Since you said it's easier to write your thoughts when you have a specific topic to talk about (and I really liked the way you talked about chapter 105 Eren when we were discussing the chapter in the Eren discord server), I want to ask: thoughts on Eren in chapter 105? and also on his current mental state? thanks

Ahhhh! Hey there, Daya! Thank you for the ask!

Eren’s mental state in 105: pretty fucked, all around.

The ways that people realistically react to and cope with seeing or doing terrible things have been a primary feature of this manga from day one. We see people shaking, screaming, and crying with fear, throwing up, lashing out in anger, going blank, questioning themselves, rationalizing their actions, repressing memories, forming separate identities, falling into depression or self-loathing–and that’s not even a complete list. In a genre usually characterized by power fantasies, Shingeki no Kyojin instead goes to pains to show us the powerlessness of its characters, and Isayama puts a lot of time and care into depicting their reactions to the trauma he inflicts on them.

Eren’s probably pretty depressed at this point. Mind, it’s hard to be a character in this series and not experience some depression, especially after the revelations in Grisha’s journals. In the past, Eren dealt with trauma and depression by pushing and fighting harder, and he only started to despair at the times when he thought his anger and determination wouldn’t be enough to change anything. But after the basement, it seems that he really isn’t strong enough to change this, at least not in any way that will matter. The world will never stop hating him and his people, simply because of what they are. No amount of shonen protagonist grit and determination can change that. Anger isn’t enough anymore.

Which of course is nowhere near enough suffering for Isayama’s taste. So on top of having the dreams that drove him kicked over like a sandcastle on the shore, and on top of all the events of the series up until the timeskip, he also has several lifetimes of traumatic memories seething somewhere in his mind. So: you have the memories of devouring your father, of yourself being devoured, of watching an eight year old girl being devoured by dogs–and the list only gets more horrible from there–all forcing themselves, in full sensory detail, into your consciousness without warning. The memories are there now, out of the box, you have them. What do you do with them?

Put them away again.

So let’s talk about dissociation. Speaking very generally, dissociation describes the human mind’s ability to disconnect parts of itself from the rest as a way of coping with stress. It covers everything from daydreaming to depersonalization to amnesia, and most people have experienced low-level versions of it. In intensely traumatic or stressful situations a mind can keep itself calm by putting the emotions (or even the memories) over there, far away from itself. At its most dramatic it can take the form of identity issues like Reiner’s, but at other times it might “just” feel like the world is strangely far away, and you’re not really a part of it. Like whatever awful thing is happening, you’re not the one experiencing it, or doing it–or you are but it doesn’t seem real–and in any case it just doesn’t hurt like it should. And you can’t snap out of it.

Dissociation probably isn’t a new coping mechanism for Eren: his memories of his father’s death were locked away tight for years, and he can press on through enormous amounts of physical pain. He’s never leaned on it quite this heavily before, but with the constant pressure he’s under, his old responses of anger and determination just aren’t enough to help him cope anymore. And when he reaches for something stronger, the dissociation is there, letting him take the things that would be too much to deal with and–not necessarily consciously–put them over there. That eerie calm that we’ve seen in recent chapters is alarming, but not surprising. It’s not even new: we saw it begin to take hold before the timeskip–and even earlier than that, after the coup.

And so we come to Liberio.

Although we don’t yet know why Eren decided to take this course of action, he clearly did feel that it was necessary. But the cost is high. This wouldn’t be the first time Eren has killed, but in the past he’s killed people he’s thought of as animals and monsters, not people he’s seen as being victims like himself. He’s jeopardizing his relationships with the people he cares about. He’s playing the part of the murderous monster that someone has to be, he’s isolating himself from others, and he doesn’t even know if it’ll be worth it. (”Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s yet another hell. I don’t know which it is.”)

There’s an element of walking stoically into the flames to Eren here. The person he’s always looked up to is looking down at him with disdain. This is fine. His friends are angry and may never trust him again. This is fine. He killed a lot of people today, including children. This is fine.

His friend is dead, and her last words were absurd, and this is not fine.

It’s hard to say where Eren’s going to go from here, emotionally. Sasha’s death overwhelmed him, but the dissociation will probably come back, and keep coming back, until he no longer needs it in order to keep going. That is Eren’s defining characteristic, after all: he keeps going, no matter what. Fight, because if you lose you die, and if you don’t fight then you can never win.

“Keep moving forward. That’s all we can do.”