Further exploring the placement of Boromir's death.

I'm posting here to try to expand on our discussion of why Boromir's death is where it is.

I think that one of the reasons that Tolkien chose to place Boromir's death at the beginning of Two Towers is to emphasize the increasing seriousness and danger of the story. If Boromir had died at the end of fellowship, it would have made it more of a routine climax at the end of the book type of event, whereas by putting it at the beginning of Two Towers we get this sense of "oh shit, this is happening, and it's only the first chapter? What's going to happen next?"

Of course another reason that we briefly mentioned in class is commercial. Cliffhangers are of course good for book sales, however looking at it again I realized there is foreshadowing, but no clear indication that something is wrong or that anyone is about to die. This makes me think that the cliffhanger aspect is a smaller part of the calculus than I had thought.