Eren is Free
New video essay up now on my channel
Eren Yeagar refers to himself as a “slave to freedom” in the finale of Attack on Titan, and that seemed to be upsetting for a lot of people. And in isolation, it does read as a truism: it sounds deep, but on it’s own, it’s really a thought-cancelling cop out that gives the speaker license to bow out of answering a question.
But while I don’t love this line because it does kind of share that cadence of being a vacuous, “really-makes-you-think,” platitude, it is getting at a truth that Eren’s entire arc is trying to working with. Whether you approve of the term ‘slave’ being used in this context, and whether you find the use of an oxymoron confusing or frustrating, this is an expression of Eren’s tragedy that is backed up by the text of the show.
Eren is a special kind of determinator archetype that actually doesn’t idolize this kind of person. Eren’s determination isn’t lovable and puppyish: it’s clearly poisonous to him and everyone around him. There is very little happiness to be found in Eren’s compulsive need to fight. His desire to leave the walls isn’t driven by an active curiosity for the world, nor even by a principled notion that all people ought to be free, but by an desire to be free of danger. That an empty world without threat is his birthright.
And this drive turns against itself. Eren becomes a metaphor for life itself, and it’s a rather dark image.
This is what I really love about the ending of Attack on Titan. Eren becomes so much more than a character in the story — really morphing into a primordial concept that the rest of the characters need to face. Every character’s story is brought to a breaking point thanks to him. It’s hard for me to say that the story even comes to any conclusions ideologically: Eren is no longer a protagonist that gets to make a good or bad decisions. Instead, the show fractures off in dozens of directions so that each character has to reckon with the ideas he provokes. For me, this doesn’t feel like a thematic statement being addressed, because it can’t be addressed. Attack on Titan is about how life is fundamentally violent and brutal, and there is no answer to that. It’s just horrible. It’s a lament.
Eren is the furthest reach of Ymir’s intention: her Will to Power. The purpose for her unending life. The two of them were fated to mark the beginning and end of the age of titans. But this fate isn’t bound to some external sense of inevitability, it’s a natural consequence of who these two people are. The “future memories” that the Attack Titan experiences is a pretty poignant expression of that: Eren doesn’t just have visions of the future: he pushes the information he wants his predecessors to have into their minds.
Ymir, as Zeke notes, creates the first Titan out of nothing but a natural desire to live.
Like what you see? Check on the full video for more!
