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Abstract
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, doom can denote statutes and decrees, legal or personal judgments, the act of judging, justice, fate and "irrevocable destiny," and death ("final fate"). [...]often impHcit in the notions of fate and doom is a sense of death. [...]after ArPharazôn breaks the Ban of the Valar and sets foot on the coasts of Aman- an act guaranteeing the destruction of the Isle of Numenor- we learn that Elenchi and his sons Isildur and Anárion "fled before the black gale out of the twilight of doom into the darkness of the world" (336). Fate and doom are key players throughout The Silmarillion, but as can be seen in Germanic texts such as the Heliand or Beowulf, they ultimately fall in accord with the will of Húvatar. 1 The Heliana is a lesser known literary work of the Germanic world, and it was commissioned by Louis the Pious (778-840) in an attempt to convert the Saxons to Christianity It contains 6,000 lines of alliterative verse (similar to Beowulf) telling the story of the Christian gospels in a Germanic linguistic and cultural framework understandable to the Saxons.