Thereās a lot of talk going on in the fandom about Eren in the latest chapters. And, as all my regular readers know, Eren is hands down my favorite character. So I decided to weight in.
The thing about Eren is that even from the beginning he had a bigger picture in mind.
Sure, these are the words of a child who does not yet fully understand the world around him. But if we fast forward just a little to Trost, Iād like to bring up one of my favorite soliloquies of Erenās as itās been such an awfully long time since itās happen:
Armin: Why did you want to go to the outside world, Eren?
Eren: When weāre bornā¦all of usā¦are free. People who reject that, no matter how strong they areā¦donāt matter. The burning water, the land of iceā¦anything will do. Anyone who saw those thingsā¦would be the freest person in the world. Fight!! Whoād value their lifeā¦ over something like that? It doesnāt matter how terrifying the world is. It doesnāt matter how cruel the world is. Fight!! Fight!! FIGHT!! (Vol 4, Ch 14)
Eren is the type of person who, at his core, believes in an ideal of freedom for all. Yes, this is before he knows the truth about the walls and Paradis. Letās fast forward again.
Right there, see it? At the bottom of the page, Erenās reaction to Willyās statement: He hears the beginning of his own beliefs in Willyās wordsā¦
ā¦And he is let down in that small hope that maybe he will not have to go through with his plan after all, that someone else in the world may be on the same page as he.
Erenās entire conversation with Reiner is just SO POIGNANT. As Iāve sat here writing this, I keep wanting to just copy paste the entire conversation into this post. I implore you, go back and read Eren and Reinerās full exchange in Chapter 100. Iāve painstakingly pulled out the bits that are most important to my point.
Eren: Willy Tybur is right. Iām the bad guy. I might just destroy the world. But you looked like bad guys to me, tooā¦. Why did you destroy the wall?
Reiner: ā¦My missionā¦.
Eren: What was that mission?
Reiner: ā¦to retake the Founder. Our goalā¦was to save the worldā¦
Reviewing this conversation breaks my heart a little, I mean look at his expression. Its a mixture of sadness and regret. Eren finally gets it. He started as a character with this solid idea of right and wrong, black and white, as Iāve written about before. His journey has been one of learning that the world is actually grey.
Heās reached a conclusion that Reiner was never truly able to reconcile in his own mind. Reiner had to create a different persona in order to cope with this reality. And, really, thatās perhaps Reinerās end goal was always a personal goal to cover his own ass in the first place. By the time they got to the Walls, Reiner was fighting for himself. Annie got it, but had her own motivations and followed those through to the end of her plot. We now know she fought for her father.
Eren, just like Annie, realizes he must follow his motivations through to the end. Because heās not fighting for himself. He is still fighting for the ideals he started this story with, he just now understands the sad realities of war and what happens when parents lay their sins upon their children. Eren, I believe, fights for the freedom of Paradis and the people inside the Walls, just as he did in the beginning. As quoted in an earlier post, āHe who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monsterā.
Consider: If Eren had chosen not to rampage here, Marley would have come to Paradis anyway. The war would have been fought anyway. Innocents inside the Walls would have died instead. I cheer for Eren because he chooses to be the bad guy, the monster, in order to protect whom he loves and cares about. Which, I now think, is another major overarching theme of Snk: Those who fight for themselves vs those who fight for others. The Self vs The Whole.
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