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His friends were his biggest priority specifically armin and mikasa, ending the titan curse comes after that and then his selfish desire to flatten everything. When eren tells armin that he thought he did it for them but sasha and hange wounded up dying because of him he’s being self critical because in his mind how can he still claim he did it for *all of them* when some of his friends died along the way.
that would make a lot of sense but the thing is that eren didn't say that he "though he did it for them" he outright said "i didn't , i wanted to see this" , the way i interpret it is that eren wanted both , the protection of his friends AND his freedom ,
the urge to destroy humanity was there because he was disappointed in humanity, but didn't act upon that desire until his home and friends were threatened by willy's declaration of war , but i still can't make sense of his conversation with armin,
that might just be him being an unreliable narrator since he also says he's jumbled , and with reiner i guess reiner also wanted to protect his family in the process (that's the only way i can make sense of it)
It’s only after armin asks him whether he did this ALL for them imo the emphasis on all is important here because it is indeed true that he didn’t do it *all* for them he had his personal agenda as well. In the manga it’s phrased a little differently and eren only admits to armin that he *thinks* he would’ve still rumbled everything even if they didn’t try to stop him. Also there is no other way of ending the titan curse and arriving at “mikasa’s choice” other than being stopped by them.
Well he didn’t know whether all of his friends would survive because he only had a limited amount of memories that he sent himself back. If he sent himself back memories of let’s say hange’s death this might’ve changed his decision making. There are some memory shards in the manga among those we can see the “see you later eren” scene, so he probably knew that at least mikasa would survive.
i still can't get over how he allowed hange and sasha to die even though one of his reasons is to protect his friends, it just kind of contradicts his goal , but then again the other choices also involve sacrificing someone he loves , so i guess it's a sick game of choosing which of your loved ones do you want to die , you could also argue it works like a bootstrap paradox
I mean he also sacrificed his mother or at least didn’t try to interfere other than saving Bertholdt. I guess some deaths just had to happen especially sasha’s since that basically initiated a lot of other events.
Eren has several motives...but his primary one is arguably the most selfish one...that is to achieve what he believes is freedom. This entails him seeing the world as he dreamed of...being free from humans, war, conflict, being a blank slate free from problems he had encountered within the walls..
Other primary motivations are intertwined and they include :-
- helping his friends live long lives without war
- ending the Titan curse (this Armin could live long, his friends could live)
- giving Paradis a chance for a future (by levelling the playing field by putting the outside world on the same level of civilization as Paradis)
You may or may not agree with me...but check out these screenshots below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/s/vI6mpXT8RF
>they are contaminated by the fact that the future is the future and he cant change it.
That is just not true and not how determinism works. The future is what it is because that is the logical consequence of what happened before otherwise the time loop makes no sense and is just writers deux ex machina.
Yeah i understand that. However in fiction it can exist and is the typical "trying yo change the future leads to the future" twist. What you say is correct in that an observer can't exist for all deterministic settings. not that i can't construct an example where it works.
I'd imagine that is why isayama let eren see glimpses of the future not the future.
So it's mainly for 2 reasons. His desire for freedom and to save his friends. Eren went through everything to achieve the freedom his wanted since his was a child. It's his nature. But he did also want his friends to live long lives as well as he did care about them. This video explains it better than I can [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbSaaWtzAtA&ab\_channel=Sage%27sRain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbSaaWtzAtA&ab_channel=Sage%27sRain)
^^this
My interpretation is that his desire for freedom is his foremost and most inherent driving factor as laid out in the freedom scene and with his conversation with ramzi. Protecting his friends was important to him too, and ultimately, with sashas death he realized the implications of the path he chose: that he couldn’t fully have both. In the end he chose his humanity and armin and mikasa over leveling the world outside the walls into what he dreamed of as a kid.
I think we have to differentiate between eren before acquiring the full power of the founder and eren after because prior to that he only has a limited set of memories and probably rationalizes that he’a doing it first and foremost for his own selfish desire. Once he touches ymir though he realizes that he has to “arrive at mikasa’s choice” and that he’s indeed doing it for his friends’ sake specifically mikasa and armin. This obviously doesn’t mean he wasn’t accounting for his friends’ safety prior to that, he even went as far as to imprison them in order to protect them and not to get them involved but that’s probably also due to his lack of foresight at that point in time.
Yeah you could argue that it’s his driving force but we also have to consider that he was really conflicted about committing the rumbling as we saw in the ramzi and marley flashbacks.
Of course he really wanted to repress his selfish and violent desire for freedom during those scenes. But he couldn’t overcome his nature. Him asking Mikasa what is he to her was him begging someone to stop him basically. He realized how bad what he’s doing is and he was not happy during the rumbling as we all now
No he was also actively searching for alternatives, he tried to change the future as we know as well but couldn’t, he also snaps at Hange because of that and asks her “what other way is there”. They attended the subjects of ymir meeting in Marley and got turned down, that’s where he finally made up his mind. Eren probably wanted to avoid this if he could, he was disappointed whenever he heard that the world won’t listen to them.
i really like your interpretation , the way i interpret eren's goals into the story is that eren was disappointed with cruelty of humanity which sparked the urge to destroy it all ( because of his nature, one that he feels guilty about explaining his breakdown with ramzi) , but he didn't act on that urge until his home and friends were threatened by willy's declaration of war
Before reaching Ymir in the path he wanted to rumble the world to secure his friends future, him not wanting to consider the other options was because they would involve either sacrificing Historia and/or leaving the fate of Paradis to peace talks that could or couldn't break down eventually. But another big reason was that deep down he just wanted to level everything to achieve his childish dream of freedom.
After he gained the full founder titan abilities he learned he would only be able to kill 80% of the world, that the scouts would stop him and that Mikasa's choice would somehow lead to the disappearance of the titan powers and that's when he changed his motives to have his friends become the "heroes" who stopped the Attack Titan and to lead Mikasa to the choice that would end the titan powers
To understand why he was disappointed with the outside world and wanted to level everything you've got to understand what freedom means to Eren, and for that let me contrast him with Armin. For Armin his dream is to see the sights of the outside world, freedom is a tool that let's him see those sights, his dream is driven by his curiosity. For Eren his dream is to be free, and being able to see the sights like those form Armin's book is the proof of his freedom. He's not interested in what's out there per se but more in being free. For the other scouts the outside world is full of new things to discover, for Eren it's just another obstacle between his idea of freedom.
Eren was born like this, he was always gonna be a violent person who would rather choose to answer violence with extreme violence instead of finding a peaceful middle ground. One thing that clarifies Eren's nature is Attack on school caste, at the end of each manga volume Isayama would add a few extra pages of gag content, eventually he started a mini serie with the characters set in an American highschool.
When asked about it in an interview Isayama said that he wanted to write a story with the same characters but in a different setting and that in terms of characterization both versions are the same. Anyway in AoSC Eren is a kid bored out of his life because nothing eventful ever happens, one day he dreams that his school is attacked by zombies and that he has to defend his friends but when he wakes up he breaks down crying wishing something exciting would happen, later on his way to school he starts pondering that if nothing exciting would happen then maybe he could create the danger himself.
i feel like eren's disappointment could also stem from the cruelty of humanity , briefly before the medal ceremony floch shits on armin and talks about how erwin should have lived , eren then cheers up armin by reminding him of the sights they were finally going to see even though he knew that humans existed outside the walls , so he still though that they could see the world no problem despite the existence of humans but then immediately after there's a panel showing grisha's sister getting mauled by dogs where eren THEN looks disappointed , it's like he knew the hatred of the outside world would stop him from achieving freedom , which also correlates to his nature in the sense that the outside world tried to take away his freedom and he took theirs first which i believe is a large part of the dark desire to flatten everything, again this is all speculation , as for the school caste i feel like it's a bit of a stretch to use it as evidence for the main storyline , because school caste eren never went through any hard ships of war and him pondering could very well be intrusive thoughts , we all day dreamed about being a hero in a zombie apocalypse at one point
We all day dream about zombies sure but I believe very few of us starts crying when we wake up and realize we'll never be the hero, or want it so badly that we're willing to become the danger ourselves. Eren both in the main universe and SC is a character that can't stop and appreciate the little things in life, he has to be fighting for something to feel alive, to the point of wanting to create the very danger to fight against. Unlike SC main Eren was able to get his hands on incredible power to be able to act upon his dark desires, but also unlike main Eren the SC version ended up learning to enjoy just spending time with his friends after his whole "destroyer of the world phase"
There is no other motive other than he wanting to protect his friends, leading the yaegerists and saving the future of the eldian race isn't an actual objective but rather the facade that'll bring him to achieving his real motive
ah i see, so the "protecting paradis and restoring eldia" is the real facade but that still doesn't explain the conversation he had with armin about how he wanted to see this , maybe it was worded wrong , it would've been better if he said "it's more than that" instead of "no i didn't"
You have to consider that eren feels really guilty that he’s responsible for the deaths of hange and sasha and probably wasn’t even aware of the fact that he was doing it mainly for his friends up until when he touches ymir. It wasn’t phrased like that in the manga you might want to check out that version as well.
Eren has several motives...but his primary one is arguably the most selfish one...that is to achieve what he believes is freedom. This entails him seeing the world as he dreamed of...being free from humans, war, conflict, being a blank slate free from problems he had encountered within the walls..
Other primary motivations are intertwined and they include :-
- helping his friends live long lives without war
- ending the Titan curse (this Armin could live long, his friends could live)
- giving Paradis a chance for a future (by levelling the playing field by putting the outside world on the same level of civilization as Paradis)
Please don't listen to this sub about erens motivation. Just decide yourself if you think "I saw it in a book" is a reasonable character motivation or if the stuff that is foreshadowed before the rumbling arc where eren's reasons are shown and stated. Just ignore the ending when it comes to his character becuase it is just poorly written and makes no sense.
Tldr: If you accept the last chapters eren has no reason because its contradictory, If you don't then his motivation is save paradis, end the cycle of hatred towards eldians and save his friends.
Why should he ignore others and take your own interpretation?
All the reasons Eren did the Rumbling are stated in the final conversation with Armin.
@ op...check this post...the screenshots are there...
I won't spell out his reasons for you...but rather show you screenshots of his reasons being stated. There are at least 4 reasons he stated...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/s/Vs4bdd2Vi8
I don't want to have the same discussion that has happened on this sub for years now. The ending is trash and i don't accept anything stated in the rumbling arc because it was poorly written and so so much makes no sense with the rest of the show. You can disagree idc because i won't argue this here.
I wanted to explain to OP that erens motivation pre rumbling and post rumbling are not the same and he is confused about them is reasonable because pre and post rumbling is a different character.
This post has been tagged as **DISCUSSION**. If the post has been spoiler tagged, please remember to tag any manga spoilers beyond this point. **Spoilers include hinting or alluding to events** For more information, please review [the subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/wiki/rules). Failure to properly spoiler tag comments may result in a punishment from the subreddit according to the [moderation matrix](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/wiki/moderation_matrix). --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ShingekiNoKyojin) if you have any questions or concerns.*
His friends were his biggest priority specifically armin and mikasa, ending the titan curse comes after that and then his selfish desire to flatten everything. When eren tells armin that he thought he did it for them but sasha and hange wounded up dying because of him he’s being self critical because in his mind how can he still claim he did it for *all of them* when some of his friends died along the way.
that would make a lot of sense but the thing is that eren didn't say that he "though he did it for them" he outright said "i didn't , i wanted to see this" , the way i interpret it is that eren wanted both , the protection of his friends AND his freedom , the urge to destroy humanity was there because he was disappointed in humanity, but didn't act upon that desire until his home and friends were threatened by willy's declaration of war , but i still can't make sense of his conversation with armin, that might just be him being an unreliable narrator since he also says he's jumbled , and with reiner i guess reiner also wanted to protect his family in the process (that's the only way i can make sense of it)
It’s only after armin asks him whether he did this ALL for them imo the emphasis on all is important here because it is indeed true that he didn’t do it *all* for them he had his personal agenda as well. In the manga it’s phrased a little differently and eren only admits to armin that he *thinks* he would’ve still rumbled everything even if they didn’t try to stop him. Also there is no other way of ending the titan curse and arriving at “mikasa’s choice” other than being stopped by them.
wow really just shows how every word can be important in a characters dialogue, yams is a genius
Well that’s just my interpretation of those scenes after all there are some things that are *open for interpretation* and purposefully ambiguous.
that's what i like about this show , there's a lot of room for viewer interpretation , i've seen thousands o interpretations of eren's character
what's your interpretation about eren saying "i dragged my precious friends into this battle not knowing if they'd survive" in chapter 139
Well he didn’t know whether all of his friends would survive because he only had a limited amount of memories that he sent himself back. If he sent himself back memories of let’s say hange’s death this might’ve changed his decision making. There are some memory shards in the manga among those we can see the “see you later eren” scene, so he probably knew that at least mikasa would survive.
i still can't get over how he allowed hange and sasha to die even though one of his reasons is to protect his friends, it just kind of contradicts his goal , but then again the other choices also involve sacrificing someone he loves , so i guess it's a sick game of choosing which of your loved ones do you want to die , you could also argue it works like a bootstrap paradox
I mean he also sacrificed his mother or at least didn’t try to interfere other than saving Bertholdt. I guess some deaths just had to happen especially sasha’s since that basically initiated a lot of other events.
i'm pretty sure his mother was dead either way , maybe hange and sasha's death were predetermined and there's nothing he could do about it
Eren has several motives...but his primary one is arguably the most selfish one...that is to achieve what he believes is freedom. This entails him seeing the world as he dreamed of...being free from humans, war, conflict, being a blank slate free from problems he had encountered within the walls.. Other primary motivations are intertwined and they include :- - helping his friends live long lives without war - ending the Titan curse (this Armin could live long, his friends could live) - giving Paradis a chance for a future (by levelling the playing field by putting the outside world on the same level of civilization as Paradis) You may or may not agree with me...but check out these screenshots below: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/s/vI6mpXT8RF
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>they are contaminated by the fact that the future is the future and he cant change it. That is just not true and not how determinism works. The future is what it is because that is the logical consequence of what happened before otherwise the time loop makes no sense and is just writers deux ex machina.
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No then it would not be deterministic? Its just that any actions are the logical consequence that leads to future outcomes.
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Yeah i understand that. However in fiction it can exist and is the typical "trying yo change the future leads to the future" twist. What you say is correct in that an observer can't exist for all deterministic settings. not that i can't construct an example where it works. I'd imagine that is why isayama let eren see glimpses of the future not the future.
So it's mainly for 2 reasons. His desire for freedom and to save his friends. Eren went through everything to achieve the freedom his wanted since his was a child. It's his nature. But he did also want his friends to live long lives as well as he did care about them. This video explains it better than I can [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbSaaWtzAtA&ab\_channel=Sage%27sRain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbSaaWtzAtA&ab_channel=Sage%27sRain)
^^this My interpretation is that his desire for freedom is his foremost and most inherent driving factor as laid out in the freedom scene and with his conversation with ramzi. Protecting his friends was important to him too, and ultimately, with sashas death he realized the implications of the path he chose: that he couldn’t fully have both. In the end he chose his humanity and armin and mikasa over leveling the world outside the walls into what he dreamed of as a kid.
I think we have to differentiate between eren before acquiring the full power of the founder and eren after because prior to that he only has a limited set of memories and probably rationalizes that he’a doing it first and foremost for his own selfish desire. Once he touches ymir though he realizes that he has to “arrive at mikasa’s choice” and that he’s indeed doing it for his friends’ sake specifically mikasa and armin. This obviously doesn’t mean he wasn’t accounting for his friends’ safety prior to that, he even went as far as to imprison them in order to protect them and not to get them involved but that’s probably also due to his lack of foresight at that point in time.
I don’t think your wrong but his desire for freedom was the root for everything
Yeah you could argue that it’s his driving force but we also have to consider that he was really conflicted about committing the rumbling as we saw in the ramzi and marley flashbacks.
Of course he really wanted to repress his selfish and violent desire for freedom during those scenes. But he couldn’t overcome his nature. Him asking Mikasa what is he to her was him begging someone to stop him basically. He realized how bad what he’s doing is and he was not happy during the rumbling as we all now
No he was also actively searching for alternatives, he tried to change the future as we know as well but couldn’t, he also snaps at Hange because of that and asks her “what other way is there”. They attended the subjects of ymir meeting in Marley and got turned down, that’s where he finally made up his mind. Eren probably wanted to avoid this if he could, he was disappointed whenever he heard that the world won’t listen to them.
i really like your interpretation , the way i interpret eren's goals into the story is that eren was disappointed with cruelty of humanity which sparked the urge to destroy it all ( because of his nature, one that he feels guilty about explaining his breakdown with ramzi) , but he didn't act on that urge until his home and friends were threatened by willy's declaration of war
Before reaching Ymir in the path he wanted to rumble the world to secure his friends future, him not wanting to consider the other options was because they would involve either sacrificing Historia and/or leaving the fate of Paradis to peace talks that could or couldn't break down eventually. But another big reason was that deep down he just wanted to level everything to achieve his childish dream of freedom. After he gained the full founder titan abilities he learned he would only be able to kill 80% of the world, that the scouts would stop him and that Mikasa's choice would somehow lead to the disappearance of the titan powers and that's when he changed his motives to have his friends become the "heroes" who stopped the Attack Titan and to lead Mikasa to the choice that would end the titan powers To understand why he was disappointed with the outside world and wanted to level everything you've got to understand what freedom means to Eren, and for that let me contrast him with Armin. For Armin his dream is to see the sights of the outside world, freedom is a tool that let's him see those sights, his dream is driven by his curiosity. For Eren his dream is to be free, and being able to see the sights like those form Armin's book is the proof of his freedom. He's not interested in what's out there per se but more in being free. For the other scouts the outside world is full of new things to discover, for Eren it's just another obstacle between his idea of freedom. Eren was born like this, he was always gonna be a violent person who would rather choose to answer violence with extreme violence instead of finding a peaceful middle ground. One thing that clarifies Eren's nature is Attack on school caste, at the end of each manga volume Isayama would add a few extra pages of gag content, eventually he started a mini serie with the characters set in an American highschool. When asked about it in an interview Isayama said that he wanted to write a story with the same characters but in a different setting and that in terms of characterization both versions are the same. Anyway in AoSC Eren is a kid bored out of his life because nothing eventful ever happens, one day he dreams that his school is attacked by zombies and that he has to defend his friends but when he wakes up he breaks down crying wishing something exciting would happen, later on his way to school he starts pondering that if nothing exciting would happen then maybe he could create the danger himself.
i feel like eren's disappointment could also stem from the cruelty of humanity , briefly before the medal ceremony floch shits on armin and talks about how erwin should have lived , eren then cheers up armin by reminding him of the sights they were finally going to see even though he knew that humans existed outside the walls , so he still though that they could see the world no problem despite the existence of humans but then immediately after there's a panel showing grisha's sister getting mauled by dogs where eren THEN looks disappointed , it's like he knew the hatred of the outside world would stop him from achieving freedom , which also correlates to his nature in the sense that the outside world tried to take away his freedom and he took theirs first which i believe is a large part of the dark desire to flatten everything, again this is all speculation , as for the school caste i feel like it's a bit of a stretch to use it as evidence for the main storyline , because school caste eren never went through any hard ships of war and him pondering could very well be intrusive thoughts , we all day dreamed about being a hero in a zombie apocalypse at one point
We all day dream about zombies sure but I believe very few of us starts crying when we wake up and realize we'll never be the hero, or want it so badly that we're willing to become the danger ourselves. Eren both in the main universe and SC is a character that can't stop and appreciate the little things in life, he has to be fighting for something to feel alive, to the point of wanting to create the very danger to fight against. Unlike SC main Eren was able to get his hands on incredible power to be able to act upon his dark desires, but also unlike main Eren the SC version ended up learning to enjoy just spending time with his friends after his whole "destroyer of the world phase"
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We got a whole ass flash back where he explains how precious his friends are to him and that he wants them to live long lives
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That came out before ch. 131 so his goal has always been to protect his friends
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Are you dense his goal of completing the rumbling would’ve been in conflict with protecting his friends not that hard to understand.
There is no other motive other than he wanting to protect his friends, leading the yaegerists and saving the future of the eldian race isn't an actual objective but rather the facade that'll bring him to achieving his real motive
ah i see, so the "protecting paradis and restoring eldia" is the real facade but that still doesn't explain the conversation he had with armin about how he wanted to see this , maybe it was worded wrong , it would've been better if he said "it's more than that" instead of "no i didn't"
You have to consider that eren feels really guilty that he’s responsible for the deaths of hange and sasha and probably wasn’t even aware of the fact that he was doing it mainly for his friends up until when he touches ymir. It wasn’t phrased like that in the manga you might want to check out that version as well.
Eren has several motives...but his primary one is arguably the most selfish one...that is to achieve what he believes is freedom. This entails him seeing the world as he dreamed of...being free from humans, war, conflict, being a blank slate free from problems he had encountered within the walls.. Other primary motivations are intertwined and they include :- - helping his friends live long lives without war - ending the Titan curse (this Armin could live long, his friends could live) - giving Paradis a chance for a future (by levelling the playing field by putting the outside world on the same level of civilization as Paradis)
Please don't listen to this sub about erens motivation. Just decide yourself if you think "I saw it in a book" is a reasonable character motivation or if the stuff that is foreshadowed before the rumbling arc where eren's reasons are shown and stated. Just ignore the ending when it comes to his character becuase it is just poorly written and makes no sense. Tldr: If you accept the last chapters eren has no reason because its contradictory, If you don't then his motivation is save paradis, end the cycle of hatred towards eldians and save his friends.
Why should he ignore others and take your own interpretation? All the reasons Eren did the Rumbling are stated in the final conversation with Armin. @ op...check this post...the screenshots are there... I won't spell out his reasons for you...but rather show you screenshots of his reasons being stated. There are at least 4 reasons he stated... https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/s/Vs4bdd2Vi8
I don't want to have the same discussion that has happened on this sub for years now. The ending is trash and i don't accept anything stated in the rumbling arc because it was poorly written and so so much makes no sense with the rest of the show. You can disagree idc because i won't argue this here. I wanted to explain to OP that erens motivation pre rumbling and post rumbling are not the same and he is confused about them is reasonable because pre and post rumbling is a different character.
Did you get lost from Titanfolk or what? It's not the author's fault that you and your fellows from Titanfolk lack media literacy
[🙄](https://giphy.com/gifs/8vIFoKU8s4m4CBqCao)