Attack on Titan: Freedom and the Other
(This essay follow-up the manga up to the Chapter 137 and may have spoilers. You will also be warned when it’s dangerously spoilerish for those who are in the Season 4 of the Anime)
Doomed to desire freedom, Eren sees in the Other an eternal threat to his existence. The feeling of living inside a cage, like a confined bird, or worse, like cattle conformed to waiting for slaughter, is a scary metaphor. Between the conformity of a passive and fearful life and the rebellion and confrontation of that threat, the feeling of dissatisfaction and revolt with the situation of a live in captivity is easy to be sympathized and nurtured.
Attack on Titan begins introducing us to its three main protagonists, Eren, Mikasa and Armin, as small children, extremely curious about the “world outside”. Haunted by the existence of the Titans, gigantic monsters that are separated from humanity by great walls. From the beginning we are introduced to some themes that will permeate the whole series: fear of the Other and the desire for Freedom. Eren looks away from the passivity of adults and the isolationist military wing — both of them defending the existence of the Walls and vouching for its continued efficacy in dealing with the Titan problem. He admires the Survey Corps — courageous soldiers who dare venturing outside the relative protection offered within the city and face directly the Titan-Enemy.
In the first narrative arc of AoT, the Titans are the racialized representation of the Other as barbaric as possible: monstrous beings whose sole purpose is to devour humans. They do not need them to feed, nor are they interested in any other non-human being. Its appearance is humanoid, but distorted, with distorted and exaggerated limbs and facial expressions. The Titans are a corruption, a perversion, of both human and nature. There is no attempt to reproduce the species, and also, nor knowledge of their origin. They also lack any kind of language or culture.
To better understand what this “Other” is, it is also necessary to understand what ‘We” is. Philosophically, the constitution of the identity of the I / We / Us necessarily passes through the dialectical constitution of the otherness that is the Other / They. I identify with brown hair as opposed to those who have black or blond hair. I identify myself as part of the male gender, as opposed to the female gender. We are human, inasmuch as there are other “non-human” beings. This construction of identity goes through a process of identification between those who are equal, and those who are different, the Other. I am an individual person with certain characteristics as opposed to other individual people with other characteristics. We are part of a group of a certain nationality, as opposed to people who are of other nationalities. The ethnocentric look is that which establishes the look of a given culture as the center in which all others are compared. The relationship between identity / otherness will anthropologically mark the relationship with the Equal and the Different.
Historian François Dosse points out how the first historian, Herodotus, represented Greece as a “mirror” of the Persians: the former was civilized, rational and democratic, while their mirror was mystical and despotic. Edward Said proposes the “Orientalism” model to explain how the West “invented” a stereotypical representation of the East over millennia. Tzvetan Todorov in “The Conquest of America” demonstrates how Cristopher Columbus fantasized and projected fantastic views on the Amerindian populations he encountered. In modern times, representations of Native Americans commonly depicted them as primitive, wild, bestial, an “Other” much closer to a force of nature which, along with animals and wilderness, should be civilized.
In this first act of the series, the Titans are presented as bestial beings, a force of uncontrollable nature. Humanity, on the other hand, is presented as civilized and having their own culture, costumes, diversity among its own as well as a capacity for organization, feelings and rationality Faced with such a monstrous and incommunicable Other, a highly militarized society is introduced to us. With an influential religion that promises salvation, the fear of this Other is a major factor (if not central) in its social organization. The Survey Corps is the only arm that dares to venture beyond the walls of comfortable space by “We/Us”, and are commonly ostracized by the population in the face of their failures.
The human resident population — the “We” — is represented in a very particular way: relatable and identifiable to us readers, but also somewhat strangely at first glance — The characters, for instance, have different names and surnames that can be linked to different ethnic origins: Jaeger, Braun come from the German language, Jean, Arlett resemble French, Hoover and Ackerman, English. Their physical characteristics are also diverse: some are blond with blue eyes, others have brown hair and we do know textually that Mikasa comes from a rare “Oriental/Asian” lineage.
Despite the notable absence of dark-skinned characters (only in part II will we see a black population, for example), civilization indicates a heritage borne from multiple origins. Above all, the “We” is identified as essentially human as opposed to the Other’s bestiality.
Eren synthesizes many contradictory movements in this situation. He refuses a passive role in his relation to the fear of that Other. He also intensively desires Freedom from the social comfort and restraint among Equals. His response when the Titans breach the Wall is first a reaction borne out of fear, and then anger: the Other that threatens his Freedom must be destroyed.
From the beginning of the series, one of its possible interpretations could be that the it defends a certain nationalist feeling around humanity and the need of brave military personnel to break the isolationism that imprisons us. The images of captivity and the cage metaphor are counterpointed to militarization, armamentism and the possibility of overcoming this oppressive Other.
Much criticized within the democratic tradition, the German jurist Carl Schmidt argued that politics should be based on a Friend / Enemy paradigm. The Other who threatens national security must be treated as an Enemy to be destroyed. For Schmidt, liberal diplomacy that seeks consensus and agreements is, at the very least, “naive”. This political philosophy will be the basis of much of the militarism in the 1930s-40s that spawned World War II. The equalization and racialization of We — Humanity and the nationalist sentiment, gradually through the plot, gives place to a rise of a questioning of this logic and a substitution by elements that challenge these paradigms.
Although this is what feeds the psychology and motivations of the characters in the first arc, this is only an apparent and initial perspective: unlike most other anime and even superhero stories, the AoT war is not clean: it is traumatizing and causes as much suffering for the Other as for Us. Let’s compare it with the traditional structure of a Shonen or a superhero story: the protagonist (be it Goku, Naruto, Luffy, Captain America, Batman, etc.) through personal improvement, must overcome the Other through the exercise of a superior violence, solving problems, and as a rule, restoring the status quo threatened by the Enemy. Goku defeats Freeza by combat, and saves Earth; Luffy defeats enemy pirates on a certain island and solves all the problems that afflict it; Spiderman must defeat Doctor Octopus to avoid a tragedy.
In AoT this is radically different, since there are countless plots in which the exercise of violence does not solve all problems, and the combatants are killed or at the very least — highly traumatized.
The most exemplary case, of course, is the tragic figure of Reiner, whose demeanor, attitudes and subsequent troubles in the story closely resemble classic symptoms associated with PTSD. He even has a personality dissonance, not knowing how to deal with the violent acts he has done. Eren, Armin, Mikasa, Jean and several others are not immune to fear, acquiring traits related to the trauma and guilt of their own actions and of those around them. So even when the conflict is solved through violence, it still leaves a permanent mark.. In this sense, different from common sense, AoT is not a militaristic narrative, but an anti-militarist one, and one that constantly demonstrates the horrors of violent conflict[1].
From the first chapters, however, we see Eren “killed” by a Titan, Mikasa reminiscing about a society marked by violence it forces children to commit murder, and subsequently Eren resurrecting as a Titan. This creates a first breach in this absolute Other, after all, one of Us has some connection with these Others. Eren also equals himself and appropriates this Other’s body and strength to use as weapon against Them.
As the narrative progresses, this Other becomes closer and closer to Us: it is revealed that Annie is on of Them, an Other that infiltrated Our society. When we reach Connie’s original village and see what has become of Connie’s mother, we understand that humans (We) can become Titans (Other). Eventually, the Beast Titan is presented as an Other who can think and communicate like Us. The once firm barrier that separated Us and Them in the readers and protagonist’s minds is continually broke down until we come to the final revelation of the essence: the Titans are human. We are the Other.
Through access to Grisha’s memories, it is revealed to us that the Other-Titan is created from an act of violence. The people of Ymir (Eldians) cannot normally become Titans, so the injection that is applied to them and makes them a Titan is an allegory for the dehumanization of the Other. This dehumanized Other lives — literally and metaphorically — on the margins of society: beyond the Walls in Paradis and in violent exile by Marley. The effect of the dehumanization of the Other on Titan has the consequence that they are monstrous and threatens the common life within Paradis, and is also a punishment and lively reminder of a myth that confirms, for the Marleyans, that the Other-Ymir / Eldian is indeed a threat.
The search for knowledge about the Other is initiated in the very first chapters, when Eren’s father, Grisha Jaeger, promises to show him one day what lies in the basement — an apt location, as it not only is a hidden part of their own house, one that Eren had never accessed, but also doubles as a metaphor for the basement of society, where hidden (and mostly unpleasant) truths lie. The search throughout Part I is to convince society of the importance of this place and also being able to reach the basement where Knowledge about the Other resides. In this process, a key element is Hange’s experiments to better understand the Titans, as well as the process of acquiring more power with Eren’s Titan, which is mainly a search for knowledge of this new Body.
When the objective is finally reached, what is initially discovered through a photography, is that there is a new Other — and a world beyond the Island. When Eren finally reaches the desired Ocean, symbol of his Freedom, but now recognizes that there is still an Other, he sees his freedom threatened again, and his question is disturbing: when we destroy the (new) Other-Enemy, will finally we be free?
Memory and History
Although the use of flashback and individual memories is a very common narrative trope in mangas and other contemporary productions, they assume an important narrative and allegorical role in AoT, not only as a way of exposing the past as it happened. In fact, there is a long discussion among historians about the possibility of accessing the past. In the 19th century, the methodical-scientific school, whose best-known historian was Leopold von Ranke, proposed that the effort to accumulate all historical documents would allow us to reconstruct the past “as it was”. Subsequently, several historiographical schools challenged this notion: the vestiges of the past are only a segmented part of that reality, constituted both by accident (some documents were preserved, others destroyed, etc.), as well as by the selection of the historian, someone of their own time, that makes a methodological reading of these vestiges, with their own concerns. As a rule, on most narratives presented to us by the Culture Industry, when a flashback or some knowledge about the past is “revealed”, they are automatically considered to be “the truth” or particularly in the flashback, “the past as it was”. It is as if we had gone back in time and witnessed the past itself, rather than it being a construction, a reminiscence (made on present time by someone) of the past.
.The first contact with Memory as a theme is still in the first part of AoT, when it is revealed that the power of the First King changes and erases individual memories. It is eventually revealed that when the First King went into exile with the people of Ymir on the island of Paradis, he erased everyone’s memory of the Past and the “world outside”. In other instances, the memory was erased from certain groups or individuals. The absence of Memory produces an erasure of the connection between the Past and the Present — the inhabitants of Paradis are unaware of the circumstances and reasons why they should live in isolation and what the Other-Titan represents, and do not even know that there is another humanity out there of the walls.
Commonly, what we mean by memory is individual recollection, images of past events that have occurred to a person. French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs proposes the concept of Collective, Social, Memory — a memory that is produced and circulated by a given society. We all “remember” World War II, or other historical events, even those we have not experienced firsthand. Social Memory is collectively produced by various symbolic productions: monuments, rituals, stories passed down through generations, school books, literature, films, manga, video games, etc. This social memory is socially constructed, and it changes over time according to economic, political and cultural changes.
In our times, The National State is one of the greatest powers within contemporary societies, and as a consequence, one of the main controllers of what is remembered and what is socially forgotten. But this is in constant dispute: in 2020 we saw the Black Lives Matter movement tearing down statues that celebrate Confederates in the United States (but without a doubt, trying to remember them elsewhere, for other meanings); street names are constantly changed to account for people and heroes that society wants to be honored. No one in their right mind (or at least, who is not a Nazi) wants a statue of Hitler to be raised or to stand, and so on. What is remembered and how it is remembered are of utmost importance within a society.
There is an immense debate in historiography about the relationship between Memory and History of the Past. The classic definition, much criticized, is that Memory is produced socially through symbols, monuments, stories passed down through generations, and by culture as a whole, while History is an intellectual operation of intelligible understanding of the past through evidence criticism. Although the division has some validity to understand the difference between the two, Memory impacts how professional history is made, just as historiographical production impacts social memory.
The erasure of Memory, therefore, is also a form of social control and an instrument of immeasurable power. Rewriting history, erasing memory through the destruction of symbols and the construction of new ones, is imperative especially for authoritarian regimes. King Fritz, allegorically through magical power, is capable of erasing the Social Memory of the inhabitants of Paradis, disconnecting them from the Other and controlling them to always fear beyond the walls, and comfortably follow the rules of a hierarchical and militarized society.
When Krista Lenz defeats Rod Reiss, her father and current king of Paradis, who intends to perpetuate the erasure of Memory, she claims to be the new Queen and restores her name: Historia (Greek name for history). This symbolic act is Paradis’ first resumption in relation to his own history, rejecting the control over the Memory that previous kings made, and indicating a new path for the direction of this society. When Eren finds the photograph and accesses Grisha’s Memories, he recovers the Social Memory and reconnects with the past, allowing Paradis to open himself up to the World again.
Another big leap for Attack on Titan allegories comes when Eren has access to the memories of Attack Titan and his father Grisha’s life story. Through them, we come to better understand the Past and the Other “out there”.
What Isayama now builds on the “people of Ymir” is a situation analogous to that of the Jews in the ghettos of Nazi Germany, represented by Marley. The parallels are often obvious and explicit: the people of Ymir are the abominable Other — they are blamed for all the evil of humanity, for oppressing and genociding other peoples for thousands of years, for being disguised Titans, and are segregated and marked (with the bandana on his arm, just like the bandana with the Star of David that the Jewish people were forced to use). The Titans perhaps refer to the Jewish folklore, the Golem, beings made of raw material, soulless and monstrous. But inversely, in AoT, the Titans are made of organic matter, and are created from a human soul / body.
And when we eventually see the map of the world — which is an upside-down representation of our planet, we see that Paradis, the island to which the people of Ymir are exiled, corresponds to Madagascar in our world (remembering that every map is a cartographic representation, not the real itself, and since we have no reference point, the geography of this world is, technically, the same as ours). The “Madagascar Plan” was one of several proposals made by the Nazis to expel the Jews from Europe, between 1937 and 1940. The plan did not work out because of the British maritime blockade in the Second World War. The logic reverses, as does the Golem myth, and if Madagascar was one of the places the Nazis thought of displacing the Jews, Paradis became the self-exile of King Fritz and the Eldians.
Grisha’s initial tragedy, which puts him in touch with the world outside of childhood, is when his sister disrespects the codes of that World, that blamed her for crimes that were not her own, is murdered, and Grisha’s parents, traumatized and fearful, prefer to suffer silently with the grief of their lost child, than with the possibility of more tragedies to happen.
This dissatisfaction with conformism, like his son Eren in the future, leads Grisha when he is older, to seek a resistance movement from the people of Ymir, against the oppressive Marley. In the Resistance, another memory / narrative about the Past is created: the people of Ymir were historically responsible for the great advances of humanity, and all the oppression they were supposed to have carried out was a great lie. King Fritz, who went into exile a hundred years ago in Paradis, was a traitor, and a new nationalist movement of the people of Ymir rises and seeks to crown a new monarch. The weight of the generations, however, causes Grisha to impose on the child Zeke demands and expectations that are eventually rejected, and he, like Grisha, goes against the wishes of his parents, betraying resistance.
It is through Owl that Isayama will make a speech about importance and the mobilization of Memory. When he saves Grisha, he explains that both the memory produced by Marley — that the people of Ymir were genocidal, and the one produced by the people of Ymir — they only brought good things to the world, could not be reality. No people are intrinsically and essentially good or evil, and the past is filled with contradictions and disputes. What Owl say is that the historical agents act according to their possibilities, and commit atrocities or do good according to different circumstances. Each of these Memories is an ethnocentric reading of that Past.
At the end of Part I, Historia is a puppet queen of the military state (Isayama was already criticizing the new power established in Paradis, for example, in the grotesque scene in which Marshal Zackrey tortures a prisoner) that now occupies Paradis, that is, History is not yet free, the possibility of subjects controlling their own historical course is still controlled by an authoritarian power. In turn, Eren, who holds the Memory, has a great revelation — which is not revealed to us then — when Historia plays. And it is Eren who will be the main catalyst for the events of Part II of Attack on Titan.
The different political responses in the tension between Memory and the Other
The themes of the relationship with the Other and with Memory continue in Part II of AoT, but subordinated to a new allegory: the different responses given to the political problems that these relations produce. One of the philosophical bases for understanding many of the allegories is existentialism and the discussion of determinism and free will.
The question revolves around why humans act as they do. Is there something that determines our actions, or do we have the right to decide what to do? This age-old question arises when, for example, God tells Abraham to sacrifice his children to test their faith. Abraham’s decision is to follow God’s order, which prevents him from doing so. However, if Abraham did not have free will, his action would have no value.
Determinism, in its multiple variables, defines that human actions are done according to biological, sociocultural, psychological, logical, or even divine determinations. Biological determinism postulates that what we do is due to an innate instinct and nature: we are cruel, or we act like animals, because our DNA or the evolutionary process has led us to act in a certain way — we eat because we are determined to need feed us; sociocultural determinism will postulate that we act according to the rules of our society and culture — we are obliged to work, because that is the way in which we are paid and can feed ourselves; the psychological postulates that our behaviors will make us act in certain ways, and not in others, and so on — eating with a fork and knife, not with the hand, is why we learned and were trained to do so. The divine goes through the idea that “everything is already written”.
Understanding the multiple conditions and determinations that led Napoleon to be part of the French Revolution and later declaring himself Emperor, or the existence of the Inquisition, or how and why societies deal differently with a pandemic is one of the tasks of human science research. Do circumstances explain (all) human actions?
A classic example is the following: Person X points a gun at Person Y’s head and orders that he must kill Person Z. How much freedom does Y have to take this action? A very common and acceptable answer would be to say that he had no choice but to carry out the order, even though internally Y was horrified by the act he had to perform. This would be determined by the self-preservation instinct, which overrode the cultural and psychological determination that killing is wrong. On the other hand, determinism would also justify that Y’s moral choice to refuse to shoot and prefer to die was due to the weight of a moral determination. Ultimately, Satre would argue that in the face of this conflicting dispute between determinations and conditions that resides freedom and free will: the possibility for a person to decide which choice to take.
AoT characters in Part II will have to decide their own answer, and make a choice. Will they conform to the determination of history, and reproduce a violent history? What are the reasons that mobilize them, and what decisions will they make? When Eren confronts Mikasa and Armin, he reveals that they can do nothing against him, since the Ackermans are biologically determined to protect the Titans, and Armin, as a Titan, is bound by Memory’s determination of his actions.
Immediately in part II, Isayama show us a new group of militarized children who compete among themselves for the honor of becoming one of the new Nine Titans[2]. We are also introduced to the notion that Marley uses Titans for War (that is, dehumanizes the people oppressed by them and uses them as weapons), and that the world’s technology is now sufficiently advanced to face and destroy the Titans — The Great Threatening Other. One of the first arcs rightly is about creating an international alliance to destroy the Eldians once and for all. This military alliance is based on the assumption that all Eldians are Titans — a monstrous Other — in potential, and that they threaten the rest of the world, reducing an entire people to the status of terrorists.
To guarantee the security and freedom of the rest of the world, this racialized Other must be destroyed. It is in response to this bellicose and destructive threat, that the different Eldians must respond. Paradis, in turn, coming out of the centenary isolation, goes through a modernization process, and allies with certain individuals and nations, in a similar way to Japan’s own modernization process from the 1850s.
Although the fate of the original four child soldiers was tragic (Reiner has PTSD, Bertholdt and Marcel were devoured, and Annie is in a “coma”), and the situation of the Ymir people in Marley is overwhelming, the new children see how great importance is the possibility of being chosen as of new Nine Titans, either because they consider it an honor, or because it is a powerful tool to protect those they love — preventing their family from being targeted by Marley. Although the people of Ymir are segregated and oppressed in Marley, a large part of the people who inhabit the Continent see themselves as guilty and see the people of Ymir in Paradis as the monstrous Other, who perpetuates the story of oppression that they were taught. Gabi and Falco’s narrative arc will lead them to blame the residents of Paradis in the first instance as continuing a past collective guilt, and murder the gentle Sasha, seen as the Other Enemy. It is only through the circumstances that lead them to live with people from Paradis, that they learn that this Other is also Human, like them. This is the narrative response about how knowing the Other can allow understanding and empathy to be borne.
A more tragic character is Reiner, whose guilt haunts him throughout the plot. Initially, the guilt over the death of his friend Marcel mobilized him to destroy the inhabitants of Paradis, but when he got in touch and discovered them as humans, who, like him, suffered and shared the same anxieties, he developed a dissociative personality syndrome. Full with guilt because of Berthold’s death and his inability to individually resolve the contradiction between Marley and Paradis, Reiner is driven to attempt suicide, and is interrupted by Eren, who forces him to live with the guilt.
[ Stop right around here if you only watch the anime and is still in the middle of the Season 4]
Another answer is Zeke’s, much more nihilist. As Grisha’s son, he saw the impossibility of the revolution that the resistance group planned, and the cycle of violence and hatred it would produce. He then devises a plan to euthanize all Eldians across the planet. For Zeke, as long as these people exist, they would bring eternal suffering to others, and to themselves. Zeke is also the representative of the guilt borne by the acts of the past, whether of an individual, a family, or a community. In the face of this gigantic guilt, he takes responsibility for himself to redeem his people, choosing to kill everyone, understanding this as a collective suicide for the good of humanity. Obviously, Eldians see this as a mass murder that included a plethora of innocents in the name of a greater good, and the guilt of past’s horror made no sense to them. It is important to remember that, prior to Zeke, the plan of the “First king” Karl Fritz, to displace, isolate and erase the memories of the people of Ymir in Paradis, was also a self-punishing solution based on collective guilt and the idea that “Titans shouldn’t exist”. While Karl intended to expel the Eldians from the world, Zeke preferred the genocide of his own people.
Zeke’s plan is defeated by Eren, who becomes the serie’s final antagonist. What comes to us as a big plot twist, is the continuation of Eren’s own line of thought in the Act I: to become Free it is necessary to eliminate the Other that threatens Us. Continuing the line of reasoning that grounded his perspective in Act I, Eren understands that to become Free it would be necessary to eliminate the Other that threatens Us. The narrative about Eren psychoanalytically expresses the resentment as the basis of aggression, and in its political form, fascism. He sees the rest of the world as a constant threat to the existence of Us-Eldians, whether now or in the future, and as long as this Other exists, they can develop techniques to eventually exterminate them. It is based on this intense fear that he understands Freedom, and that is what mobilizes him to establish genocide all over the planet.
With due regard for fantasy — no nation in the world today would be able to eliminate all others while remaining protected — this is the basic principle of Fascism. Fascio is a word and a symbol of Latin origin that meant the union of multiple tied rods. Italian fascism, which gives rise to the name of this political ideology, proposes the maxim of “together, we are stronger”. In the fascist interpretation, this union is a union between Us — the Equals — against Them, the Enemy. Fascist ideology seeks to erase otherness, both internally (dissidents, other ethnicities, etc.) and external ones (enemy nations, etc.). The invention of the Other-Enemy that threatens us bases the discourses of different rhetoric, such as the protection of national sovereignty, the freedom of individuals, and feeds conspiracy myths of how the Other is always present and threatens our lives. Eren points to the destruction of the Other’s difference as the path to unity, peace, and freedom.
In the internal political scenario, the fascist response to the problem of the Other is represented by the Jaegerists, led by Floch. Floch is a character presented as morally weak since its introduction. And it is he who leads an armed militia that in the name of the Leader (Eren) and the Nation (Paradis-Eldia) must subdue all dissidents, and supports the global genocide by the Wall Titans.
It is also possible to point out Eren’s fascism in his genocidal act, but Isayama gives yet another layer of complexity to the character — without denying the barbarity of the act. Eren is not concerned about the internal enemy, the “Us” is not a threat per se, and he admits that they are opponents who can seek their own freedom response (and thus, he does not use the power of the First Titan to paralyze Armin, Mikasa, and the others).
The classic definition of Politics in the thinkers of Antiquity assumes that Equals (We/Us) with different positions and interests compete for the best course of action, either through arguments or weapons. Political theorist Carl von Clausewitz proposes that war is the continuation of politics by other means. The war dispute between different city-states or nations is the armed resolution of interests that are not resolved by words, diplomacy and agreements, but it is nonetheless a battle/dispute between Equals. This opposes the view of the Other-Enemy who ceases to be an Equal, and becomes dehumanized and must be exterminated. Eren acknowledges that his Equals — members of the Ymir people — have the right to dispute his answer, even through violence. He does not grant that right to Others.
When Eren enters Ymir’s memories, we can understand what was the Original Sin, or rather the Original Violence, which gave birth to the long history of violence caused against and by the Eldians. Enslaved and tortured, Ymir is a desperate child who eats the Forbidden Fruit, but she is not expelled from Paradise, since she already lived in Hell, but is raped and forced to carry the offender’s children — the first Eldian King, Fritz. The foundational act of the civilization of the people of Ymir is violence. Not any violence, but patriarchal and sexual violence that dehumanizes. In turn, monstrosities emerge from it, used for the barbarism of war, conquest and oppression. Ymir does not break free by becoming a Deity over the Titans, she is perpetually enslaved to live in a limbo of oppression and violence, forever trapped in the dehumanizing condition.
When we retroactively read the scene where Ymir restores Zeke after he was killed in a clash with Levy, we can understand it as an allegory of the perpetuation of guilt and a desire for self-destruction as an end to the long history of violence.
Eren, in turn, prevents the guilt of this violence from continuing to dominate her, and embraces Ymir, giving the first act of Love that she has never had. Accepting her pain, he allows her to be free, and leads her to the same response as his: the destruction of the Other. Together, Eren and Ymir allegorize the flow of violence brought up with the past and all the accumulated resentment of perpetuating violence. It is also a metaphor for how authoritarian and fascist strands can embrace people left behind by the establishment, and mobilize their resentments to blame the other.
It is when Eren launches the genocidal attack that Isayama finally reveals to us the different places in the world and the population, in a clear mirror relationship with our world, where, for example, it is a black population, not mostly white, that occupies “London”. It is also not accidental that the first scenes of destruction and consequence of the attack that are shown to us are not Marley’s (the allegory of the authoritarian nation), but a nation that reminds us of Palestine or another poor region of the Middle East, and barbarism is seen from the point of view of an innocent child, who had his hand cut off for being forced to steal in order to feed himself. The tragedy of accumulated resentment and the search for freedom at the end of the Other are the reasons we see, in the Memories of the past, Eren crying with sadness and apologizing in advance for the genocide he was about to commit. The destruction of the Other, for Isayama, is necessarily accompanied by great forces (Titans) trampling the innocent in the name of Freedom.
Finally, we have the political — and democratic — community to which Armin, Mikasa, Jean and Connie belong, and which later Gabi, Falco, Annie, Pieck, Reiner take part. It is democratic because it allows for dissent, and the resolution depends on the coexistence between the dissenters, and the consensus between what should be done.
Individually, each of them has doubts about what to do. Armin wants to resolve the problem of the coexistence with the Other through dialogue: convincing Eren that his path is not the right one, rescuing him from fear. Mikasa is more mysterious, but the author implies that she intends to resolve it through violent conflict, but without killing him. Annie, on the other hand, sees any resolution other than killing Eren as naïve. Jean, one of the most complex characters in the series, has doubts whether Eren’s action is correct or not: and he does recognize, as long as the rest of the world exists, and the Eldians are considered monstrous (similar to racism, anti-Semitism, or different forms of prejudice that dehumanize each other) Paradis is threatened. Among Marley’s characters, Pieck, Reiner and Theo Magath (Marley’s official) also have different perspectives. The Officer acknowledges that they were wrong to treat the Eldians as they did, and this perpetuated the cycle of violence to the point that their country was now decimated.
All are united by a single principle: genocide is unacceptable barbarism. Their union is due to the refusal of that answer. And for the hope that the problem with the Other can be solved in another way.
Democracy can be understood as a big “bet”: there is no way to be sure that things will work out, but there is a hope that in it the recognition of the Other will be possible, and diplomacy will offer agreements, tolerance, the possibility of coexistence and a way out of violence and total destruction.
One of the great human tragedies is the mimesis-mirror relationship in relation to the Other. We, as individuals, group, or nation, are plural, rational, we have anguish, we smile and cry. The Other, as a mirror, is an amorphous and frightening mass, unified, irrational, bellicose, and threatens us. Countless imperialist powers have justified wars in the name of protecting their own, of freedom, of civilization, and have mobilized millions to kill and die in the name of these ideals, be they nationalist, religious, racial, among so many other reasons.
However, we are the Titans, transfigured and dehumanized.
The Jewish-German philosopher Theodor Adorno came to propose the understanding of another mimesis, a negative-mimesis, in which the “Us” can be seen in “Them”. Unlike fascist ideology, which seeks to violently suppress the difference between Us / Them, or a false idea of a universal Us (“we are all human”, “all lives matter”) in which there is no difference in class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, the great challenge of our time is to see a Us in Them that builds a Universal that understands and respects differences, and allows us to see the suffering of Them, as if it were Ours.
Robson Bello
[1] If we are going to complexify the issue, AoT criticizes and celebrates violence in contradictory meanings. In fact, the narrative presents a myriad of exhibitions where violence is cruel and traumatic, but at the same time, as an action genre manga, the “fight scenes” are exciting and lead the reader to vibrate with the killings, that without doubts is largely responsible for the success of the series. It is possible to argue that, as the narrative makes the criticism of the horror of violence clearer, this aspect loses its place, although it never completely disappears.
[2] The Nine Titans, which we have known as “Special Titans” since Part I, are the possibility of transition between the identity of the We-Human and the Other-Titan. These individuals live on the Border between these two identities, and in this sense, they are special because they overcome the prison of the unique identity, acquiring special powers. Within the rules of this universe, these individuals can only live for 13 years (I don’t know if this is an arbitrary rule, or has any allegory), and if they die without passing their powers on to a new generation, the power will be randomly transmitted in some individual of the Ymir people on the globe. The solution, therefore, is to let themselves be eaten by a new individual who has become Titan. This is an anthropophagic allegory: it is by feeding on the legacy of the past generation that passes between the We and the Other, which allows a new generation to acquire the same capacity. Many cultures around our world are anthropophagic, and they believed that eating parts of the opponent allowed them to take part of their courage and strength for themselves. Several artistic vanguards debated what they should absorb from other cultures, and transform into a new one, their own. And so on. Continuously, all new holders of one of the Nine Titans’ powers acquire the powers of the previous generation, but they also develop their own characteristics — whether aesthetic, technological, or by acquiring the Memories of the individuals who came before.