Why is Melkor so utterly evil??
 

Is there a deep psychological reason why Melkor is so "evil"? [img]smilies/evil.gif[/img] Or is there no explanation? I know this might be a dumb question, I haven't gotten very far on the Silmarilion, yet. I am just curious..........why? [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

well Melkor was the mightiest of the Valar and evil from the start-but Iluvatar said that even the evil contributes to good in the end *direct quote lacking*
I guess the "deep, psychological reason" was that there had to be forces of evil, and what could be more so than the greatest of the powers????

Is there ever a reason? It always strikes me that the so-called 'mightiest' Vala behaves more like a spoiled child, so I reckon it's just the mind not being up to the powers it controls. Classic case of too much too young.

The quote is: For he that attempteth this shall prove mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which himself hath not imagined."

An example of this is when Gollum fell in to the Cracks of Doom. Gollum being the evil thing that he was proved to be the instrument of good in the devising of a very wonderful thing: the destruction of Sauron. Gollum did nopt want to destroy the Ring but that's the way it turned out.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I guess that if Melkor hadn't been evil, we wouldn't have had The Silmarillion [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
I would have been too boring if everyone was happy and lived in peace.

I don't know if many people know but Tolkien was very religious, and although never admitted, the paralellism with the Bible are quite obvious. The ainur are the angels and Melkor is no other than Lucifer, the Devil.

Although, remember that the Valar, although powerful weren't perfect, and they were given the option to follow their own way, only a small part of them (including valar and maiar) went to Ea, and I think that Melkor, being the most powerful of all, thought he should have had a special treatment from Illuvatar, as he didn't, he tried to destroyed everything the other valar created.

Yes that is perfectly correct. The books are totally Christian and have many Biblical parallels.

This is a little much for me. While I agree that there are many opportunities to ascribe Biblical parallelism, I don't think we can conclude that "the books are totally Christian". What does that mean anyway?

If your comment was purely sarcastic, then please ignore this post.

I don't think that he was evil to start with, but he was proud. He sought to create things of his own and order them according to his on ideas, he was wrong to do so but I feel some sympathy for him here. I'm sure that Yoda would have something to say about pride. Something like "Pride leads to Obsession, Obsession leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to Suffering, emmmmmm." Not evil to begin with but his character set him on a road that would lead to it.

Quoth Mhoram: Most of the great 'downfalls' in Tolkien's works can be traced to, if not pride in general, at least to arrogance. Morgoth's pride in himself led to his turn to evil, Gondolin's fall can be traced to the pride of Turgon in ignoring the warning of Ulmo, Nargothrond fell because of their pride in their strength, Smaug was killed because of his arrogance in showing off his 'waistcoat', Saruman's arrogance in attempting to vie directly with Sauron led to his ensarement, the list could go on. It seems that Professor Tolkien firmly believed in 'Pride goeth before a fall'.

I think so too, Melkor was just too proud at the beginning and he became greedy, because he (as the most powerful Vala) wanted the world for him alone and didn´t want to share it with Manwe or the other Valar.
In someway I can understand Melkor really good and in my eyes he´s a tragic person.
He was jealous of Manwe (and the others, too) because he was the mightiest, but the others were treated just like him.
And when he had started feeling jealouse, he soon felt hate and he couldn´t stop it anymore. The others were happy and he grew evil.

There's a great essay that discusses Melkor's motives (and compares them with Sauron's later on) in HoMe X Morgoth's Ring. I wouldn't want to venture to describe it right now though, without the book at hand.