Eren is a Crying Child

Ymir in this chapter serves as a parallel for not only both Historia and Mikasa, but also Eren as well. The reason Eren personally reaches out to Ymir so deeply is not because Eren is Ymir’s savior, but because Eren is Ymir. When Ymir stops hiding her eyes and expression and reveals her true face, it’s important to see her for what she is: a crying child.

Which is what the framing of this chapter establishes, that Eren is not a great liberator. He’s not a badass. He’s someone deeply traumatized. His want to destroy the world isn’t about idelogy, he’s lashing out. Eren’s not being strong to become the hero who saves the world, he’s using the idea of his strength to deny his grief and any vulnerable emotion he can show because he thinks that he is not allowed to be weak. Eren tells Ymir that she is a human because those are the words that he most wants to hear. I’ll explain more under the cut.

1. The Cycle of Grief

Eren is fundamentally, down to his core, a child unable to cry or feel his own emotions. Because he believes he has no right to feel those emotions. That he has to push those emotions aside and be strong and fight back against the world at all times or he’ll lose everything. In growing up into someone strong, and forcing himself to always fight back against the world, he has lost a fundamental part of himself that Ymir represents, the child who just wants to cry. Eren is Ymir he is at the same time, crying and making an angry face because he feels so much towards a world that’s continually taken, and taken, and taken from him.

There’s a clear difference between the external goal which Eren does acknowledge, and the internal goal which Eren does not acknowledge. What Eren says he wants is liberation for the world around him, but what Eren seeks inside is his own liberation from the burdens that he’s put on himself.

Eren’s own internal conflict is a parallel for the conflict of the world at large, continually caught in the cycle of war and abuse that seems unending. Eren is also, constantly dealing with grief and loss that he is unable to resolve in any healthy manner of get closer on. Which is why his primary fear is the loss of his friends in the first place, because he cannot handle those feelings at all.

What Eren wants is peace, security, people who love him for who he is weak or strong, the things he had when Carla was still alive. But, he believes he can find those things in fighting. He wants the ability to see an end to the fighting, but Eren is so unable to comprehend something past that he thinks his own salvation is something as extreme as just destroying every single person who could ever fight against him to end the fighting permanently. Because Eren can’t properly see an end to fighting, without more fighting. So even if Eren is right that you do have to fight back, he’s also wrong because fighting back is the only thing Eren knows how to do.

Remember this is also literature, where parallels like that can be made. Eren’s fight against the world is simulatenously a fight against himself. Two classical conflcits, man vs society, man vs self.

Eren “being a badass” is most often him getting angry, and yelling to deny any kind of feelings of grief of remorse he might have, because in a way his mindset is too fragile to process any of those emotions. Yes, he does feel them, he’s obviously upset when his actions lead him to doing things he does not want to do like imprisoning his friends, and killing innocents in war but rather than handle those emotions he pushes them deep down and represses them. Eren is so “strong”, and yet he cannot handle any kind of show of weakness.

In terms of human psychology, Eren represents the grief cycle if he were permanently stuck in stage two, anger. Eren unable to even feel, feelings of loss denies them and gets angry and never once moves past that stage. It’s important to remember where Eren’s character is inspired from.

He’s not an action hero, he’s Shinji Ikari. It’s the same concept, a child is used by a world of adults because he has a special power that enables him to fight back, and he desperately searches for agency despite being stuck in a conflict that he was born into, and a system that continually exploits him as a tool for fighting rather than treating him as a human being.

He has a father who ultimately chooses to keep him distant and not tell him anything in the end (Grisha / Gendo), a mother who is the symbol to him of all the love in the world that he is unable to meaningfully receive ( Carla / Jaeger). The fundamental similiarity between Shinji and Eren even though one is passive (Shinji) and the other is active trying to steal away any meaningful agency and power away he can from the world (Eren) is at their core they are the same, both of them are fundamentally unable to handle this grief in a healthy way and thus they are incapable of meaningfully growing into fully rounded people. Shinji is permanently stuck in stage 3 depression and detachment, and Eren is stuck in stage 2 Anger, and yes Eren’s shows of strength, his anger at the world, his burning resentment and desperate fights for freedom may look cooler but they are fundamentally the same.

There’s no quote from End of Evangelion that better serves as a summary of what Eren says to Ymir in this chapter than this quote too, except, he is missing the second part.

Which is why Eren is ultimately wrong, and has to be wrong. In fighting the ugliness of the world he’s completely forgotten about the beauty. On one hand what Eren says to Ymir is good and right. She deserves to be angry about the world. She deserves to resent the people who have mistreated her. Her emotions, even the negative ones are all valid. She’s still a person after all this time, and her emotions are her own, even if they’re ugly, even if they’re vengeful, even if they’re destructive.

But at the same time Eren has a chance to show a little girl what’s beautiful about the world that’s completely mistreated her, and he tells her to destroy it instead.

Because Eren himself does not know any step in that cycle beyond anger. He does not know any response beyond getting angry at how the world has treated him. He lashes out, but he never has any meaningful closure, or any relief. Eren’s missing out on an oppurtunity to comfort a little girl because he’s lost all sense of comfort for himself.

That’s why Connie interprets what was Eren’s grief stricken face at Sasha’s death at laughter, because for Eren he’s pushed his emotions so far down now he can’t even cry properly when somebody he deeply cared about has died. This is not Eren being strong, it’s him coping terribly. The reason we’re kept out of Eren’s head, why we can’t see his own point of view is because Eren himself is restricting his point of view from the audience. He lies to his friends. He lies to himself. He goes that far, just to deny that what he feels inside isn’t just anger, but also sadness at the world, a want for comfort, etc. etc.

Eren’s feelings for wanting to lash out are completely valid. There’s basically no way to process that insane amount of grief without lashing out. My point is, Eren conceives of no step beyond lashing out, except to such an extreme that if he destroys everything he will somehow make the feelings go away.

He’s not being strong, he’s continually teetering on the brink of suicide because he’s completely forgotten about all of the beautiful things in life and what makes it worth living due to his decision to focus only on the fighting. In the same chapter we see Eren talk about the beauty of always moving forward, we also see the ugly side to it.

The same ideology that Eren must always keep moving forward, is also what drives Reiner to the brink of suicide. Reiner’s not a strong soldier like he pretends to be who fights to the end, he’s a deeply suicidal person who is desperately looking for some reason to live, to keep going.

But what continually pulls Reiner back isn’t the fighting itself, which is what Eren seems to think it is, that his solution lies somewhere in the conflict that he continually throws himself into. It’s the children. The eldian children that surround Reiner and Reiner feels responsible for, the one he wants to save from this conflict, the future that he himself does not have. Which is why Eren killing children is so thematically important, because Eren himself does not see that future.

Eren and Reiner are foils. While Reiner is clearly projecting here and telling Eren that the best thing for them is just to die already, to go to sleep, that that’s the only peace they can achieve in their life. If Reiner feels that way then it’s likely Eren is equally as suicidal as Reiner is. It’s just Eren has an objective that he has to complete, and that’s what is keeping him alive, and keeping him strong.

Also, the point once again Eren has never once beaten Reiner in the series. He lost to him several times over, and the reason why is because Reiner and Eren are the same. They both fight back against the world by denying that they are people and instead trying to conform themselves to some idea, Eren tries to become the ideal of freedom, and Reiner tries to become the ideal soldier. Eren cannot defeat Reiner because he is not any better than Reiner. Hence why, the one to defeat Reiner here is not Eren’s show of determination and strength, but rather his connection to Zeke.

The beauty of connection in a world that Eren only wants to destroy now. Which is exactly the point what Eren seeks is a release. He views the destruction of everything as a release for him, the peace he thinks he can never achieve in life through any other means. It’s the same suicidal mentality that Reiner has, it’s just a double suicide with the world. Eren would rather die a villain hated by the whole world, then try to live as a person with feelings.

Which is why Eren cannot save anyone in a meaningful way right now. He’s given the chance to empathize with Reiner, he’s given the chance to empathize with Zeke, he understands those ideas in his head and that other people have different point of views but ultimately he rejects it in favor of falling back on conflict, because conflict is all he knows. He’s afraid that if he mourns for even a second he’ll break down like Reiner and start begging for death. He sees that as his only two options, either die and be destroyed by the world, or keep moving forward and destroy the world.

2. Eren and Historia - Lashing Out

Lashing out is a part of the cycle of grief. You have to feel your emotions in some way, even if it’s selfish, even if it’s ugly, those emotions are always going to come out no matter how much you repress them. You are ultimately a person with your own emotions even if you deny that. However, if you just lash out with no meaningful resolution, then it’s easy to believe you’ve somehow cleared those emotions out and then just go back to letting them pile up again.

The parallel to Historia is right there. Life is not something that can be lived entirely for the sake of others. Historia is a character who repressed herself entirely, and tried to live completely as a good girl. She was so obsessed with being seen by others, she denied any selfish feelings that she might have. She denied herself as a person and tried to live up to an ideal instead.

Historia imitated the only person who showed her any kind of love, because she thought that was what others wanted from her. Nobody loved HIstoria Reiss the girl, nobody saw her as a person.

Eren udnerstands her because his method of coping is exactly the same. They both deny who they are as people, because so much of their identity is made up of the people around them, they love so deeply that they canont stand to lose them. Historia, and Eren both lost everybody so suddenly in their lives that they’ve never learned to process those feelings of loss.

Historia says it outright, when Ymir the one person who treats her as a person disappeared then Historia completely lost her identity and her sense of what she wants in the world, because she was depending on Ymir for those things and could not find it in herself.

Historia does not have a strong enough sense of self identity to know what she wants. She is like Eren, always putting on masks, always denying herself, and very conscious of the way she appears to others. Which is why Eren does the same thing, but Historia never quite catches onto that. The Eren whose always shouting about wanting to kill all the titans, he’s a fake. That was as fake as Historia’s good girl persona, but Historia herself does not quite understand that.

Eren full of insecurity and doubt, because he knows he’s still that kid who could not do a single thing in front of the titan that killed his mother, he knows he’s still that crying child and he can’t change who he is no matter how hard he tries. Reiner is the person who sees that. Historia fails to make that connection even when Eren sees that connection himself.

Which is why he also tells Historia the thing that he also wants to hear. That it’s alright for him to be normal. Yes, Eren does accept that he’s a normal person in this arc, but he also BACKSLIDES which is a thing in character arcs.

Historia herself is a character who goes through extreme bouts of selflessness followed by extreme bouts of selfishness. That’s what repression does, the more that she puts away her own selfish feelings and tries to live thinking only of others, the more she gets taken advantage of and used, the more those feelings of hurt and resentment pile up. It’s impossible for them not to.

Which is why what she says in this scene is both good and bad. Historia has to lash out because those feelings have to go somwhere, the problem is that after this scene Historia never makes any meaningful change on those feelings.

What Historia wants isn’t ultimately to be a good girl, or god, or even to be the enemy of the world because all three of those are roles to play not being a person. But they are fundamentally stuck in a system that denies who they are as people, and to cope with it Eren and Historia both deny themselves, and it’s a bad habit they fall back on.

Eren cannot save Historia, because Eren himself does not know the step beyond lashing out. He succesfully encouraged her to lash out, but in the most recent arc we see Eren and Historia despite all they have learned falling back on their old patterns. Historia lets herself be used by others as the queen and becomes entirely passive, Eren puts back on his facade that he’s confident and repeats what he said when he was younger to keep him move forward, but instead of destroy all the titans it’s not destroy all of mankind except for us.

Lashing out is soemthing necessary, but it doesn’t solve the problem ultimately. Historia, and Eren are two people who will ultimately backslide into where they find their identity, Historia finds it in living of service to others, and Eren finds it in conflict and war.

3. Eren and Mikasa - The world is Ugly and Beautiful

Once again returning to Mikasa’s lesson, the central theme of the series. That life is relentlessly cruel, but also it is something worth living. That is why there are always two sides of the coin, ugliness and beauty, why everything is far more complicated than simple black and white.

In this scene, Eren encourages Mikasa to fight and that’s important because otherwise they would have died, but lashing out is not the only thing that exists in this scene. Which is why both Eren and MIkasa are having problems remembering it in the future.

Mikasa focuses far too much on the scene afterwards because Eren wrapped the scarf around her. She wants to remember the beauty of the memory, the love she was shown, and not the violence. Because paralleling Historia, if Historia lives for other people, then Mikasa lives for one person which is Eren. Because she ignores her own individual will to live which was always there and is wrapped around the idea that living is living for Eren.

Which is why Mikasa is confronted with Eren’s violence, because it’s something she ignores. She wants to focus on the beautiful parts of Eren without looking at the ugly, and that causes her to idealize him and not see him as his own fully person. Which is Isayama’s point, it’s not one or the other, it’s both you have to understand.

Whereas, Eren himself does the opposite of MIkasa even though it’s a moment they shared together. He forgets the moment that he wrapped the scarf around Mikasa, the moment of resolution and connection afterwards because he thinks what saved her is the violence. He has also forgotten that she needed both, both the violent liberation and the lashing out to affirm her own feelings, but also the connection to another person and the comfort afterwards. Which is why we see Eren give such a meaningful glance at the part of the scene he’s forgotten.

The point being that Mikasa herself is unattaching herself from Eren, and coming along to a much more nuanced version of her feelings towards him due to their confrontation.

So we see the parallel to this scene. Eren liberates a little girl from slavers the same way he did with Mikasa so long ago in the past, and it’s a direct parallel because we are also reminded of this scene again one chapter ago.

However, unlike back then Eren offers her no comfort or connection. He encourages her to lash out with nothing else. He’s seen a girl miserable her whole life and instead of trying to comfort her in any way, he tells her to strike back against the world because that’s all Eren understands anymore.

Once again we see the parallel in how Eren and Zeke treat , but it’s important to remember that Eren is just as bad as Zeke. What they want amounts to the same thing, the complete destruction of a group of people. It’s also important to remember that Zeke and Eren are both themselves, completely unable to see themselves as people.

Zeke was raised as a child soldier, and he was only given birth to in the first place because he was meant to be used in another person’s plan to liberate the Eldians. No matter how he sees himself, either as the one who kills all of the Eldians, or doing what his father wanted him to do and liberate them, he is ultimately never seen as a person. Zeke cannot see Ymir as a person, because Zeke himself is fundamentally unable to see himself as a person. He’s never been treated as one, and in this moment he’s desperate because the father he wanted to acknowledge him finally said he was his own person only to task him with stopping Eren.



Eren is just as bad as Zeke. Eren lost his mother, and his home, sense of security for three years and Eren’s way to deal with that was to do what Grisha did to Zeke, to himself. He denied he was a person in any way in order to deny the feelings of grief that came with the idea that he could lose everything at any moment, as suddenly and violently as he did with Carla. Eren too, is just like Ymir someone who feels like he’s never been free once in his life and therefore his only act of freedom comes in his decision to lash out against everything.

Eren sees himself in Ymir, someone fundamentally unable to be a person because of the sense of responsibility they have towards the world. That is why what he tells Ymir is something he utlimately wants to hear, that she is a person, that she does not belong to anyone.

But, Eren is the same as Zeke. That prevents him from truly sympathizing or saying anything affirming of life towards Ymir. Remember, Ymir is someone who was used and abused as a child. Eren thinks it’s perfectly okay to kill children and use them in that way if you get the end result you want, or at least he’s justified that to himself. He’s telling one girl the way the world treated her was wrong, when he himself has broken children in order to get what he wants.

Eren offers her the right to choose, but it’s very clearly a don’t do what my brother wants you to do, do what I want you to do instead. He says she’s free to choose, but he clearly wants to use her power to lash out against the world

He doesn’t ask her what she wants, he just gives her an alternative. Which is why a beautiful scene of Eren empathizing with a little girl and telling her she does not have to serve others, she has her own emotions, and she’s allowed to be angry at the world for how it ultiamtely mistreated her is also ugly.

Because Eren’s idea of liberation ultimately is just chains under a different name. He’s stuck in a cycle of lashing out in grief that he cannot escape from, nor can he help others get out of. He’s chained to his own emotions of anger, and hatred, because he ultimately is unwilling to let go of them and admit that he’s just like Ymir. That he’s that crying child too.

Eren can keep fighting, but he can’t overcome, and he can’t find any comfort in the world anymore, only more violence. Which is why Eren ultimately can’t save that little girl, only use her in the same way others have used her, use her power to destroy the people he wants to destroy. He an’t show her what is beautiful about the world the same way that he did to Mikasa once. He cannot reach out a hand to her.

Nobody wants me, they can all just die.

Then what is your hand for, Eren?