A Titanic Dilemma: Nihilism, Existentialism, & More in Attack on Titan
Eren Yeager jumping rooftop to rooftop, chasing any Titans he can find.
In Attack on Titan, Hajime Isayama constructs a bleak world of monstrous violence, geopolitical manipulation, and moral ambiguity that invites a philosophical exploration of freedom, identity, and the human condition. Beneath the surface of epic battles and dramatic betrayals lies a relentless meditation on nihilism, existentialism, historical trauma, and ethical responsibility. This essay will aim to unpack these layered themes by engaging with key philosophical concepts and thinkers. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s reflections on nihilism and the “will to power,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s notions of existential freedom and responsibility, and Plato’s allegory of the cave, Attack on Titan emerges not merely as a work of fiction but as a parable of modern philosophical anxieties. Through its characters and conflicts, the series interrogates what it means to be free in a world where history is manipulated, identity is weaponized, and moral choices are constantly shadowed by violence and necessity.
Each section of this essay delves into a thematic node of the series: the Titans as symbols of a world devoid of inherent meaning; the clash between hope and fear as embodied by Eren, Armin, and Gabi; the existential burden of Eren's Titan powers; and the illusion of truth shattered by the revelation of Marley. By comparing Marleyan oppression to Nazi ideology and the Eldian plight to Jewish suffering, the series invites a critical reflection on collective guilt and historical cycles of dehumanization. The essay will also examine the moral weight of the euthanasia plan proposed by Eren and Zeke, the implications of complicity, and the manipulation of free will across generations. Ultimately, by comparing Eren’s and Reiner’s respective struggles, and reflecting on what "freedom" truly means after the Rumbling, this analysis seeks to uncover whether Attack on Titan offers a vision of redemption or simply affirms the tragic absurdity of human existence.
If You Gaze Long Enough at a Titan, the Titan Also Gazes Into You: Titans as Nihilistic Agents
In Attack on Titan, the Titans are more than monstrous antagonists; they are existential symbols of a world devoid of inherent meaning, echoing the nihilistic worldview described by Friedrich Nietzsche. Titans devour without reason, destroy without ideology, and appear immune to moral categories. Their origin is obscured for much of the series, contributing to their role as forces of chaos and absurdity. This reflects Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the “death of God,” in which humanity, having lost its grounding in absolute values, faces a void of meaning. “What does nihilism mean?” Nietzsche asks in The Will to Power. “That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; 'why?' finds no answer.” The Titans, in their mindless devastation, manifest this aimlessness. To the people within the Walls, they represent a universe indifferent to suffering—a world where survival is the only law and hope often feels like delusion.
This symbolic function is emphasized by the existential dread the characters experience. Early in the series, the overwhelming presence of the Titans pushes humanity into a psychological spiral of despair. The helplessness of soldiers against these beings leads to what Albert Camus calls “the absurd condition”—the tension between our search for meaning and the silent, indifferent universe. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes, “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” Titans, in their grotesque and absurd forms, reinforce this silence. They are not gods or demons with moral agendas—they are simply there, like the absurd boulder Sisyphus must eternally push. The refusal of the universe to offer justification mirrors the Titans’ unrelenting nature, where terror becomes mundane and death is stripped of heroic dignity.
Moreover, the Titan transformation process itself—where ordinary humans become mindless, destructive creatures—dramatizes the existential loss of identity and purpose. It is a symbolic regression into a purely biological, de-individualized state. For those turned into Titans, memory and reason are erased, and they exist only to consume. This recalls Martin Heidegger’s notion of “thrownness” (Geworfenheit)—the idea that human beings are thrown into a world not of their choosing, without inherent guidance, and must confront their own being in the face of death. The Eldians, capable of becoming Titans, are both burdened and alienated by this possibility. The Titan form is both an inheritance and a curse, echoing the existential predicament of being thrust into a world with responsibilities one did not choose. The terror lies not only in what the Titans do, but in what they reveal: that anyone can become a monster, stripped of will, identity, and humanity.
A Titan eating a person.
Yet, in the face of such nihilism, Attack on Titan does not offer a simplistic rejection of meaning. Instead, it challenges characters—and viewers—to confront the absurd and choose how to respond. Nietzsche, despite identifying the horror of nihilism, also proposed a path beyond it through the creation of new values and the embrace of life’s inherent struggles. This tension defines the narrative arc of characters like Eren and Armin, who must wrestle with the idea that the world is cruel and unjust, yet still worth engaging. The Titans, as symbols, do not merely signal despair; they also catalyze philosophical reflection. They force the characters—and by extension, the audience—to ask: In a world without ultimate meaning, how shall we live? It is a call to existentialism. In this way, the Titans serve as a canvas onto which the existential anxieties of the modern world are projected—horrific, mindless, and yet deeply human in what they reveal about the nature of fear, survival, and the search for meaning in the void.
Sink or Swim: Eren and Armin’s Hope vs. Gabi’s Fear of the Outside World
The emotional and ideological tension between Eren and Armin’s persistent hope and Gabi’s indoctrinated fear encapsulates a central dialectic in Attack on Titan: whether one should engage the world through trust and transformative vision, or through suspicion and violent self-preservation. Eren and Armin, having grown up behind the Walls, begin their journey believing in the possibility of freedom and understanding beyond their enclosed world. Their hope—especially Armin’s—is not blind optimism but an existential resolve to imagine and pursue a future better than the present. Armin embodies what Ernst Bloch, in The Principle of Hope, described as the “Not-Yet-Conscious”—a radical hope that dreams of new realities even amid devastation. Bloch writes, “Hope is the most human of all mental feelings… it is the forward dreaming of a better life.” Armin’s vision of the ocean, and his yearning to explore the world beyond the walls, reflect this anticipatory consciousness—a belief that even in a broken world, something beautiful might still exist.
Young Eren (left), Armin (middle), and Mikasa (right).
Eren’s hope, however, evolves—or perhaps devolves—into a darker, more destructive form. While he begins as someone inspired by Armin’s wonder and driven by a desire for freedom, his increasing despair at the world’s cruelty transforms his hope into fatalistic resolve. Eren’s actions become less about building a better world and more about obliterating the one that exists. Here, hope distorts into what Søren Kierkegaard might call despair in defiance—a condition in which the self refuses to be itself, actively willing its own annihilation in order to escape the unbearable reality. In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard writes, “Defiance is that despair which is the despairing refusal to be oneself.” Eren refuses to accept a world where the Eldians must continue to suffer, and thus, in a strange reversal, his hope for Eldian freedom becomes the justification for global genocide. His version of hope loses its utopian openness and collapses into violent certainty.
In sharp contrast stands Gabi Braun, whose fear of the Eldians beyond Marleyan borders is rooted in state propaganda, cultural indoctrination, and personal trauma. Unlike Armin, who constructs a future through wonder and critical reflection, Gabi is a product of manufactured fear—taught from childhood that her people are inherently cursed and must atone for their existence. Her fear is not merely emotional but epistemological; she believes she knows the truth, and this “truth” justifies violence. Philosopher Michel Foucault, in his analysis of power and knowledge, observed that “truth isn’t outside power… truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.” Gabi’s truth, forged by Marleyan ideology, is one that sustains the status quo through fear. She is, in a sense, a child of the Panopticon—controlled not by direct force but by internalized surveillance and guilt. Her mindset is one that Eren adopts before the Eldians of Paradis secretly invade Marley. Eren’s quote “So if we kill the enemy, the one waiting for us on the other side of the sea, will we… finally be free” is what Gabi herself believes about the Eldians of Paradis. Her fear is not cowardice, but a socially engineered lens through which she interprets all Eldian resistance as monstrous.
Gabi Braun.
However, Gabi’s journey—especially her interactions with characters like Sasha’s family and Falco—gradually destabilizes her worldview. As she witnesses the humanity of those she once demonized, her fear begins to give way to understanding. This shift is significant because it shows that fear, while powerful, is not immutable. Gabi undergoes what philosopher Hannah Arendt might describe as the awakening of natality—the capacity to begin anew, to think differently, to act in unexpected ways. In The Human Condition, Arendt writes, “The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is ultimately the fact of natality… the capacity to begin something anew.” Gabi’s transformation becomes a hopeful counterpoint to Eren’s descent: where he becomes trapped in a cycle of destruction, Gabi begins to question the logic of inherited hatred. Armin and Gabi thus converge—through different paths—on the possibility that understanding and reconciliation are not only necessary, but possible.
The Ironic Double-Edged Sword: Eren’s Shifting Powers as Absurdist-Existentialism
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain” – words spoken by The Dark Knight’s Harvey Dent, but could not ring anymore truer for Attack on Titan’s Eren Yeager. Eren’s Titan-shifting powers are not just tools of war—they represent the existential burden of agency and the absurd weight of freedom in a world defined by violence and uncertainty. From the moment Eren gains the ability to transform, he becomes responsible not only for his own fate but for the fate of entire nations. This immense power is thrust upon him with little explanation or preparation, placing him in an existential crisis familiar to the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre writes, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” Eren does not ask for power, but once he possesses it, he cannot escape the moral implications of his choices. His Titan form becomes a symbol of radical freedom—freedom without guidance, limits, or guarantees of righteousness.
This freedom, however, quickly becomes a source of anguish. Unlike traditional heroes whose powers serve clear moral purposes, Eren’s powers continually blur the lines between savior and monster. His struggle reflects the existentialist notion that meaning must be created rather than discovered. As the world reveals its deeper truths—the cyclical violence of Eldian and Marleyan history, the manipulation of memory, and the role of Titans in global oppression—Eren begins to realize that no authority, tradition, or divine order can dictate how he should use his powers. He must choose, and in doing so, define what kind of person he is. As Sartre insists, “Existence precedes essence”—Eren’s identity is not given; it is shaped by his choices. But with this realization comes an overwhelming pressure: every action carries existential weight, not only for himself but for the countless lives he affects. “You’ve become the very thing you swore to destroy”, are words uttered by Obi-Wan Kenobi, yet are still a fierce warning regarding Eren’s fate in light of his choices. “If someone is willing to take my freedom, I won’t hesitate to take theirs”, Eren exclaims in Season 4, Episode 20.
Eren in his Attack Titan form.
Eren’s Titan powers also plunge him into what Albert Camus calls the absurd—the clash between the human desire for clarity and the chaotic nature of existence. The more he sees of the world—its history, its suffering, its lies—the more disillusioned he becomes. Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, describes the absurd man as someone who, upon recognizing life’s lack of ultimate meaning, does not despair but revolts against it by living with full awareness of the absurd condition. Eren embodies this revolt in a tragic, distorted way. He knows that no action can undo the past or guarantee a better future, yet he commits to a course of destruction to create what he calls “freedom.” However, his revolt lacks Camus’ nuance. Rather than embracing the absurd and continuing on in spite of it, Eren attempts to impose meaning onto the void through sheer force—what Nietzsche would call the will to power. In this sense, Eren becomes both an existential hero and a cautionary tale: one who confronts meaninglessness but answers it with domination rather than creative redefinition.
The World Outside the Cave’s Walls
The revelation of the world beyond the Walls in Attack on Titan is one of the most philosophically profound moments in the series. It functions as a direct parallel to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from The Republic, in which prisoners are chained inside a cave, forced to perceive only shadows projected on the wall, mistaking these shadows for reality. Plato writes, “What the prisoners see on the wall are mere shadows of the real objects passing in front of a fire behind them… and if they were released and forced to look at the firelight and the real objects, they would be blinded and confused.” Similarly, the people of Paradis Island live for generations believing that the world outside the Walls is destroyed or filled only with Titans. Their worldview is constructed by ignorance, mythology, and state-controlled narratives. The Walls are not just physical structures—they are epistemological boundaries, limiting what people can know, see, and imagine.
When Eren, Armin, and others finally learn the truth about Marley and the broader world, it is a moment of philosophical awakening akin to the prisoner who escapes the cave and sees reality for the first time. “Sure, we can stay inside the wall our entire lives and do nothing but eat and sleep! But… that makes us cattle”, Eren says (“To You, in 2000 Years: The Fall of Shiganshina, Part I”. Season 1, Episode 1, Attack on Titan). This experience, however, is not liberating in the way one might expect. Plato suggests that knowledge is painful, and the path to enlightenment is fraught with suffering: “When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows.” In Attack on Titan, this is precisely what happens. The characters’ discovery of Marley, the history of the Eldians, and the global system of oppression does not bring clarity or peace—it brings moral confusion, despair, and a loss of innocence. Armin, who once dreamed of the ocean as a symbol of freedom, finds that even the vast sea has shores stained with blood and conflict. The truth is not beautiful; it is horrifying.
Eren pointing across the ocean.
Yet the allegory goes deeper. Plato’s prisoner, upon escaping and learning the truth, feels compelled to return to the cave and help free the others. But when he does, the remaining prisoners resist and ridicule him. Plato writes, “Wouldn’t they kill him if they could?” This mirrors the tragic element of Eren’s return to Paradis with the knowledge of the outside world. Rather than uniting people around a common truth, the new knowledge fractures them. The truth is too painful, too destabilizing. It forces characters like Eren to make impossible decisions—ones that blur the line between liberator and tyrant. Eren doesn’t simply return to the cave to share knowledge—he returns to destroy the cave altogether. In this sense, the allegory diverges, or perhaps evolves: where Plato saw philosophical truth as leading to moral clarity and the cultivation of the soul, Attack on Titan suggests that truth, unmoored from shared values or hope, can lead to catastrophe. Enlightenment, in this case, becomes a double-edged sword.
Ultimately, the world beyond the Walls represents the terrifying freedom that comes with expanded consciousness. In existential terms, this freedom demands that individuals and societies abandon comforting illusions and take responsibility for their own meaning-making. As Immanuel Kant wrote in his essay What is Enlightenment?, “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.” For the people of Paradis, this emergence is violent, disorienting, and deeply traumatic. They must reconstruct their entire moral and political reality in light of the truth. Plato’s allegory invites us to believe that truth leads to justice and virtue, but Attack on Titan complicates this notion, asking: What happens when truth is incompatible with peace? When stepping out of the cave means facing not only reality but the failure of every story we once believed in? In this way, the series captures both the brilliance and the horror of philosophical awakening—it is not the end of the journey, but the beginning of a darker, more complex struggle for freedom.
Marley, The Nazis, and the Eldian-Jewish Parallel: A Tragic History of Oppression
The Marleyan regime in Attack on Titan functions as an unmistakable allegorical echo of 20th-century fascist regimes, especially Nazi Germany. Marley utilizes a state machinery of propaganda, racial ideology, militarization, and ghettos to justify the subjugation of Eldians, much like the Nazis justified the persecution of Jews through pseudoscientific racism and nationalist myth. In Marley, Eldians wear armbands, live in internment zones, and are blamed for global suffering due to their supposed ancestral sins—parallels that evoke chilling images of Jewish ghettos, yellow stars, and the doctrine of collective guilt in Nazi ideology. Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, explores how totalitarian states dehumanize targeted groups to consolidate control: “What makes man a political being is his faculty of action… but the isolation of the Jew as a pariah was the first step toward his exclusion from the political world.” Eldians are likewise politically neutered, permitted to live only through submission, and denied any voice in the global order.
Marley’s indoctrination of its Eldian population further mimics Nazi efforts to control identity through internalized self-hatred. Gabi Braun, a child soldier, believes deeply in Marleyan propaganda, referring to herself as a “good Eldian” and others as “devils.” This mirrors how Nazi youth propaganda cultivated both fear of the “other” and loyalty to the regime. In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault explains how modern states control not just bodies but minds through surveillance and normalization: “Power produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.” Marleyan institutions produce a version of reality in which Eldians are born cursed, and only through complete submission and military service can they find conditional acceptance. Just as the Nazis used cultural, educational, and scientific systems to justify anti-Semitism, Marley uses its entire ideological apparatus to craft a worldview in which Eldian oppression appears not only natural, but righteous.
Gabi at war wearing an Eldian armband.
A Jewish woman wearing an identifier armband during World War II.
Yet, the analogy is not merely historical—it invites a reflection on philosophical complicity and resistance. The Eldian situation asks viewers to contemplate the ethical dilemma of inherited guilt. Are the sins of the ancestors binding upon the children? Nietzsche critiques such moral genealogy in On the Genealogy of Morality, arguing that systems of punishment rooted in ancestral sin perpetuate cycles of resentment and domination: “The ‘guilty’ man is the man who has broken a promise… punishment is the making-visible of guilt.” Marley’s treatment of Eldians enshrines this logic. Eldians must eternally atone for the violence of their imperial past, even though generations have passed. Nietzsche would argue that this leads not to justice, but to the preservation of power by those who benefit from the guilt economy. In this light, Marleyan ideology is less about truth than control—about shaping historical memory to justify present-day domination.
However, Attack on Titan complicates this analogy by making the Eldians both oppressed and historically culpable. Unlike the Jewish people under the Nazis—who bore no guilt—Eldians were once imperial conquerors who used the Titans to enslave and annihilate others. This ambiguous positioning opens space for difficult philosophical questions: Can a people both suffer injustice and be responsible for injustice? How does one ethically navigate inherited trauma and historical violence? Philosopher Paul Ricoeur, in Memory, History, Forgetting, argues that collective memory must balance between acknowledgment of past wrongdoing and the possibility of reconciliation: “The duty of memory is not only to preserve but to repair… to open the way to a justice to come.” In Attack on Titan, the path to justice is clouded by revenge, fear, and the impossibility of undoing what has been done. Thus, the Marley-Eldian dynamic invites not a one-to-one historical mapping, but a complex meditation on cycles of hatred, the moral weight of history, and the struggle for dignity in the aftermath of dehumanization.
Eren and Zeke’s plan to sterilize the Eldian race and remove their ability to transform into Titans represents one of the most morally contentious dilemmas in Attack on Titan. On the surface, their logic stems from utilitarian reasoning: if Eldians can no longer reproduce or shift into Titans, then the cycle of hatred, fear, and war surrounding them will cease, sparing future generations from suffering. Zeke, especially, views this plan as merciful. But the moral flaw lies in its foundation: it assumes that the best solution to oppression is erasure. This mirrors what philosopher Immanuel Kant warned against in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: treating people merely as means to an end. Kant’s categorical imperative demands that humans be treated as ends in themselves. The euthanasia plan violates this imperative by denying future Eldians the right to exist—not for who they are, but for what they might become. It does not eliminate oppression—it accepts its logic and seeks to eliminate the oppressed.
The issue of complicity is crucial. By accepting Marley’s worldview—that Eldians are inherently dangerous because of their Titan powers—Eren and Zeke internalize the enemy’s hatred. This leads to a haunting philosophical question: If a persecuted group is hated for being “special” (e.g., chosen, gifted, powerful), is it morally righteous to give up what makes them distinct in the name of peace? Hypothetically, if the Nazis had justified their hatred of Jews by claiming the Jews were “God’s chosen people,” would it have been moral for a Jewish leader to propose that Jews renounce or erase that chosenness to end the persecution? Would doing so represent peace—or capitulation to the oppressor’s logic? Eren’s decision to eliminate Titan powers can be read this way. Rather than affirming Eldian humanity as independent of Titan abilities, he affirms that their humanity must be severed from those abilities to be valid. As philosopher Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Ethics of Ambiguity, “To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.” The euthanasia plan is an escape from ambiguity and moral responsibility; it replaces freedom with resignation.
Further, the plan undercuts any effort toward collective healing or moral restitution. It attempts to solve a political and ethical crisis through biological determinism. Instead of confronting the systems of fear and violence that produced global anti-Eldian sentiment, Eren and Zeke seek to erase the Eldians’ ability to be feared. Yet this is not transformation—it is surrender. Philosopher Michel Foucault would critique this as a manifestation of biopolitics: the regulation of entire populations through control over life and death. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault describes how modern regimes of power manage life through exclusion, sterilization, and classification. The euthanasia plan is a chilling expression of that same logic—it is not justice, but a form of moral self-annihilation. It does not address why the world hates Eldians; it merely affirms that they should be hated unless they cease to exist in their current form.
Ultimately, the tragedy of Eren and Zeke’s plan is its philosophical cowardice. Rather than resisting the structures of hatred and fear, it colludes with them. It is a form of moral exhaustion—one that mistakes annihilation for peace. To borrow from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “The greatest weight is this: ‘Eternal recurrence… would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?’” Eren’s vision of peace is so burdened by history that he chooses to eliminate the future rather than risk repeating the past. But the price of such peace is the loss of identity, of meaning, of hope. It makes complicity with oppression the final act of agency. A true ethical alternative would require a radical reimagining of coexistence, one that affirms the value of Eldian life not in spite of their differences, but through them. As long as peace demands self-erasure, it will never be moral—it will only be another form of domination in disguise.
A Tyrant of Time: Eren’s Manipulation of Free Will and Destiny
One of the most philosophically provocative revelations in Attack on Titan is that Eren, through the power of the Founding Titan and his connection to Ymir’s time-transcending consciousness, is not merely a product of past events—he is their orchestrator. This radical collapse of temporal causality throws the idea of free will into question. If Eren can influence the actions of his father Grisha, Eren Kruger, and even his half-brother Zeke across time, are they truly acting of their own volition? The scene in which Grisha hesitates to kill the Reiss family, only to be urged on by a future Eren, is especially disturbing. Grisha’s tears and shaken moral compass suggest inner conflict—but Eren’s presence makes his choice seem less autonomous. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer famously wrote, “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.” In other words, we may act freely, but what we desire to do is often shaped by forces beyond us. Eren becomes one of those forces—manipulating the will of others while appearing to exercise his own.
This raises the question: if Eren influences others across time, is he stripping them of free will, or are they merely part of a determinist loop in which all actions are already inevitable? In some interpretations of compatibilism, free will can exist even in a determined world—as long as the individual identifies with their actions. But Grisha does not seem to fully identify with killing the Reiss children—he is coerced, crying, begging for forgiveness. In this light, Eren’s manipulation is more than persuasion; it is domination. Zeke, too, is shown the memories Eren chooses, leading him to think he can sway Eren’s ideology, only to discover that Eren has been using him the entire time. Friedrich Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, discusses how “the will to power” shapes human behavior—not merely as a desire for control over the world, but over meaning itself. Eren becomes a god-like figure who redefines causality, morality, and agency in his image. His control over memory and time allows him to manufacture events that appear inevitable, yet are carefully orchestrated.
Eren (left) manipulating his father, Grisha (right) to kill the Reiss family.
Eren (right) standing atop Zeke (left), bound by the chains of the Founder Titan in the “Paths” — an interconnected accessible dimension where the Founder Titan can communication and transport her will, and other memories, to Eldians.
Eren’s manipulation of Eren Kruger is perhaps the most metaphysically disorienting moment. Kruger, who predates Eren’s birth by decades, tells Grisha to “save Mikasa and Armin”—two people who did not yet exist in his timeline. This looping of time calls to mind the eternal recurrence Nietzsche described—an existence where past, present, and future are bound together endlessly, with no real beginning or end. But instead of this being a source of affirmation and liberation, as Nietzsche imagined, it becomes a source of entrapment. Eren is both puppet and puppeteer, acting on impulses and visions that he, himself, implanted. Jean-Paul Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, argues that “man is condemned to be free,” meaning that even in the face of absurdity, humans are responsible for giving meaning to their actions. Yet Eren’s choices—shaped by his future memories—undermine the very condition of choice. If Eren acts because he remembers choosing to act, does he ever truly choose at all?
In this temporal prison, free will becomes indistinguishable from fate. What makes Eren’s manipulation so chilling is that it poses a new form of tyranny—not one imposed externally by states or systems, but by the self, looping through time, shaping its own past to secure its own future. His is not the freedom of spontaneous agency, but the predetermined sovereignty of someone who cannot imagine another path. Eren doesn’t force people directly, but creates contexts and choices so constrained that alternatives vanish. In this way, he becomes an embodiment of what philosopher Isaiah Berlin would call negative liberty gone awry—not the freedom from interference, but a terrifying freedom to control others under the guise of inevitability. Eren’s arc exposes the shadow side of determinism: when the future becomes the author of the past, autonomy collapses, and the illusion of free will becomes a tool of manipulation. What remains is not choice, but the performance of choice, dictated by a will already written in time.
From Soldier to Slave: Eren and Reiner’s Imprisoning Freedom
Eren Yeager and Reiner Braun stand at the heart of Attack on Titan as mirrored antagonists, both trapped within a paradox of freedom. Despite ostensibly fighting on opposite sides of the conflict, both are driven by ideals of liberty while being shackled to paths they neither fully control nor escape. Eren declares early on that he will “destroy every last one of them” to secure freedom for his people, echoing a Nietzschean will to power: “The noble type of man experiences itself as value-creating” (On the Genealogy of Morality). His pursuit of freedom becomes an iron law, a self-imposed compulsion that consumes every other moral or relational concern. In contrast, Reiner, who also believed himself to be a hero bringing peace, buckles under the psychological weight of his choices. His fractured psyche reflects Kierkegaard's concept of despair—being inauthentically oneself, split between the “finite and infinite,” the “possible and necessary” (The Sickness Unto Death). Both characters are thus enslaved, not by titans or governments, but by the inescapable momentum of their decisions and ideals.
Eren’s version of freedom is defined by its absoluteness. He embodies existentialist themes of radical agency, yet his agency is paradoxically bound by determinism. The moment he inherits the Attack Titan, he steps into a loop of causality that reveals itself most clearly when he states, “I’ve always been like this,” after seeing his future through the memories of his titan. This assertion resonates with Spinoza’s idea that “freedom is understood not as free will but as understanding necessity” (Ethics). Eren comes to believe that his choices, no matter how extreme, are justified because they are necessary—ordained by fate, memory, or history. His freedom is not the liberty to choose otherwise, but the power to act in accordance with what must be. Ironically, this collapses into a form of slavery: to time, to history, and ultimately to himself. His warpath is not fueled by the joy of liberation but by a grim, obsessive compulsion to achieve what he perceives as the only path toward true freedom—obliteration.
Reiner (left), shaking hands with Eren (background), who is about to transform into the Attack Titan.
Reiner, on the other hand, is wracked by guilt, embodying a more psychological form of bondage. His desire to be a hero contrasts tragically with his lived actions as a destroyer. Unlike Eren, Reiner does not hide behind ideology; he suffers the unbearable contradiction between his self-image and his deeds. This inner division is reminiscent of Frantz Fanon’s reflections on colonized identity in Black Skin, White Masks, where the colonized subject internalizes conflicting roles imposed by external powers. Reiner is both the oppressor and the oppressed, a Marleyan soldier and an Eldian victim. His breakdown, suicidal ideation, and multiple identity crises illustrate the impossibility of sustaining such contradictions. While Eren finds liberation through a terrible clarity, Reiner finds a fragile redemption through humility—choosing to live, to protect the children, and eventually to aid in saving the world. His freedom is not self-made, but relational—found in responsibility, repentance, and solidarity with others.
In the end, Attack on Titan presents both Eren and Reiner as “slaves to freedom,” but the contrast lies in their conception of what freedom entails. Eren believes in a freedom that must be seized, even at the cost of humanity. Reiner, however, grows into a freedom that must be suffered, mourned, and shared. Eren’s arc reflects the dangers of Nietzschean overreach—of becoming the “monster” to destroy monsters—while Reiner’s reflects the arduous moral realism of Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, in which true freedom is found in the acceptance of absurdity and the choice to go on living anyway. Despite Eren’s claim “I’m the same as you” when he approaches Reiner in Marley, he could not be more mistaken. Perhaps they were similar at one point–two soldiers fighting for their freedom–but their methods have completely overturned that. Thus, the show reveals two opposite responses to the same existential crisis: one that seeks control through annihilation, and one that finds peace through endurance. Both are tragic, but only one allows for healing.
Come Hell or High Water, or the Rumbling and Tall Titans:
“I am free. Whatever I do, whatever I choose, I do it out of my own free will.” are words uttered by Eren in Season 4, Episode 14. Eren Yeager’s apocalyptic decision to annihilate 80% of humanity through the Rumbling raises a stark philosophical and moral question: who, if anyone, is free in the world he leaves behind? His stated goal—to ensure freedom for his friends and for the Eldians—ultimately seems self-defeating. Though the Titan curse is lifted with Eren’s death, the fear and trauma he instills in the surviving nations cast a long shadow. The Marleyans, having lost their global dominance and military infrastructure, might be weakened in the short term, but their hatred for Eldians—now intensified by the genocidal catastrophe Eren unleashed—still simmers. The Eldians, stripped of their most powerful weapon, find themselves newly vulnerable. Their ability to shift into Titans once gave them a strategic deterrent, however morally fraught. Now, without that power, and with the world mourning billions of dead, they are ripe for retribution or renewed subjugation. In trying to end the cycle of hatred, Eren may have inadvertently reset it with even more venom.
Eren leading the Rumbling, with his friends Mikasa (right) and Armin (left) watching in horror.
By forcing his will upon the entire planet—Eldians and non-Eldians alike—Eren paradoxically becomes the greatest violator of freedom in the name of securing it. He makes a choice for the world that the world did not consent to. This is reminiscent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s critique of “bad faith”—denying the freedom of others to create meaning through their own choices. Sartre writes, “I am condemned to be free,” suggesting that every human is responsible for their own existence and decisions (Being and Nothingness). Eren’s actions rob humanity of that responsibility by reducing everyone to passive recipients of his vision. Even his friends are unwitting pawns in a grand performance orchestrated by Eren’s foresight. The very possibility of moral agency is swallowed by the scale of his unilateral intervention. His actions, though claimed to be self-sacrificial, are ultimately rooted in a tyrannical idealism: “You will be free—but only after I remove your ability to choose.”
Eren envisioning his younger self soaring above the clouds, with thousands of innocent lives—Marleyans and Eldians alike—being crushed underneath him.
Eren’s eradication of the Titan curse is not the liberation he imagines it to be. Without Titan powers, Eldians may no longer be seen as existential threats, but they also lose any leverage in a politically fractured world still shaped by fear and historical oppression. The Rumbling, while tactically brilliant in neutering the global threat to Paradis, poisons any chance of reconciliation. Frantz Fanon warned that “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon” (The Wretched of the Earth), but he also stressed that true freedom involves mutual recognition—not merely the inversion of power. Eren’s strategy lacks that dialectic. He doesn’t foster understanding or rebuild trust; he razes the world and hands his people a hollow shell of “freedom” to survive in. Worse still, Marleyans and other survivors now have more reason than ever to enslave, isolate, or exterminate Eldians to prevent another Eren from rising. The structural violence remains—perhaps made even more insidious without the supernatural threat as a balancing force.
So, do Eren’s ends justify his means? If the end was “freedom,” then the means annihilate its very possibility. Isaiah Berlin distinguishes between “negative liberty” (freedom from external constraint) and “positive liberty” (the capacity to determine one’s own life). Eren claims to secure both—removing external enemies and supposedly enabling his people to live on their terms. But by decimating the world and scripting the narrative of their future, he denies them the essential ingredient of positive liberty: choice. Freedom achieved through domination is not freedom at all—it is merely another form of control. Eren’s legacy, then, is a cautionary tale: a man so obsessed with breaking the cycle of hatred that he recreated it on an unimaginable scale. The survivors may no longer be bound by Titans, but they remain chained by fear, trauma, and distrust. In the aftermath of the Rumbling, the most haunting truth is this: no one is truly free.
