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.

1. Eren has not Changed

Character arcs in Attack on Titan are very longform in general characters change gradually over time instead of all at once. Which is why Eren’s ‘change’ after the timeskip seems so dramatic and abrupt at first. Until you compare him to the other characters, Jean is still angry but part of him likes Eren and is trying to be a decent person in the middle of a warzone therefore a foil to Eren, Armin is still hesitant and caught between taking the steps to make his lofty ideals a reality and the people around him, Mikasa still wants to believe in Eren while at the same time vying for her own independence.

We see stagnation in other characters and yet such a pronounced change in Eren. Which is exactly the point, Eren is no different from his friends he is too stagnating on all of his worst instincts that have been set up from the beginning of the manga and he has been given moments to learn better several times.

The people who are commenting that Eren has changed are also the same people who had an idealized, almost narrative viewpoint of him in the first place. It’s not that Armin stopped understanding him, it’s that Armin the dreamer, chose to see the best in Eren rather than the worst. Jean even says so he was so damn cool.

Attack on Titan has talked about special people and narrative several times. While the idea of special people does not exist, people still get swept up in narrative and compelled by it because they want to be. Jean is just a normal guy, and yet he’s caught up in the idea of Eren being a special person that he both envies and admires him at the same time because he wants to be like Eren.

It’s not Eren himself has changed, but rather the perspective of the characters around him. Which is why the two most important characters to Eren both experience the same thing, a recollection of their romanticized past with him shown in it’s actual light. Eren seriously remarking that if they destroy all the enemies on the other side of the ocean that they will finally be free. Eren brutally killing two people in front of Mikasa, and not even seeing them as human beings just dogs who lost their right to humanity. They both also react the same way, in deial about this reality at first.

To believe Eren is strong, that he represents something, that he carries tremendous ideals on his shoulders, that he fights for something other than the sake of fighting is to fall for Eren’s own personal narrative the same way Armin and Mikasa have.

As the story has changed the perspective of the world for each character has broadened, characters have slowly been sliding their own perspectives as well to make up for this scale, except for Eren. The reason Eren has seemed that he’s changed is that he hasn’t, his stagnation is so great that it’s at odds with scale of the story and the perspective of other characters besides those on the island that we now understand. In a story that is now about people on both sides of the conflict, Eren views things as similiar as he did at the start of the story, he is still one man fighting to destroy all of the other titans in the world.

Yes, Eren does understand that there are other people on the side of the conflict that are suffering the same way he has, but at the same time his actions always directly contradict his words. What is most important are his choices, not the lip service he pays to other people. But to illustrate this point and further show who Eren is and what he’s refused to change from let’s go back to the two most important moments in his arc where he could have changed.

The first is with Mikasa, the second with Armin, almost like they’re the two most important people to his arc or something.

Faced with Dina’s titan after just being rescued from Eren and Reiner, Eren screams at how he’s failed to become any stronger, despite joining the scouting corps, despite being given a special power that helps him transform here he is watching helplessly again as the titan that devoured his mother is about to devour him and Mikasa.

Here is where Eren’s true beliefs of himself shine forth. Eren doesn’t perceive himself as someone strong, or even a fighter. Deep down he knows that he’s just a weak little kid that did nothing but watch as his mom died, and he hates that about himself. Eren’s biggest battle isn’t external, it’s not about fighting against other people, it’s always been about fighting against himself. He perpetually views himself as inferior and weaker to other people around him and not in control of his own life at all, so in order to fight against that he grasps desperately for any kind of freedom and agency he can have.

Eren is right when he says he’s always had a conflict against Mikasa for a long time, as much as he cares about her, but he also completely lies about the reason for it. It’s not that she acts like a slave, in fact it has nothing to do with Mikasa it’s entirely Eren’s own personal feelings of inferiority. He believes Reiner and Mikasa are capable of doing things he cannot. That they are the special ones whereas he is a brat who is all talk. He hates Mikasa because when she tries to protect him, when she tries to stay with him, she makes him feel weak being around her. Eren’s ideal world is one where fighting all alone he could accomplish anything he wanted, and win his one man war against the titans. Literally, relying on anybody else, or the idea that he has to rely on someone even someone who has always been there for him since childhood contradicts the one man war or one man hero narrative.

Eren’s real view of himself is a worthless person who is all talk and cannot do a single thing, especially when it’s important like when he needed to protect his mother. Eren believes he is not enough, not enough for anybody, and not enough for himself, which is what prevents him ultimately from being able to connect to anybody. Eren’s strongest driving force is not his strength, or his determination, ultimately it’s his inferiority. He has grand aspirations specifically because Eren views himself as someone insigificant, and he’s so desperate to be anything other than a helpless victim, to have his life mean something. Which is why what Mikasa says in this scene to him is so important.

What Mikasa says to him in this moment is that he is enough. Eren’s always been enough for her, not because he showed up and killed those bandits for her, not because he freed her, but because he reached out to her in a moment when she was alone.

The simple act of wrapping his scarf around her, a show of affection, meant more in the world than all of his attempts to be strong and fight on his own. She likes Eren because he was there for her in a moment of vulernability, it’s all to do with showing weakness, and supporting each other, all of these things that have nothing to do with strength. And we see Eren refuse Mikasa’s attempt at intimacy almost violently by shoving her off, and make a promise that we eventually see him break later. Because in the end, even if someone tells him exactly what he wants to hear, that he was enough for them, that their lives were meaningful because they had each other, Eren will always default to his narrative of strength and survival giving meaning over everything else.

The second lesson that Eren learns but refuses to learn is once again when he almost loses Armin in a similiar situation. It brings about a moment of shocking honesty and self awareness from Eren.

Eren admits he forgot about the ocean, and all this time he’s only been fighting for his own personal hate. That he believes he’s not someone capable of doing anything other than fighting.

It’s also Eren’s revelation that this is exactly why he was going to lose Armin in the first place. Armin feels worthless and does not believe himself to be an asset, and because of that he came up with a plan to sacrifice himself for Eren’s sake. Eren is completely devastated not only by this, but also by the fact that he did not make Armin understand his true feelings, that he always saw Armin as an equal, that he’s always believed Armin to be better than him. Eren neglects to make his friends understand the emotional value they have to him, and then he almost loses them, it’s a pattern throughout the series. This is where Eren realizes he needs something other than fighting in order to live. He needs to have something in his heart other than hatred. And this is also, a lesson he promptly ignores.

Then, Eren once again says something that he is going to directly contradict later to show how he hasn’t changed. Eren calls him soft and makes him seem like a coward and second guess himself. He literally uses Armin’s own biggest insecurity against him as a way to sabotage him and make it harder for Armin to stand against him. When we know Eren thinks the opposite, that Armin is brave and that his ability to see past fighting makes him even stronger than Eren.

Eren also directly goes out of his way to destroy the moment of him wrapping the scarf around her, which contradicts his promise that he would always wrap it around her again as many times as he needed it too.

And in doing that he emphasizes once again, that he still is driven by the same hatred he has ever since he was a kid. Eren says it over and over again, since I was a kid, since I was born. Eren’s struggle is not against a world that refuses to change. Eren’s struggle is against his own self that refuses to change, he tries to change the world because he believes he is broken in a way that he cannot be fixed. Which is why ultimately this scene ends with Armin speaking the truth.

What’s so good about the freedom that Eren is apparently willing to die, or go to war with the whole world for, if he uses that freedom to hurt Mikasa? Eren’s way of protecting his own friends is to go out of his way to sabotage them, and limit their freedom to make them unable to act on their own. How is that any different from enemy forces hurting his own friends? Eren’s version fo protecting is to break Armin and Mikasa’s legs because he is so afraid of losing them he does not want them to be able to walk on their own or even make choices seperate from what he wants for them. How is that strength to protect his friends? It’s weakness. Eren is most likely not doing this because he wants to, but he believes he has to. He has to make Armin and Mikasa hate him in order for them to stay out of conflict and in the safety zone, because that is what he wants for them.

How is that freedom?

It’s just control over them.

2. Eren Does Not Believe in Freedom

A lot of people misinterpret the Eren and Levi’s corps scene. That if Eren had fought from the start that he would have been able to protect everybody and trusting his comrades was the wrong thing. However, the point of that scene is that Eren chooses to try to trust in people and they all die. He then changes his choice and tries to fight on his own and it’s the same result, he’s captured and more people die. What Eren had to learn to accept in that scene was his own powerlessness. That no matter how strong he becomes there are times where he’s going to be equally helpless because that’s how the world is, massive, and beyond our control. Eren’s ideal version of that scene is that he did not have to trust anybody, that he was so strong that he could fight on his own, kill all the enemies, and not have to endure the loss of everyone. Therefore his ideal is where he has enough power to control every single factor. What he wants is not freedom but rather control.

A brief tangent that is also why Levi is his foil, Levi’s narrative is continually about despite him having a miraculous strength he constantly has to learn to accept the loss of his comrades and his important people. Why? To disprove the idea that the strong are the ones who can protect their loved ones. This right of the strong idea is toxic and infectious, if I’m strong I won’t have to be on the losing side anymore, I can take instead of being taken from. The thing is even if Eren was the strongest titan he can’t stop from losing everything. In an attack that works basically perfectly according to his plan when ambushing Marley, Sasha dies for basically what amounts to random coincidence. Eren started a chain of events yes, but that chain is so convoluted there was no way Eren could have foresaw it coming or protected Sasha. Mikasa can catch a cold and die tomorrow, in a situation that has nothing to do with Eren’s personal strength. There are things that are genuinely out of his hands, and yet Eren will never accept that, instead he makes everything about personal strength and control.

That’s the thing Eren isn’t trying to solve the conflict or unfairness of the world, he doesn’t care about what happens to weak people who are taken by the strong. He just wants to be on the side of the strong, taking from others. His solution actually reinforces the cycle of the strong taking from the weak because all he does is try to climb to the other side, he still believes in the idea rather than figting against it.

In Eren’s foiling with Levi, this is what he is supposed to eventually come to accept. That the strongest person in the whole world, the person with the most freedom, is still going to be powerless. Because people are born for no reason, live meaningless lives, and die for no reason. This is an idea that can both be liberating, or restricting depending upon how you see it, but I will get into that in a moment.



This is basically what Hanji says to Eren and Mikasa as well, that they have to accept that they’re going to lose people, and moving forward in spite of accepting that is true strength. That is the lesson Eren is set up to learn with his foiling with Levi, but does not.

Instead we see Eren twist the meaning of those words to suit himself. He interprets those words the exact same way that Reiner does, which is why they are so similiar in the end and share the same weakness.

“Keep moving forward” is Eren’s arc words of this Arc. They’re grandiose words that make him sound like some kind of hero that is fighting all alone against the world and will keep fighting no matter what carried by his own determination, but once again that’s just narrative. Reiner has this flashback explicitly while he’s trying to commit suicide. There’s nothing more illustrative about how healthy and self destructive his mindset is, than Reiner literally being about to blow his brains out while thinking about how he encouraged Eren in the past to do the same thing that he is doing right now.



Eren and Reiner don’t move forward because they want to, because they see a way to keep living in that, they’re not accepting that the world is full of meaningless losses but trying to love and fight for the world anyway. They move forward because they want to run away for themselves, from the ideas that all of their actions are worthless and they cannot change a thing.

I have to keep moving forward is not a fight for freedom. They are being dragged along by their own chains. They believe they have to keep moving forward, that the world gives them no other choice but to do so. Eren literally never once sounds free or like he’s making this decision because he wants to when he talks about moving forward and fighting.

Eren also plays lip service to the idea that he wants something beyond the fighting, but once again this is where Eren and Reiner’s stubborn insistence upon living and also the way they act with suicidal recklesness contradict each other. Eren himself would have no place in a world of freedom created by his actions. His goal seems to be to make one massive movement to change the world, and then rather than changing himself, to die with the old world. Die hated by the world, or die a martyr for the Eldian people it’s exactly the same. He believes there’s nothing value of his life, so he’s trying to desperately make his death meaningful. Eren’s not fighting to live, but rather to die in a way he thinks will change things.

Also look how the way Eren talks, there was something pushing us along, we have no choice, we were born this way. These ideas are opposed to any idea of freedom, if Eren were really free then he would also admit that his choices are his own. Notice also, Eren says this only after Reiner tries to take personal responsibility for his actions. To admit that he does feel personal guilt for what he was doing.

Eren’s not saying this because he believes it, he’s saying that he was born this way, he has no choice to move forward, because he does not want to be doing these things. He is forcing himself to do these things because he believes he has to. If Eren were really believing he’s doing what he has to to change the world, then he would live with his choices rather than constantly try to avoid feeling guilty over them.

Which is why Eren also speaks against the idea that he can change. Insisting that he was born a certain way and will always be the same, is the exact opposite of freedom. Eren chains himself to the idea that he has some divine purpose and he has to act this way. Eren is proplled, not by the idea of trying to make the world different than the one he saw, but literally a predetermined future.

Eren believes in Destiny, Predetermination, things that are not freedom because those things give him meaning. We see Eren kiss HIstoria’s hand this chapter four times not as a gesture of affection but rather a callback to what he was thinking at this exact time.

Eren’s not doing this for a future with Historia and the rest, he’s trying to die in a way that will change something. Yet at the same time he contradicts himself again, it’s alright if Eren throws his own life away, but nobody else is allowed to sacrifice themselves. Eren has the freedom to kill himself, but nobody else has that freedom.

Eren takes a long glance at Mikasa because she represents what he wants, a longing for connection, beautiful things in this ugly world, a place in this world. Mikasa’s always spoke of the acceptance that Eren cannot wrap his head around with his black and white thinking, that there are both ugly and beautiful things. That despite of the world’s ugliness the beautiful things are worth living for. However, when he flashes back to the Historia scene four times it’s associated with his a lack of freedom, a lack of living for the future, that he has to kill himself, that he has to make the future that he foresaw a reality. Ideas of destiny and predetermination are more compelling to Eren. Mikasa symbolizes what Eren really wants, a future, to be enough for someone, to be accepted. Historia symbolizes what Eren thinks he wants, power and control.

Eren insists over and over again that both him and Grisha have no choice but to do what they did in the end.

Nietzsche has an idea of the “burden of history’ it basically states that because things happened in the past a certain way, it absolutely had to have happened that way. Because the way the world is, it’s always going to be that way. It assumes events proceed in a meaningful order like a narrative, but once again let’s look at Eren’s influence on that scene. Once again, we need to keep moving forward. Even if we die. Even after we die. All Eren visions is fighting with no release and no freedom, and then look at the end result.

Eren insists that they have to kill the children to get the result they desire, then literally none of Grisha’s actions in the end actually do that. He killed children to save Carla, but Carla died. He killed children because he wants his family to be safe, but Grisha in the end manipulates his son and forces him to eat him without telling him anything the exact same way he did with Zeke.

Which is also, for a brief tangent why Eren’s ideas of himself are so patently fault. He’s not fighting to be a liberator. He’s fighting for the sake of fighting. Eren claims he’s fighting against the whole world but who have his targets been so far.

A civilian area full of children. The thing is Eren acts like he had no choice to do this but once again, the circumstances were created entirely by Eren. Eren cannot fight the Marleyan military alone, so he picks an area where he can infiltrate that won’t be able to fight back against him, and then makes his move and forces the Scout Corps to follow him. He deliberately chooses to exploit the weak, because that is the only way he will be able to be in complete control of the situation.

Eren is not fighting for the sake of weak people, he is deliberately repeating the cycle of strong exploiting the weak just with himself on the side of the taking, the side of the strong. This is also why, when Eren fights on his own he loses. He fights alone against the Marleyan ambush and eventually corners, making him helpless on his own until Zeke comes to save him.

Which is why ultiamtely, what Eren wants is not freedom but rather control. Eren is going to exploit people who are already exploited if it gives him just a tiny bit more power and control. Literally we see Eren beat to death two men who were willing to harm a child in order to get what they wanted, money, power, and then go on to justify himself and his father killing children because they had no choice to otherwise to get what they wanted.

Eren is a hypocrite, what he says he believes in and what he actually believes in are two separate things and they always have been. Which is why the character that supposedly represents freedom in the series most often ends up in chains.

3. Eren and Zeke as Foils

Eren wants to control other people. He manipulates them, he pushes them away, he takes their own choices away from them. Not just his enemies but literally his friends. The Jaeger Bros are both manipulative people who will utliamtely use others for their own ends, but Zeke in the end values the connections he doesn’t have, whereas Eren doesn’t value the connections he does have.

Freedom is also the freedom to fail. It’s the freedom to be weak. It’s the freedom to not get what you want. That is why Eren prefers control a reality where he can use strength to impose on others exactly what he wants. If he truly cared about the freedom of his friends, he would not put them in cages and control them.

This is not because Eren is strong, or selfless, it’s because Eren is weak and can’t see people as other people. He only values them on his own terms. They cannot die because they are important to him, because he cannot stand the sadness of their loss. Eren’s own personal feelings will always trump the feelings of those closest to him. That is also why he cannot change, not because he was born that way, but because he does not listen to other people. He does not let anybody truly reach him. Because accepting another person is an individual who is truly indepedent from you with their own two legs means they can use those legs to walk away from you.

Eren cannot accept the decisions that other people make. He is perfectly willing to put his friends through the pain of his own suicide, but he cannot accept that another of them might want to sacrifice themselves. Eren can put himself into danger and fight, but cannot accept that his friends may choose to do the same as well. That is why he takes their choices away from them. He does not let others understand him, as a means of controlling them. He refuses to talk things out, because if he lets people talk to him they might dissuade him, or influence his choice away what he wants.

Which once again why Eren and Zeke are such strong foils, they both have these manipulative personalities in response to a life that has been mostly out of their controls. The difference being that Eren has experienced unconditional love and Zeke hasn’t.

Zeke cares for Eren, even when he’s suspicious that Eren might betray him. He chose to trust somebody that might choose differently from the end. He keeps loving Eren, even when Eren despises him, even when Eren was just using him in the end.

That is to say, Zeke loves Eren as a person. Even though Eren is capable of hurting him, or disagreeing him, Zeke does love him as an individual separate from himself.

Eren deliberately abandons the two people closest to him, the ones he has left, the ones he wants to fight for. He leaves them all alone because his one man war against the world is more important. He manipulates them into doing what he wants and puts his own personal feelings and desires for them first.

Zeke goes through Eren’s story and learns about him, and he literally tries to convince Eren to his side with words. Eren purposefully hurts the people who unconditionally love him. Zeke unconditionally loves someone else and cannot bring himself to manipulate this one person, even when they have been shown to be a ruthless and manipulative character in the first place.

He literally cannot enact his plan unless Zeke is there, and yet here we see him. Eren complains that Zeke means nothing to him, that he was just a tool for him to use, that they have no connection as brothers and literally at the same time the only reason Eren did not die halfway through his reckless plan is because Zeke showed up to save him out of genuine affection for his brother.

Eren goes out of his way to mock Zeke for this. He shows Zeke that he was unconditionally loved by Grisha in a way that Zeke never was, and then says he chooses to act like this anyway. He says Zeke means nothing to him and was just a tool in the end.

Eren takes an oppurtunity to show Zeke that love and understanding, beautiful things can exist in this world, that people can learn from their mistakes, that their is a reason to living that makes Euthenaisa a terrible option. That the world is nothing but pain, and instead he just used it to manipulate Zeke.



Yet, Eren is not able to accomplish anything without Zeke. We saw him holding out on his own and he was completely cornered by the Marleyan ambush. Which is why Eren’s narrative is so patently false, he pushes other people away and acts like he’s not relying on other people, that he’s a one man army, the enemy of the whole world who can accomplish this on his own, but in the end he needs to be saved again, again, and again. And because it contradicts with his narrative Eren ignores that he was saved.

Which is where we finally reach because I was born into this world once again. It’s a phrase that can be freeing, or it can chain you to an idea.

Carla intended it to mean that Eren does not need to do anything to be alive, to enjoy life, just the act of being born gives him a right to life. That means that Eren’s birth is utterly meaningless. It’s a meaningless flow of events, why am I even alive? Oh, it was because I was born.

In Eren’s desperate search for meaning he twists the meaning around entirely. The beautiful sentiment that Eren was born, because Grisha and Carla had him as a child they want to love is forgotten because Eren wants his birth to have meaning. He wants to believe he has to do all these things because he was born into this world.

Eren was born and raised unconditionally loved, he was born as a child to be loved and he takes that entirely for granted.

Zeke was not born as a child to be loved, but as a tool to be used in Grisha’s plan. Ironically, this is what Eren wants to believe about himself. That he was born to be a chosen one in this conflict, that there’s meaning in his birth, that there’s a terrible burden he was given just by being born.

Whereas, Zeke who was actually in that situation is warped into something that is barely a person. Zeke sees no value in life, and the world as just a miserable painful place that it’s a curse to be born into.

Yet, what Zeke longs for and values more than anything else is the connections that he’s never had. Eren says he fights for his friends around him, and yet he throws those friends away easily, and doesn’t value them at all over his own desires. Which is why we witness Zeke’s priorities actually change, because he still wants to see something beautiful in the world whereas Eren is on the path for destruction.

Which is why the end result is Zeke, the most heartless and cruel character in the series, the main antagonist for this arc has come off in the end more empathic than Eren. They’ve completely switched positions where Zeke is now trying to misguidedly stop Eren, and Eren has superceded Zeke as the main antagonist.

Eren does not carry the ideals of the series on his shoulders, he is now the antagonist working directly against those ideals. Because of his failure to change, the Protagonist has journeyed to become the Villain.

Eren is not fighting for freedom, but rather against the notion of freedom for other people. That is why the manga is calling for him to be stopped.