Eren Yeager: A Man of Contradictions

Eren may be one of the most polarizing fictional characters in history. Anyone who has read the manga/watched the anime have extremely strong feelings on Eren Yeager. While some peoples’ opinions on him have remained consistent, many have had their opinions evolve over the years. Some people started hated him, then started liking him after the time skip, only to go back to hating him after the ending, while others liked him from the beginning but did not like how his character arc ended. My own opinions about how his character arc ended has evolved. Attack on titan in general inspires a ton of discourse, but especially with Eren and the story’s ending. The purpose of this analysis is to dissect what is going on in his head during key events and how it all led up to him doing the rumbling.

            One of the things that must be understood about Eren are his three goals. They are to destroy the titans, have all his friends live a long life and be seen as heroes by the rest of the world, and to be able to see the world that he always dreamed of seeing while destroying everything outside Paradis and creating a clean new slate. It is perfectly shown in chapter 130 of the manga. However, there’s a problem. Some of those goals contradict with each other, and that is where much of Eren’s inner conflict lies. Some of his goals need to be compromised in order for him to achieve all his goals. There’s a sort of paradox about how Eren goes about in accomplishing his goals. The more he’s trying to do, the more he has to adhere to his memories to his past and future in order to achieve what he wants. That is what enslaves him. He has free will, but he is a slave to his own flaws and desires which is compounded by his contradictory goals and his own misgivings about what he is about to do. While many of his friends do survive, Sasha and Zoe die because of him. Also, while his friends are hailed as heroes and the outside world is severely weakened due to the rumbling, the island of Paradis’ future is not completely secure like he wanted. However, he does give his home a fighting chance since the rest of the world will need to recover and build themselves back up before they even think about resuming their conflict with Eldia. However, since he’s dead he has to put his faith in his friends that they will be able to negotiate peace between Edlia and the rest of the world. The only thing Eren was sure of that would happen due to his actions would be that the Titan curse would be ended. Since the Attack Titan sees the future, the fact that Eren was not able to see beyond the events that transpired at the end of the story he knew that somehow his actions would end the titan curse. One of my favorite monologues from Eren is when he meets Falco for the first time in Marley. He talks about how those who willingly push themselves towards hell do it because they see something beyond that hell. It could be an even bigger hell or something else. Eren says that the only way to find out is to keep moving forward. That is exactly what Eren did. Despite all his internal conflict, despite hating himself and all that he has done/will do, and despite not fully knowing he will succeed, Eren kept on fighting to the very end because that is all that he knows. While much of his reasoning was selfish, and we will get to that later, he continued for the hope that the titan curse will finally end and that his friends will create a better future. Now I have heard from some that he gave up and let his friends win. I disagree. True, he gave his friends a fighting chance and allowed the titan shifters to continue to transform, but he certainly did not go easy on them. He gave them the ultimatum to either kill him or let him destroy the world. Even after Levi killed Zeke and Armin blew up Eren’s founding titan body, he changed himself into a colossal titan and attempted to connect to the worm thing that gave Ymir her powers all those years ago. He trusted his memories and continued to go on his path despite how much it destroyed him inside.

            Now I don’t want it to seem like I’m calling Eren a good guy. He is definitely a villain. He knows he is in the wrong but still does it anyway. He told Armin that if they didn’t stop him, he would have destroyed the world. However, it should be noted that he also wanted to be stopped. If the only thing he truly cared about was his own freedom he could have just prevented the titan shifters from transforming. The alliance, and most importantly Mikasa, would not even be able to get near Eren much less than kill him if that were the case. Something I have not heard people mention is that if somehow the alliance did fail and Eren did kill everyone outside Paradis Island is that he would not be able to regenerate. We see in chapter 131 that he is still just a head after having it get shot off by Gabi, even though he does have the ability to regenerate for himself a new body. If the alliance failed, he would spend his remaining four years as just a head. Regeneration for a titan is tied to their mental state. Eren is so guilt ridden and horrified that he doesn’t even have the willpower to regenerate. So why does he do the rumbling? Yeah, he does it to stop the titan curse and save his friends, but he admits he still have done it anyway even if he didn’t know if his friend would stop him Why would he put himself through so much agony, knowing that it will ultimately not satisfy him and it will leave him just an empty shell of what he once was. Again, it’s that eternal clash between Eren’s desires. Selfishness vs. selflessness. Eren’s desire to protect his friends and rid the world of the titan curse which has brought him and many others so much misery, vs his desire to claim what he feels is his birthright, ever since his father told him he was free. It is a very primal desire to be able to enjoy his freedom untethered. His desire itself is not evil. Everyone should be able to live freely without the world telling them that they shouldn’t even exist. However, destroying the world means destroying countless innocents as well, people who deserve to be free as well. Eren takes countless people’s freedom away so he can have his own twisted version of freedom.

            There has always been a discussion about nature vs. nurture. Some say that people are the way they are because that is in their nature, and others say it is because of their environment. I believe it is a combination of both, especially with Eren. We can go all the way back to when Eren saved Mikasa and killed her kidnappers. Now granted, those people were awful and deserved to die. But Eren, despite being just a little kid, killed them without even blinking. He killed them with no remorse and had no trauma from having committed such a violent act. He has always been a little deranged. But I don’t think he was a total psychopath. For instance, he never tried to kill the kids who were bullying Armin. He fought them, but if he went in with the same mindset when he saved Mikasa from her kidnappers, they would have been history. Eren had a huge capacity for violence but had some sort of restraint. That is where the nurture comes in. Eren was put in a terrible position. He grew up in a bleak world. He, and others, put all of their hopes in defeating the titans and finally being free only to then learn that there was a whole world outside their walls, and they wanted them dead, with the titans themselves being Eldians. That revelation would mess anyone up, and it certainly does mess Eren up. It gets even worse when he touches Historia’s hand and sees all his future memories. Knowledge can sometimes be a curse, and it certainly is in this case. Power can also be curse. I’ve heard plenty of times that power corrupts, and more recently I heard a quote from some video I watched a while ago that power doesn’t corrupt but it reveals. I believe that in Eren’s case it lies somewhere in between. His godlike power and memories of his future brings out his most self-destructive tendencies. As Reiner once said, Eren is the worst person for that kind of power to be given to. He’s seen so much darkness and bloodshed that he just wants to get rid of the currently existing world and start anew. However, he knows that to do it he’s going to have to kill many innocent people to do it. Eren values freedom and life, so him snuffing out so many peoples’ lives go against his values. It’s a constant turmoil he goes through right to the very end. One of the biggest examples is when he saves a boy named Ramzi from a couple of adults, even though he knows he will eventually kill him. Despite this knowledge, Eren finds himself unable to walk away and instead saves the boy. When he is slaughtering countless people through the rumbling, he reverts himself to a child in order to go through with it.

            Humans are by nature contradictory. We often have competing desires. Whether we desperately seek connection but are also solitary and like being alone, or we want to be a star player for a team in a sport we play but get nervous to be put into the game. We often get mad at others for things we do to others, and half the time we don’t even realize it. It is also in our nature to be self-destructive. Many people want to be good. We want to be there for our loved ones, we want to be selfless and be the best we can be. But whether it’s our own selfishness clashing with our desire to be selfless or whether we have addictions that we have difficulty overcoming, we often find ourselves falling short. That has always been true about humanity, which includes Eren Yeager and the rest of Attack on titan’s characters in general. As stated earlier, Eren’s power is basically a curse. Eren says that he was unable to change but the truth is with his ability to see in the past future and present he never gives himself a chance. He exists in the past, present, and future all at once. He manipulated events so he would be able to go on the path he goes. Without his interference, the smiling titan would have eaten Bertholt instead of his mother and Armin would never get the colossal titan’s powers, his father would not have killed the Reiss family and stole the founding titan’s power, and Ymir would have gone with Zeke’s euthanization plan. He does all of this, which in turn traumatizes the young Eren, all to get to the rumbling which will end the titans. He moves through time to get that point. Future Eren, past Eren, and present Eren are all meshed together to accomplish his desires. He practically traumatizes his younger self continuously. There is a famous saying from Friedrich Nietzsche about if you gaze long enough into the abyss the abyss will gaze right back at you. Eren basically bellyflops into the abyss. He puts himself through so much trauma and pain for the hope that his loved ones will be able to live long lives and the titan curse will be ended. It all could have gone wrong. His friends could have all died in which the titan would still remain after Eren died. But Eren saw that there was no future Attack Titan so he moved forward and made himself a villain to his friends, hoping that his friends will succeed. I’ve always acquainted Eren’s actions to be a prolonged suicide. In all of fiction this is probably one of the biggest instances of self-harm I’ve seen.

            One thing I have noticed people say is that Eren never changed, and some have said that in a negative way. I disagree. Now in many Eren does remain the same. But as the seasons go you do see Eren start to change for the better. Take his relationship with Mikasa for example. Early on he feels inferior to her and is annoyed at her overprotectiveness. He yells at her quite a lot in season 1. However, after the finale of season 2, which we will get to in a bit, I don’t think he yells at her again and starts to treat her better. Granted, there is that infamous scene where he tells her he hates her, and while he was definitely wrong, it is made abundantly clear, especially in the anime, that he was talking out of his butt. He also becomes less insecure at her being a better scout than he is. He even lets go of his hatred of Reiner, though it is partially because Eren realizes he is no better than him. He was on the right track until he touched Historia’s hand and then it all went downhill from there.

            Whenever people talk about their favorite moment from Eren they talk about the paths episode in which he manipulated his father Grisha to kill the royal family. While it is a powerful scene and it shows the extent of Eren’s darkness and ruthlessness, my favorite moment of his happens earlier. That moment happens in the season 2 finale episode Scream, which is also my favorite episode. It is when Eren says to Mikasa that he will wrap her scarf around her as many times as she likes, and then protects her from the smiling titan. If the paths episode represents his darkest side, this episode represents his best side. It goes back to when they first met. Yes, Eren ruthlessly killed those criminals without a second thought, but afterwards he gave Mikasa his scarf and offered her a home. He will burn the whole world down to achieve his view of freedom. He will also burn the world down and sacrifice himself and his dream if it means that Mikasa will be ok. In darkness there is light, and in light there is darkness. The former applies to Eren. Despite all his darkness and the hell that he has put himself and others through, there is still humanity there. That has always been who Eren is to me.

Authors Note: Eren is a character I have been wanting to talk about for a long time. There were so much other aspects of his character I wanted to talk about, such as some of the dynamics between him and other characters. I also wish he appeared more in the manga and anime after the time skip, but that is a conversation for another day. Hopefully I will be able to talk about the aspects that weren’t included in this analysis for future analysis’ or do an addendum. Hopefully y’all enjoy this analysis.