The next character is Armin Arlert, the narrator of our favorite story!
I wanted to write something worthy of this character’s incredible personality and didn’t want to rush it. I took my time on it, thought about his perspectives deeply and I hope that you will enjoy reading this, that it will make you discover and understand more things about Armin.
When someone is facing most difficulties alone, it’s easy to get drowned in pessimistic thoughts. Armin uses to do this in the story, not seeing himself as someone worthy and brave enough, equal to his friends’ determination and bravery. Armin has a different way of solving and settling things out, a way that not everyone is able understand and follow. Bravery has a deeper meaning than just combat strength and rush actions, not everyone has to be the same and it’s ok not to be the same. Through sadness, you learn, you understand more, it makes you humble, it hurts you deeply yet at the same time it makes you feel alive. Through sadness you are able to understand more about yourself, about others, understand everything around you and see things more clearly. If one is able to control their sadness, they will evoke the deepest complex thoughts and emotions that a man can think and feel.
Armin was more than just an ordinary child, he wasn’t seeing the same things as everyone else did nor hearing the same things as everyone else. Wherever he stepped, the land he was walking on was from different earth that was out of this world. He heard different kind of echoes that others could not hear and his eyes observed different kind of sights that others would not see. A dreamer among realists. With his daydreaming thoughts, he was able to see another kind of world.
Armin is not an ordinary person, he is not the type of hero that most would want to see in this story, he is more than just an ordinary hero. He has a complex mind with overflowing thoughts and emotions, he wants to understand everything around him in a deeper meaning without rushing to judge the situation. Not everyone is able to do that. Brave means to speak with silence. Discipline means to speak with silence. Discipline means to have control of your own thoughts, to be patient, to understand other perspectives and choose wisely the words that you will speak. No matter where you go, you just need patience, it’s all about manner in which you conduct your fight. Armin is a person that lies cannot touch him, he is soft and deserves only trust, as his mind only creates fair thoughts. He doesn’t have the need of using excuses to find justice, for he only speaks words of truth and truth is the biggest example you can tell to someone.
He always dreamed about seeing the Ocean and his personality fairly could be described as various forms and graces of the Sea. Salty blue eyes that constantly observe, just like the Sea that never rests, thoughts endless like the Ocean, thoughts as tides and also thoughts as a calm Ocean with a soft, sweet breeze . The Ocean inspires to discover what lies beyond the invisible, it gives a feeling of self exile, a melancholy, a nostalgia to travel afar, yet there’s always the desire to return to land. That’s who Armin is, a constant wanderer, a constant daydreamer who wants to discover all kinds of new worlds and emotions.
Armin in Shiganshina before facing Bertolt: “If this plan works, I’ll never get my chance to see the Ocean. For some reason, whenever I think about seeing the outside world, my fear fades away.”
How is someone able to sacrifice their own life? How can one take such decision? What is the meaning of a sacrifice? Why, after all this time struggling to survive, someone sacrifices their life? Those who are able to do this, it’s because they understand that they are dying for something worth more than their own lives.
Levi to Armin: “Don’t misunderstand. You could never replace Erwin. But.. it is true that you have a power that no human has.”
A man will never find true peace, unless they find something meaningful in their life, unless they can reach such a high spiritual level, will they find peace. And by spiritual, I mean inner peace.
Armin is able to create that inner peace, he is able to constantly control his mind and reassess his thoughts. Through his experiences he is able to understand others, “So this must be what you saw, Bertolt.” and when someone is able to understand others, he can help cleanse their soul. When someone heals his own soul, he knows how to heal others. Armin is the kind of person that in his mind exist overflowing thoughts as tides, but also, there exist thoughts as an endless calm Sea, soft and warm as a summer’s Ocean wind. He has inside him a weird mixture of nostalgia and sadness that makes him want to live a thousand lives to evoke any kind of emotion that a man can feel, to discover and understand everything that exists. He moves forward with a feeling that he lived for very long, seen so much, even though, he has yet to see. He wanders in different worlds, having only his hands as a pillow, he rests and he is able to dream whatever he wishes to see.
Based on Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan character.
