Let’s talk about the life of a Titan from Shingeki no Kyojin
(Found on the Facebook page L’Attaque des Titans France)
Since the chapter 87, readers know that Titans are in fact humans from a special ethnic group : the Eldians, who are deported and turned into monsters by Marleyans. But why ?
Eldians are born in a world traumatised by centuries of Eldia’s domination. So they have to pay all their life for mistakes they didn’t comit. They carry a cursed legacy which causes them hatred and mistreatments. They bear poverty, discriminations, violences. They have no right to protest. They deal with propaganda which learns them to hate themselves and their ancestry, so they don’t even have the right to be proud or to have self-esteem.
And what if they try to rebel ? They are arrested, tortured, humiliated and finally deported, which means they are turned into titans, without any hope to be human again one day. So it’s a choice to make : bear your wretched life or beware…
And as titans, they even lose their bodily integrity, because they cannot control themselves anymore. They are only starving monsters unable to talk, to think, they’re always naked, they lose their genitals, it’s basically regression in all the fields of a civilization. All they can do is wander and eat humans from Survey Corps, who consequently see them as monsters and oppressors. Some of those cursed people are killed under their titan form after a tragic life, it’s so pointless.
And the worst part of this horror is that they may still remain conscious. From what Ymir said to Bertholt, she was feeling like she was stuck into a never-ending nightmare. And we still have the exemple from the titan who ate Ilse Langner : this titan was from Ymir’s cult, and when it found Ilse, who looks like Ymir, this titan resists to the need to eat her and bows to her, just like he did when he was human. It seems it still has memories from its past.
So, maybe it depends on the individual. But we may guess that titans still have a consciousness unable to control their body, still have memories from their poor life, and see themselves trying to eat humans. They were considered as monsters in the continent, and they are in deed monsters on Paradise Island.
And now, let’s think about two little guys : Sawney and Bean
We don’t know the story of the humans they were before their deportation, but we have no reason to think they had another fate than the one we just described. But even though they are experience subjects, just keep in mind that they were probably partially conscious when Hanji :
Talked to them just as we talk to humans…
…gave them a name (and names are proper to society, civilization, so it renders them more human)…
… shook hands with them (another way to humanize them)…
…and cried when she hurted them (showing empathy to them).
Back then, we and other characters were all thinking the same thing : “Haha, Hanji’s a weirdo, she’s treating this monsters better than humans like Moblit”, and it made us laugh. But man !
Sawney and Bean are not their true name, but somewhere inside this titans, there is two anonymous Eldians who spent their life being hated by the world, maybe hating themselves, or struggling for basic rights. And they both ended being arrested, deported and turned into monsters. Never in all their life they got neither respect nor kindness, and then, there’s this weirdo…
… who appears from nowhere and gives them name while they’re trying to eat her and her comrades !!
Hanji has been the first one and the last one in all their life who actually treated them as persons, who gave them a chance, who did not judge them, and this, while they were man-eating monsters.
And while we were all thinking Isayama was creating an odd comic relief, he was already showing how good and kind and open-hearted and visionary Hanji was ! She foresaw, maybe unconsciously, that titans weren’t only monsters, and she gave them what they needed all their life : basic consideration.
And this is another proof that Hanji isn’t only a mad scientist, but that Isayama wanted her, since day one, to embody values like pure kindness, tolerance, selfless interest, curiosity, abnegation, protection of the weak ones, love, this character is pure love, she was written to be pure love, never forget this ! When she’s fighting, she’s fighting people who freely made choices to take freedom away from weaker ones, like Military Police, Kenny’s men, warriors shifters, jaegerists ! She just wants everyone to have the chance to make choices, to be judged by what they intentionally did, not who they are. And this is maybe the best thing we can wish to anyone : to be free to make your own choices without being limited by your random and meaningless birth’s conditions. This was what the Survey Corps was fighting for.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Hanji Zoe.
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
areudirty
izzy806
gummygunk
