Why is Melkor so utterly evil??

[Mankáno]

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.