Did You Get The Paths Idea From Madoka?!

What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.

T.S. Eliot, from section I of “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets (Mariner Books, 1968)

Attack on Titan The Final Season Part 2 - Official Main Trailer

Part 2 of Attack on Titan: The Final Season will premiere on January 9, 2022.

Eren’s Path

I just noticed the parallel between these scenes.

When faced with an outcome as horrible as the Rumbling, most other characters try to think back to a point where they could have gone down a different path or where the trouble originated from. Eren even briefly does this.

But he not only refuses to consider other possibilities, he even rejects the utility of retrospecting in the first place. To Eren, the Rumbling happening is not a problem of the right choice or the circumstances that shaped it, it's just about who he is and his "primitive desire".

So I guess in Eren's mind, the Rumbling was an existential dilemma. So long as he exists he will surely bring ruin to the world, so is it better to never have been born? Or take away his life? He couldn't possibly do so after Historia and Carla's lessons.

So he tried to change the world by facing judgement through death for his actions, or as @jeanandthedreamofhorses said, he tried to use this inherent ‘evil’ to make the world better, by gearing his desires towards their own self destruction.

But it seems to me that a curse, no matter the good brought about by it, remains a curse, 80% percent of humanity is too great a price to pay for the end that was reached, but Eren and the Alliance were at least able to prevent total extinction, and no matter when, Eren was able to temper his desires. So he may have brought about a great amount of suffering, but his final acts contain seeds of good in them.

I don’t think it’s fair to characterize Eren in such a way. It should be noted that Eren’s friends had also failed on multiple occasions to show him respect by ignoring blatantly obvious sides of him. At the ocean he questions omnicide and his friends simply ignore it, at the meeting about Zeke he brings up omnicide again and his friends just pretend it didn’t happen, then in Marley he’s obviously sad, scared and disassociating at times and once again they ignore his problems. His friends and the Survey Corps were also way too open to possibilities, it’s precisely because of their idealism that they’re in this situation in the first place. Eren has definitely made mistakes in relying too much on himself, but the SC is just as guilty in their openness to possibilities and their faith in peace, Isayama says so himself, “Peace cannot be achieved by ideals alone, how many sacrifices must be made to pave the path to peace?”. So it’s wrong to characterize them as being so respectful and loving to Eren when they deliberately ignored parts of him that they didn’t want to see.

 On top of this you say Eren overestimates his strength and abilities but with Reiner in the basement he tells Falco that he saved him by delivering  the letter, he genuinely acknowledges that the Raid was impossible without the help of the Survey Corps, and it should be noted in the way he looks at Mikasa that he’s very emotional inside about what he has brought them to do.

 And you’re disregarding the fact that he still had enough faith in his friends to entrust them with the task of stopping him, the destructive side of Eren is a side that can’t be tamed, so Eren antagonizes them later to create enough distance for them to be forced to acknowledge that side of Eren and make the decision to cut it down. He may not trust them as much as he did before, and he should have used a more tame and allied method of sublimating those desires, but at it’s core his faith in his friends still exists and Eren doesn’t overestimate himself so much as what he does is the only way he knows how to act.

Eren the Slave

There’s a common misconception in the fandom that Eren’s turn in the final arc from hero to antagonist is due to character development. This is from a belief that Eren as a character, believes in freedom and therefore has been carrying that idea on his shoulders the entire time. 

There’s a confusion between the narrative which Isayama sets up for Eren which is told from a third point of view and therefore is objective, and Eren’s own personal narrative which is composed of Eren’s own personal thoughts and feelings. Basically in any story these two things will coexist and push and pull against each other, narrative the way the world sees the character and reacts to them and personal narrative the way the character sees themselves. Eren’s conception of himself is a one man army fighting for the freedom, and willing to become the enemy of the whole world in order to do it but just because a character believes that about themselves does not necessarily mean that it is true. 

The following post is a discussion of Narrative Identity that is a theory that postulates individuals for an identiy by integrating their life experiences into an internalize,d evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life. The narrative is a story, it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots and themes which means the events taking place in it have to have meaning. 

Eren is a slave of many things, including narrative, and because of his own personal narrative he cannot change. Eren isn’t a character who has changed, moreas he’s a character we’ve had our perspective of him change as the story progresses and widens it perspective which is still development. All character development requires some kind of change or movement on the character’s part, but it doesn’t mean their characters themselves have to change, because the reader’s perspective on them can be what develops instead. 

So underneath the cut: Eren’s current development is about his failure to change, which makes him the least free character in the manga. I suggest reading my Eren and Reiner meta as a precursor to this. 

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I think both Eren and the 104th(Alliance) act in reaction to 1). The only difference is in their approach. The Alliance wants to end the cycle of violence through mutual understanding *and* getting the children out of the forest, while Eren wants to end it by crushing the opposition underfoot.

You don't seem to acknowledge that getting the children out of the forest is a direct response to ending it, for if the new generations aren't afflicted or can learn from the past mistakes it can pave a way for the cycle to collapse momentarily.

Of course, the cycle can never be truly destroyed and the forest will remain immanent but our efforts to resist it can bear fruit, even if it doesn't last. That's where beauty can shine forth in this cruel world.

Do you believe the full rumbling goes against the theme of “getting kids out of the forest?”

No, because Armin & Co. represent that side of the argument.

Mr Braus says two things: 1) He laments the continuation of the cycle of violence, and 2) He argues that the most important thing is to keep children out of it. Eren acts in reaction to 1), and the 104th act in reaction to 2).

Rather than just having the main character straightforwardly represent the moral message of the series, it's more interesting to explore the unresolvable contradictions within that moral message - that's what would have been the case if Eren and the 104th had truly been opposed. Eren would have fought to end the cycle at the cost of children's lives, and the 104th would have fought to preserve children's lives even if meant that the cycle will continue.

Of course, Eren's capability of truly ending the cycle is often brought into question - but this only adds further nuance to the series.

“ If other people are going to steal my freedom... i’m going to steal theirs “

T w i t t e r: sucubuss_art