Thread by @whofavoredfire

Levi Ackerman: The Slave to Being a Hero [Manga Spoilers]

Analysis on Levi's excessive sense of duty and how it stems from his upbringing and impacts him throughout the story

Duty & Self-Worth

Like many characters, Levi is a product of his upbringing, and Kenny gave him several complexes that relate to Levi's self-worth & sense of duty because Kenny:

1. Taught Levi to earn praise through his strength & fighting

2. Abandoned him without a reason

1. Kenny believed strongly in the inherent value of violence & power.

And in keeping with the running theme of inherited trauma & parental figures putting violence on their kids, Kenny raises Levi with this kind of mentality which in turns ties Levi's self-worth to his strength

Kenny says he can't give Levi parental affection but can teach him skills to hurt & use people.

But by denying Levi parental affection (& knowledge of their biological relationship) & focusing on teaching him to use violence to solve his problems, Kenny creates a complex in Levi

2. Then Kenny abandons him & leaves Levi to think he was abandoned by his only parental figure due to his failure to be strong enough.

Therefore, Levi associates his failures to meet that standard with his abandonment- and it's something that haunts him.

So Levi learns to tie his self-worth to his strength, which gives him a sense of duty and responsibility that extends beyond normal bounds. And he's very hard on himself for failures, even as he refuses to let regret cripple him.

One example is failing to kill Reiner in RtS:

There's several elements of this excessive duty and responsibility with his promise to kill Zeke, too. He keeps stressing he "let him get away" even as Zeke only escapes because Levi's trying to save others and/or protect Paradis by choosing not to kill him.

This excessive duty & lack of self-worth beyond his strength & abilities is compounded by his injuries; he refers to himself as "forgettable", "a burden" even as he has invaluable contributions to the team- in fact, he calls himself a burden for the injuries he got saving Connie

This is also why Levi is quick to praise others, thank them for their work and acknowledge them-

But also seems deeply uncomfortable with admiration and deflects compliments.

We're even introduced to Levi responding uncomfortably to "noisy brats" singing his praises in his first scene.

Levi sees his duty & responsibility as expectations for him, holds himself to this high standard, and that's different from how he sees others' efforts- recognizing his subordinates' contributions as worth thanking and acknowledging but only recognizing his own failures

And when they mess up, like Mikasa in the Female Titan arc which leads to Levi's ankle injury or Jean apologizing to Levi for ignoring his orders and endangering the team in Uprising or Eren apologizing for Levi's squad's death, Levi doesn't get mad, he dismisses apologies.

Slave to Being a Hero

And this all ties into what Levi is "enslaved" to as established in the story- Levi is canonically a "slave" to being a hero, that duty and responsibility to the greater good.

Isayama has even commented that he draws Levi with dark circles under his eyes to convey the "self-destruction" Levi takes on to reach the "standard" of Humanity's Strongest-

Levi in the Rumbling Chapters

And self-destructive to achieve the goal is a great way to describe Levi's efforts in the Rumbling chapters.

He coughs up blood, loses 2 fingers & an eye, is covered in bandages, panting in exhaustion, & being told he can't and shouldn't fight-

Despite all of this, he is still flying off to kill Zeke to stop the Rumbling, screaming to Mikasa and the others to move quickly to continue the fight in 138, etc.

He never stops despite the pain he must be in and that he's too hurt to walk on his own.

Through this, he achieves his goals- both "promises" Humanity's Strongest made:

1. Ending the titan threat by helping Mikasa kill Eren in 138 (in his intro to the dying soldier)

2. Killing Zeke to bring meaning to the sacrifices of RtS and stop the Rumbling in 137 (to Erwin)

More importantly, he's still preoccupied with saving & protecting Mikasa, Armin, Jean, & Connie- despite the fact that they're in much better shape than him.

He's still willing to endanger himself & put himself in harms way for them; they're his priority, not protecting himself

But because of his injuries, we see Levi forced to decouple his self-worth from his strength in certain ways- he recognizes his limitations and is self-aware enough to act accordingly.

Like with how he switches roles in his orders to Mikasa in the Female Titan vs. Rumbling arc:

Moreover, because he's injured, Mikasa, Jean, Armin, & Connie's care for him is on full display. They all act protective over him & show more worry than they ever have because he's more vulnerable- highlighting how he was always worth more to those in his life than his strength