing a crown), wherein he demands that they choose and choose quickly which side they will take, is our first hint that Aragorn will not just let things happen to him anymore, that he is not quite so resigned and hopeless as he has been since Moriah, that almost in spite of himself he will claim the throne of man. He almost wants to be hopeless, but something won't quite let him. In a weird sense, Aragorn is right: no choice of his can mar or mend this quest, he just doesn't realize yet that destiny is actually moving with him, not against him.
Our little trio of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas seem to slowly be realizing that they are in a bigger story than they think they are--Lord of the Rings is certainly not a meta-narrative by any stretch of the imagination, but our trio here do seem to be learning how to read the novel they are already in. First they are reading the tracks of the Orcs; then the clues left by Pippin and Merry (and the author); then from the Riders they learn the political situation in this land; these three are our stand-ins, as this novel slowly opens up to them at the same rate it opens up to us. Perhaps that is why we must follow Aragorn et al for this Book--they are Tolkien's ideal readers, training us to read this novel as carefully as they are learning to. Perhaps the ultimate Quest of LotR here is not to destroy the Ring or restore the King or save all Middle-Earth--the actual Quest is to learn how to read, specifically to read how the story we inhabit is far more hopeful than we realize.
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