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Dragging this back up because of something Evisse mentioned in a rep comment about extraversion & introversion.
The first 'book' of Towers is, as I said, extraverted, & the second introverted. This has got me thinking about Boromir & Faramir. Boromir is the extravert - what you see is what you get. He is focussed 'outwards' on the world around him & on his interactions with others. Faramir, on the other hand, seems to be a typical introvert, quiet, thoughtful, only acting when he has considered all possibilities.
I think this is maybe the reason why we respond more quickly to Boromir, & why some people find him a more convincing character. He is 'shallower' than Faramir, & so is easier to get a handle on. We see Boromir's struggle clearly & openly with the lure of the Ring, & so can see how it is affecting him & can sympathise with him. We can believe in his struggle.
Faramir, on the other hand, is an introvert - his 'struggle' goes on under the surface, & all we see is the result of that inner conflict - it seems to just 'appear' out of nowhere, & thus can seem less 'believable'. But the struggle is no doubt of the same intensity.
I think something else we should take into account is that by his nature Boromir would not have gone in for the kind of spiritual & philosophical struggle that Faramir would have done for most of his adult life - which is something we introverts tend to do. Boromir would have simply 'acted' in response to the 'moment'. Faramir would have spent a long time thinking about moral issues, & have found a perspective on things like power & control which Boromir simply would not have. Faramir may not have had any idea about the Ring itself, but he was familiar with what it meant & the issues around such a thing. so, it would have been easier for him to come to a realisation of the right thing to do. His struggle would not have been over [i]what[i/] was the right thing to do with the Ring (which is effectively the dilemma Boromir struggled with) but, knowing what the right thing to do was, how to find the will to do it.
I think this is what's happening in these two complementary books - the first is asking 'what is the Right thing to do?'(see Aragorn's questions to Eomer), the second (following on from what we have learned about power in the first) is asking 'Now we know the right thing to do, how do we find the strength of will to do it.
The 'spirit' of Boromir dominates book 3, that of Faramir book 4. And i think that's why tolkien began book 3 with the Departure of Boromir, rather than ending book 2 with it.
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