Morgan Burdick
Nic Helms
Rethinking Medieval and Ren Lit
11 December 2023
Have you ever wondered what character you are from an obscure book and scourged the internet for a silly personality quiz only to be disappointed that nobody had made such a quiz? Well, that was me, except there were plenty of versions of this quiz, but none that really stood out to me. So I decided to make my own on a website called Quotev.
If you are curious as to which main character you are in the story (Satan, Adam, or Eve) feel free to take the quiz I made using the link below. The link should bring you to a website page that looks like the screenshot below.
https://www.quotev.com/quiz/16208865/Who-are-you-in-John-Miltons-Paradise-Lost
I looked into a brief history of personality quizzes and was shocked to discover they first originated as a response to World War One Veterans to see who was most likely to suffer from shell shock. (Eben Harrell.) It has since developed over time and the next biggest personality quiz was Myer-Briggs Type Indicator. Most people probably recognize it from MBTI’s. Some examples of these are INFP, ENFJ, ISTP, ISFJ, etc. It was actually really interesting to read the history of personality tests.
My inspirations for this quiz are the silly Buzzfeed personality quizzes (here is the Paradise Lost quiz they did), a few quiz examples from the website I used (here is a quiz I took a lot of inspiration from, although I tried to keep our questions different) and a short summary video that I used to remind myself of the plot and for a bit of character analysis. The short summary video is made by a YouTube account called “Overly Sarcastic Productions.” I find that they do a great job summarizing classic books and stories to a modern audience in a way that isn’t too distracting, but also very lightly informed. So if you want a good grade in a class or you had a hard time following the plot, using their videos may help, but you do actually have to put work into the reading and assignments to get a greater understanding of the text and characters.
Speaking of characters, most of the character analysis I did for this project was my own interpretation of the text. For instance, if you get Eve as your character result, I describe her as feminity incarnate and a small form of an anti-hero. She does what she wants and what she believes is right not really caring about the circumstances. I described Satan as the main character but the antagonist while Adam is more the protagonist and a side character in a way.
When it came to the questions I decided to ask, I used some really basic questions like “What is your favorite time of day?” but others were more obscure like “What do you throw down (playing rock, paper scissors) hoping not to win?” For each question, I made three different answers you could choose from, each one representing a different character from the text. Some of the answers might have been too obvious as to which character is being represented and I think an easy fix for that would be to add more answers for each character. The fun thing about using Quotev is that you can have quiz questions with multiple-choice answers for one character. For instance, say there was a question “What’s your favorite color?” You could choose blue and red for your answers and those answers could represent two different characters or even the same character. I think adding some of those questions and answers would make it less obvious.
I made the format of the quiz very simplistic by having three answers (three characters) for one question, and only having twelve questions. I chose twelve questions because there are twelve Books in Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” At the end of each character description, I decided to add three quotes regarding (or said by) the character you got from the quiz. I thought it would be a nice touch and let the taker of the quiz be aware of what the text is like. If you are curious as to what I wrote for the other characters, you can read the descriptions without taking the quiz again.
At the bottom of the screen, you can click on the character names under Results totals and read the character description. Here is a screenshot of where to click, on the right side of the screen.
I hope you enjoy the quiz and have fun! In the future, I may come back to this quiz (and another I’m making for Global Lit) and make these edits I talked about in this reflection. Thank you for reading and giving the quiz a try if you’re interested.
Works Cited
Harrell, Eben. “A Brief History of Personality Tests.” Harvard Business Review, 14 July 2021, hbr.org/2017/03/a-brief-history-of-personality-tests.
jroberts18. “Which Paradise Lost Character Are You?” BuzzFeed Community, BuzzFeed, 6 Jan. 2017, http://www.buzzfeed.com/jroberts18/which-paradise-lost-character-are-you-2dfqv.
Kit. “Are You A Solider, A Poet, Or A King?” Quotev.Com, Nov. 2023, http://www.quotev.com/quiz/16160930/Are-you-a-Soldier-a-Poet-or-a-King.
Overly Sarcastic Productions. “Classics Summarized: Paradise Lost.” YouTube, 8 Feb. 2016, youtu.be/-NMDtsPgfD0?si=znBdmeQ7XuiMuRTy.
Sprockets and Springes 