Hero or Monster? The Terrifying Morality of Eren Yeager

The Boy Who Sought Freedom

For the first three seasons of Attack on Titan, Eren Yeager is the quintessential Shonen protagonist. He is loud, angry, and driven by a righteous desire to protect his friends and destroy the monsters that killed his mother.

But when he kisses Historia’s hand and sees the truth of the future, everything breaks.

Hajime Isayama pulled off the greatest protagonist-to-villain shift in modern fiction. He didn't do it by mind control or corruption; he did it by pushing Eren’s core philosophy—"Freedom"—to its absolute, terrifying extreme.

The Irony of The Rumbling

Eren’s tragedy is that his pursuit of freedom turned him into a slave. Because he saw the future, he knew he was destined to initiate the Rumbling and crush the world outside the walls. He became a prisoner of his own destiny.

When Eren finally reaches the ocean—the symbol of absolute freedom he dreamed of since childhood—he isn't happy. He looks across the water and says, "If we kill all our enemies over there, will we finally be free?"

In that moment, Eren realizes that the world isn't an empty playground to explore. It’s filled with people who hate him simply for existing. To secure the freedom of his small island, he decides to strip the freedom (and lives) away from billions.

The Uncomfortable Truth

The reason Eren is such a compelling character is that the narrative forces the audience to ask an uncomfortable question: If the entire world decided your family had to die for the "greater good," what would you do?

He is not a psychopath who enjoys killing. The scene where he apologizes and cries in front of Ramzi (the young refugee boy) proves that he is fully aware of how evil his actions are. Yet, he moves forward anyway.

Eren Yeager is a monster, but he is a monster created by a cruel world. He reminds us that the line between a hero defending his home and a tyrant destroying the world is terrifyingly thin.