A culminating image symbolizing the persistence or resurgence of an era of war as the final panel would thus arguably be redundant and unnecessary.įurthermore, the chapter is entitled “Toward the Tree on That Hill.” If the tree were simply a symbol of war, by implication the chapter could equally be called ‘toward the endless cycle of war’. The cycle of war was already continuing in the decades or centuries before the child arrived at the tree. The first reason for this is that “the endless cycle of war” was already clearly and powerful represented in the preceding panels: A reasonable interpretation either way, but also, I think, an incomplete one. One prominent answer I’ve seen is that it symbolizes the continuation of the cycle of war and violence either because a) of the symbolic parallel to Ymir or b) on a more literal level, that it implies the actual potential revival of new era of Titans. Naturally, the immediate response to the symbolic tree on the final page is to try answering the invitation to the question, “What does it mean?” A symbol both invites and resists interpretation. In literature, a symbol is something that clearly means something – but with the most “literary” symbols, their meaning cannot be absolutely defined any attempted answer as to what a symbol represents has no finality or certainty, and interpretation will remain ever open to debate. The final pages of the updated ending are bold, but I think ultimately more evocative than the original preliminary ending.Įven after the intensely polarized reader reception that took issue with the lack of storytelling precision and clarity when it was most needed, SNK chose to end with a decisively ambiguous symbol.
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