I Think This Quote From Isayama Sort Of Says It All About Levi:

I think this quote from Isayama sort of says it all about Levi:

“It’s that he found a place to make the most of what he could do, or rather, his own special abilities.  Underground, where it was all he could do to stay alive, he had to live for that, but then he started to form relationships and began to feel that he could do things for others.  And that’s why he first went above ground…”

As soon as Levi realized he could use his strength to help others, that’s what he tried to do.  It was what he always wanted to do.  It was always just there, an inherent part of his personality.  He just didn’t realize he could help others until he became friends with Furlan and Isabel because no one ever told him he could.  No one ever showed him how.  Levi was left lost by Kenny, because Kenny only ever taught Levi to use his strength for himself, and no one else, and then abandoned him, leaving him in desperate, dire circumstances where, as Isayama said, it was all he could do to stay alive.  In a position where he wasn’t able to do anything but struggle to survive.  He had to find out for himself, through forming friendships and relationships with others, that his strength could actually help other people.  No one taught him that.  He had to and was able to figure it out on his own.  It’s also testament to Levi’s open and compassionate heart that, despite how he was raised, and where he was raised, he was willing to let others get close to him and form those relationships.  And the moment he realized that he could help others, that’s what he wanted and tried to do.  That’s also why he decided to stay with the Survey Corps, not because he felt beholden or some sort of infatuation with Erwin, but because he felt like it was a place where he could help the most people the most effectively.  Before that, he knew Furlan and Isabel wanted to live above, and he tried to make that a reality for them, even though, if you read “No Regrets”, you see that Levi himself wasn’t sure about living on the surface, and was scared about the dangers involved with leaving the only place he’d ever known, or trusting someone from the surface making them promises.  But he yielded to Furlan’s plans, he left behind his own comfort, he left behind his own certainty and his own place in the world, a place where he’d worked and fought and scratched his way to a position of, at least among the people of the Underground, some respect and standing, so that he could give a better life to the two people he loved.  And we see this same, self-sacrificial tendency later on in the story too, when Levi tries to take on the burden of killing Erwin himself, and keeping Furlan and Isabel out of it so they can actually have a chance to live the lives they want, and not have to be on the run from the authorities. 

And that really encapsulates who Levi is.  A totally selfless act, done for the benefit of others and, in many ways, to his own detriment.  Levi was taught to be exactly the opposite of this by Kenny.  But still, this is who Levi is, selfless, self-sacrificial, kind and caring.  Nobody taught Levi to be this way.  He just is this way. 

Part 2 of the Psychological and Emotional Impact of Levi’s Early Childhood:  How Levi’s Years with his mother weren’t Idealic:

So some of the conversations and additions to my post about Levi’s childhood got me thinking and focusing a little more on one, specific aspect of it, that I wanted to delve into here.   

Again, it’s interesting, because, as we know, Kuchel was a loving mother toward Levi.  She clearly loved him and, at risk to herself, wanted and kept him.  Something which undoubtedly made her own life exponentially harder, when obviously it was already incredibly difficult.  I also talked about how this decision had an aspect of selfishness to it, though, as she knowingly brought Levi into a situation in which he would also end up suffering a great deal.  I want to reiterate that this isn’t meant to be taken as a criticism of Kuchel or her love of Levi.  It’s just a stated fact. 

Kuchel clearly struggled to take care of Levi.  The fact that Levi was at death’s door when Kenny found him is testament to this reality.  All the love in the world wouldn’t have been enough to provide the basic necessities a growing child requires.  Levi was in a state of extreme neglect.  He was starving to death.  He was filthy.  He was barefoot and completely alone, with no sign at all of anyone having come by even once to provide help, and no sign that Levi ever left to seek help.  It was pure luck that Kenny came by when he did and was able to rescue him.  If he hadn’t, Levi would have surely died.

So what I wanted to get into here more specifically is what it tells us about Levi’s upbringing with his mother, that he was left in such a state, and why when Kenny found him, it was obvious that Levi was totally isolated, that nobody came by to help him, and that he also, apparently, never left their room to find help.

What that tells me is that Levi likely never had any real social interaction outside of his mother.  That his isolation may have been so extreme, in fact, that nobody outside of their home even knew he existed.  This seems supported by the fact that Levi was socially inept when Kenny first meets him.  He barely speaks, almost to the point of muteness.  When Kenny talks to him, Levi more often than not says nothing, just stares at him with shuttered eyes.  Kenny describes Levi as “cold” or “unfriendly”.  Levi is also constantly looking at Kenny.  He rarely seems to take his eyes off of him, which could indicate a wariness of him, which, given the sort of life his mother was living, and given where they were, the Underground, makes plenty of sense.  Levi would be wary of strange men. 

Given these details, it seems likely to me that Kuchel, in the least, kept Levi as isolated and alone as she could manage, and that she likely did this out of a desire to protect him from the dangers of the Underground.  It seems likely that she kept him in their room and rarely, if ever, let him out.  Again, probably because she wanted to shield him from danger.

But as we see, there was a price to pay for doing something like this.  Not only was Levi maladjusted, but when his mother was dying, and Levi was left to starve to death, Levi seemingly didn’t know how to ask anyone for help.  Now it’s possible Levi might have tried finding help, and nobody listened to him.  I wouldn’t find that surprising either, given the environment they were living in.  The Underground is a cut-throat, dog eat dog place, where very few people can afford to help anyone else, given the general, desperate circumstances most down there find themselves living in. 

Whether Levi sought help and was turned away, or he didn’t seek help because he didn’t realize he could, and also because nobody ever came by to help either of them, either way, this would have, tragically, affirmed for Levi that neither his nor his mother’s lives were worth anything to anyone. 

I assume it took a long time for Kuchel to die.  She was completely wasted away by the time Kenny found her, essentially skeletal in her appearance.  Part of this could have been because her body was decomposing.  But the fact she’d been dying from disease would have obviously ravaged her body, too.  Levi would have had to witness this slow, no doubt agonizing deterioration for who knows how many weeks or months.  That alone would have been horrifically traumatizing for him, especially given his own, general helplessness.  And in all that time, nobody ever once, we can assume, offered them a helping hand, offered them food, offered them money, offered them medical assistance. 

It’s interesting to consider too that Kuchel must have known that she was dying, and that without her, Levi would surely die too.  She had no way of knowing that Kenny would come by when he did, or that he would come by at all.  She hadn’t seen him, I’m assuming, since before she gave birth to Levi, since Kenny didn’t even know Levi’s name when they met.  So what does this tell us?  That Kuchel knew she was dying, and that without her there to take care of him, Levi would die too?

One might think Kuchel, once she realized her case was hopeless, would attempt to hand Levi over to someone else to care for him.  But clearly that didn’t happen.  There could be a million reasons for this.  Mainly, I would think, Kuchel didn’t trust anyone she knew enough to actually care for Levi, or that she simply wasn’t close enough with anyone to feel confident in her ability to ask them to care for her child, and that gives us a pretty good idea of what Kuchel’s relationships with other people in the Underground were like.  We can assume from this that she didn’t have any close friends, and in turn, we can assume that neither did Levi.  I would go so far as to say Levi probably didn’t have any friends.  I don’t think he ever had any real, meaningful interaction with other children, even.  Again, remembering Levi’s social ineptness when Kenny finds him, how withdrawn he was, seems to support this.  So from all of this, I think it’s likely that neither Kuchel or Levi ever got much social interaction, or had any, real social lives to speak of.  I think we can clearly see the ill effects of this in Levi throughout his entire life.  He’s famously very socially awkward.  He doesn’t really know how to express himself in words.  People often mistake him for being apathetic or rude or unfriendly because his face isn’t generally very emotive, and he often speaks in a monotone.  This in itself is it’s own kind of tragedy, because at his core, Levi is actually exceptionally compassionate and kind.  Levi’s social difficulties would also have obviously been terribly exacerbated by the way Kenny raised him after Kuchel died. 

But going back to the way Kuchel raised him, I think it’s fair to say that she kept Levi very isolated, and that she herself was probably very isolated too, and so we have to think about how this bleak reality likely impacted Kuchel’s own ability adequately care for Levi.

Again, going back to the state Kenny found Levi in, it’s obvious that something went very, very wrong in Kuchel’s ability to take care of her son.  It’s obvious that she was struggling severely to provide for him, once again not from lack of effort, but because of the desperate circumstances of their lives.  Food, clothing, shelter, warmth, etc…  We see those things were clearly not being provided to Levi on a consistent basis.  He was dressed in rags, some type of garment that was too large for him, and might be supposed to have belonged to Kuchel herself, meaning she couldn’t afford to buy him anything better.  He was barefoot, meaning she probably couldn’t afford shoes for him.  His hair was uncut and unwashed, as was the rest of his body.  They were living in what appears to be a single room with next to nothing in it.  There’s a single bed which Kuchel occupies, some pots and a pitcher for water I’m guessing, and that’s about it.  We see no toys.  We see no books.  We see nothing of any comfort or luxury.  There’s no other obvious rooms attached to the one they’re in.  No bathroom or washing area.  No doors leading anywhere else but outside.  And finally, Levi clearly hadn’t eaten anything of substance, or any kind of full meal, in a long, long time.   And he was completely alone.  So we see that, in the end, Kuchel, despite her obvious and genuine love for Levi, wasn’t able to take care of him.  Obviously Levi’s deteriorated state when Kenny finds him is a direct result of Kuchel herself falling ill, and she no doubt did her best when she was still able to work to provide for him these basic necessities.  But it’s also still obvious that it was always a struggle.  They had no money, and that’s plain.  They were living, very obviously, in abject poverty.  And already living in such a dangerous, cut-throat environment, where criminals and predators were able to openly roam the streets without consequence, since the above ground authorities rarely ventured down there, a lone mother and her very young child would have struggled all the more to survive.  With such a poor financial situation, their day to day lives must have been incredibly precarious and uncertain. 

But I’m also not just talking about providing the bare life essentials when talking about Kuchel’s struggles to take care of Levi.  Going back to Kuchel’s own seeming lack of social interaction or dependable friends, one has to consider the psychological impact of this on her, and how that in turn would impact her relationship with Levi.  Being a mother is a hard job.  It’s hard enough even in the best of circumstances.  Taking care of a helpless child that is in constant need of love, care and attention is incredibly draining and time consuming.  We often hear people joke about how mother’s should be paid to be mothers alone, because it’s such a consuming job. 

Now, you take the general difficulty of that job, and you amplify it with the sorts of difficulties and bleak realities Kuchel and Levi faced, things like abject impoverishment, a lack of any sort of real social life or friends, constant fear and paranoia of ones surroundings, the ever present reality of being surrounded by criminals, and Kuchel’s own day to day life working as a prostitute, and you start to really realize just how bad and difficult their lives together must have been.

Kuchel wouldn’t have had any sort of outlet, or escape, from the harsh realities of her day to day situation.  If she had no real friends (again, something that seems almost certain when considering everything else), then we have to assume whatever downtime she had from selling her body for money was spent with Levi and Levi alone.  So after hours and hours of being forced to let strangers have their way with her and use her body for sex, which we can pretty much guarantee also involved plenty of physical violence against her, Kuchel would then have to come home and take care of a young child who needed to be fed, clothed, washed, paid attention to, etc, etc…  all things Kuchel was clearly struggling to provide.  I don’t think the mental and emotional toll this sort of existence must have had on her can be exaggerated.  She had to have been exhausted, both physically and mentally.  With no one outside of a young child to talk to or interact with, she must have been deeply depressed and often felt incredibly alone.  Those feelings would have only been worsened by her struggle to provide enough food and shelter and warmth to keep them both alive.  They would have only be worsened further by her need to constantly be vigilant and protect Levi from the many, many dangers of the Underground. 

My point with bringing all this up is to show that it’s unlikely that Kuchel, in these circumstances, would have been able to provide Levi, not just things like food or clothing or warmth, but a healthy social environment.  It’s very, very doubtful that Kuchel would have had the time, or the energy, or even the mental capacity, to be able to give Levi the kind of love and attention she would have under even slightly better circumstances.  Realistically speaking, she was probably simply too tired at the end of each work day to really play with him, or spend time with him in any meaningful way.  She was probably too exhausted to indulge in any sort of wants or needs of his outside of immediate essentials.  Assuming Kuchel was often depressed (which I don’t think is at all a stretch or unlikely, again given her own isolation and the ugly reality of her life), that would have also impacted how she interacted with Levi.  Children aren’t stupid, they’re intuitive, and we know Levi in particular is maybe the most emotionally intelligent character in AoT.  He would have picked up on her depressive moods, and her general unhappiness, I’m sure.  He would have felt that negative energy coming from her. 

Going back to Levi’s maladjustment when Kenny finds him, to his muteness and wariness, his “cold”, “unfriendly” demeanor, I think it’s safe to assume that these problems in Levi were a result of not just the incredibly harsh circumstances of his life with his mother, but also came from Kuchel’s failure to provide Levi with enough stimulation to teach him social skills.  Again, please remember, this isn’t meant as a criticism of Kuchel or her love for Levi.  I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to cast doubt on those things.  Again, it’s just to highlight and draw attention to the fact that, despite that love, Kuchel still wasn’t, and frankly couldn’t have been, a perfect mother to Levi.  Their situation just simply wouldn’t have allowed for it.  And so I think it’s realistic and fair to assume that Kuchel failed Levi in certain ways. 

Levi wasn’t okay when Kenny found him.  Again, not just based on the fact that he was literally dying and in a state of extreme neglect, but based on the fact that he was clearly a child who had never learned to be social.  He was strange. He didn’t act at all like a normal child his age might.  He was deeply withdrawn, almost mute, he never smiled or laughed, he was wary, probably from having been taught to be afraid of men, listless and resigned.  None of this speaks to a child who is well adjusted or who received a lot of love and attention.  He doesn’t demand attention, the way most children do.  Instead, when Kenny finds him, Levi is curled against a far wall, just waiting to die, quiet and accepting.  Think about this.  He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t making a fuss, he wasn’t even visibly upset in any way over his situation.  He was just resigned to it.  He didn’t beg Kenny for help when he came, or even talk to him, except to tell him his mother was dead, and after being promoted multiple times, to tell him his name.  Levi didn’t demand or seek attention, even from the first person to show up and offer help, likely because Levi was taught through example not to expect attention.  And once again, this isn’t a criticism of Kuchel, but an acknowledgment of the likely reality that she just didn’t have the time, energy or ability to give Levi attention beyond providing for him the bare minimum required to keep him alive. 

Levi’s state when Kenny finds him, not just physical, but his emotional and mental state, suggests a certain amount of neglect in Levi’s life from his mother. 

So again I posit that this general perception in the fandom of Levi being provided plenty of love and care from his mother in the first, few years of his life is idealized in the extreme, and fails to acknowledge the harsh reality of their lives and circumstances, as well as fails to acknowledge the state Levi was in when Kenny found him.

I say all this, and think it’s important to acknowledge, because I don’t think Levi is given enough credit for making himself into the man he would eventually become.  Very often, the credit is solely given to his mother, and sometimes even to Kenny (really don’t get that one), for Levi turning out to be a kind, caring and compassionate human being.  But in my opinion, in the face of everything we know, this belief doesn’t hold water.  It doesn’t account for just how bad off Levi was, not just physically, but mentally, when Kenny took him in. 

There’s always the question of nature vs nurture, and I’m always of the mind that how a person turns out is more a mixture of the two than any, single one.  And certainly, we see parts of Levi’s personality which have been shaped by the way he was raised, both by Kuchel and Kenny.  Levi’s social awkwardness, his blunt, sometimes rude interactions, his anger and violence, his fear and readiness to act in the face of that fear, etc… all these things were no doubt informed by Levi’s experiences growing up.  And yes, I’m sure that part of Levi’s ability to love and be loved came from his mother.  But not all of it did.  Levi, from seeing how his mother was treated, from seeing the negative results of the life she was living, not just on her, but on him, would have been sent the lesson early on in life that neither of their lives were worth very much to anyone but each other.  From Kuchel’s inability to really take care of him, Levi would have undoubtedly questioned his own worth, not because Kuchel didn’t love him, but because he would have picked up on how his existence was a burden to her, how it made her life harder, how she in turn wasn’t always able to provide him with a great deal of warmth or affection, because it was already too much to provide him with basic necessities for staying alive.  Levi knew not to expect a lot of love or attention, and that tells us an awful lot about Levi’s life with his mother.  He doesn’t throw a fit or complain when Kenny takes him in and starts treating him harshly.  He doesn’t whine or demand love when Kenny starts teaching him how to use a knife, or how to “greet people” (ala, beat the shit out of them).  He doesn’t show any expectation from Kenny at all, let alone an expectation for love and affection from him.  Every panel we see of Levi with Kenny shows Levi standing there, mute and listless, simply accepting of his new situation and the new way in which he’s being treated.  He just… takes it.  This isn’t a child who’s been taught that he deserves better.  This isn’t a child who expects to be treated with kindness or respect or gentility.  This isn’t a child who is used to getting his way, or who expects to be paid attention to.  This isn’t a child who expects much of anything at all.  Again, the fact of Levi’s immediate acceptance of the way Kenny treats him tells us a LOT about what his life with his mother was like.  He wasn’t spoiled, he wasn’t treated as special, he wasn’t given an excess of attention or love.  If he had been, that would have made itself evident when Kenny took him in and started treating him the way he did.  And once more I reiterate, this isn’t meant as a knock on Kuchel, or to cast doubt on the love she had for Levi.  It’s just a simple acknowledgment of certain facts.  When Kenny leaves Levi, Levi just accepts that as well, though obviously it hurts him immensely.  He doesn’t chase after Kenny, or beg him to come back.  He just stands there and watches him walk away.  He just accepts that he’s being abandoned.  Again, this isn’t indicative of a child who has a particularly strong sense of self-worth or importance, or a child who was taught to fight for his right to love.  He was taught to fight for his life by Kenny, sure, but he was taught the exact opposite regarding other people’s lives in turn.  And we know, bizarrely, from how resigned he was to his own death after Kuchel died, that Levi’s experiences in the first years of his life with his mother didn’t teach him to fight for or value his own life, though I’m sure that isn’t what Kuchel ever intended. 

And so when we take this all into account, when we take into account that Levi wasn’t ever really taught to value or fight for his own right to love and compassion, or even life, how he wasn’t taught to even expect those things, on top of which, taking into account how he was taught not to value the lives of others through Kenny’s lessons, and then you reflect on how, DESPITE all that, Levi was open enough to make, on his own, his first, real friends in Furlan and Isabel, to form an actual family with them, and to make more friends after they died in Erwin and Hange, how he fights with everything he has to protect the lives and dreams of others, how he has so much deep compassion and care for others, how deeply affected he is by the deaths of others, how hard he tries to keep everyone around him alive, how much he values life, values the lives of others, and their right to life, you realize how remarkable that really is.  You realize that nothing in Levi’s life growing up can really account for that ability to care, or that deep compassion he holds.  It comes down to his nature.  Levi is just an innately caring, kind and compassionate person.  Rather than inheriting that ability from Kuchel’s example, I would rather say Levi inherited that ability from Kuchel’s nature.  He wasn’t taught to be loving and compassionate.  He just was.  And so was his mother.  Both of them maintained that capacity despite their horrible circumstances and experiences, not because of them.  Just like how Levi and Mikasa are innately loyal, Levi I would say is also innately, inherently kind and compassionate.  Some traits of our personalities are just inborn, not taught.

I think Levi deserves so much more credit than he generally receives for being the kind, caring man he is.

I bet little Levi used to play with Mama Kuchel's hair all the time

Isabel: so you’re admitting you’re gay?

Levi: … what?

Isabel: you just told me you’re homocidal.

Levi: …

Farlan: Remind me why we kept her again?

Farlan: how was your relationship with Kenny?

Levi: oh, it was a little hit and miss

Farlan: sometimes it was good and sometimes it was bad?

Levi: Sometimes Kenny hit me and sometimes he missed

The Psychological and Emotional Impact of Levi’s Early Childhood:

I don’t think Levi’s early childhood really gets discussed enough in the fandom, or the ways in which those experiences in his formative years had to have impacted him.  This could be because we don’t really get many panels depicting his childhood.  Just a few.  But those few panels show us enough for us to extrapolate plenty and form a pretty clear picture of what he went through.

First of all, it’s almost a certainty that Levi was born as the result of rape. 

That’s something that I think everyone should let sink in.

He was born in the brothel that his mother, Kuchel, worked in.  And “worked” is a relative term here.  Kuchel was driven into the Underground as a result of persecution by the royal family.  She was undoubtedly very young, she was alone, with no real resources or support or guarantee of safety or protection from anyone, in an environment of criminality and violence.  There were likely very few, if any options available to her in terms of her own survival.  Her becoming a prostitute wouldn’t have been any kind of a choice then, but rather a move made in desperation.  And so I think we can also safely assume that Kuchel’s experiences working as a prostitute were tantamount to forced labor.  In other words, a kind of slavery.  She was almost certainly paid a paltry sum by the brothels owner, evidenced by the sorry, squalid and destitute state we see her and Levi living in when Kenny comes.  She was likely afforded very few, if any rights or defenses against whatever her clients chose to do to her, as also evidenced by the fact that no one seemed to really know or care enough about her or Levi to even realize when she had died. 

It’s impossible for me to define any of what Kuchel went through working in such a place as anything less than rape, then.

So, Levi’s very existence is one that is a literal product of violence.  I’m absolutely sure that Levi himself is painfully aware of this, knowing that he was born out of his own mother’s pain and suffering.  Going into the implications of this on Levi’s psychological health, I think you can safely assume this realization had a very negative impact on his own sense of self-worth.  His mother was the only person in his childhood who we ever saw treat him with any kind of actual love or kindness.  The only person who ever, actually wanted him.  And yet, Levi would have seen demonstrated to him, every day, how his existence in his mothers life placed an increased burden on her, forcing her into increasingly more desperate circumstances, now having to feed two mouths instead of only one, and as a result, likely having to engage in increased, unwanted sexual activity with her clients.  So Levi would be aware that not only was his mother, (again, the only person who loved and treated him with tenderness) being hurt on his behalf, but he also would have been aware, after witnessing the particular ways in which she was being hurt, that he himself was the result of that violence.  Levi would have been shown that his very existence, then, was something which caused immense suffering and pain to the only person in his life who loved him.  I honestly can’t even imagine the negative implications of something like this on a young mind.  Only to say, it must have been horrific and resulted in lifelong trauma.  Trauma which, due to the desperation of Levi’s life afterward, he likely never had any opportunity or chance to even address. 

Now, moving on to something else.  There’s a tendency by many to paint Kuchel as this sort of perfect mother figure.  Someone who, through the power of her love for Levi alone, was able to overcome the trauma of their general circumstances, to negate the negative experiences he would have been exposed to, resulting in Levi becoming the kind and compassionate person he would be as an adult.  But I think this assumption about Kuchel and their situation is not only unrealistic and idealized in the extreme, but also in its way, undermines the actual bleakness of their circumstances.

Again, we have to remember that Kuchel was driven into the Underground, and essentially forced, through lack of any other options, to become a prostitute.  Calling her a prostitute is a nice way of saying she had to sell herself into sexual slavery.  Kuchel’s own psychological and emotional trauma doesn’t often get touched upon or acknowledged when people talk about her and her relationship with her son, nor does the desperate poverty of their living situation.  Kuchel died right in front of Levi, and we can assume with pretty good accuracy that she either died from a sexually transmitted disease, or that she died from malnutrition and starvation.  These weren’t two people, then, who were living a comfortable or secure life.  In fact, the very opposite.  Levi was starving to death when Kenny found him.  It’s easy enough to assume from his state of general neglect and starvation that Kuchel, at the very least, was struggling to provide for him.  Not just food, but any kind of comfort or care.  Clothing, warmth, protection, cleanliness, and very likely even, affection.  This isn’t a knock on Kuchel’s worth as a mother, or her parenting.  She was, undoubtedly, doing the best she could given the circumstances.  But, again, this particular aspect of their lives isn’t touched on nearly enough.  Kuchel died out of neglect, impoverishment, desperation and abuse.  Given what we can assume her day to day life was like, having to let men come and sexually assault her just to keep herself and her son alive, one has to also consider the emotional and mental toll this sort of existence would eventually have on her.  She had to have been exhausted, both mentally and physically.  You add to this the always uncertain and present reality of whether either her or Levi would even be able to eat on any, given day, whether she would be able to keep her son from starving to death, and you can start to form a clear idea of how things like “playtime” or “fun”, or freely given and enthusiastic love and affection, would be, tragically, low on the list of priorities.  Their situation was absolutely a situation of survival, first and foremost.  Luxuries weren’t a part of their lives.  Anyone who’s ever experienced extreme deprivation, poverty and desperation on the level in which Kuchel and Levi were living would know that those material realities absolutely have a negative impact on one’s ability to simply live.  To be happy.  To indulge in fantasy.  To indulge in luxury.  To indulge in any kind of relaxation or ease of living.  It’s nice to imagine that Kuchel was always able to show Levi love and affection.  To always be a kind, caring and generous mother to him.  But that perception of their lives together ignores the bleak and harsh reality of what was really going on.  More likely than not, Kuchel was often too exhausted and in bad, physical shape herself to play with Levi, to pay attention to Levi, to indulge in Levi.  It was everything she could do, after all, to simply keep Levi alive, let alone healthy and happy.  Kenny described Levi, when he first took him in, as the most unfriendly kid he’d ever met.  We rarely see Levi speak at all in those early days with Kenny.  That doesn’t speak to someone who is well adjusted socially.  That doesn’t speak to someone who received a lot of open love and affection in the formative years of his childhood.  Again, this isn’t to criticize or undermine Kuchel’s abilities as a mother.  It’s simply acknowledging the tragic reality, that someone in Kuchel’s position, living the kind of life she was living, wouldn’t have had the luxury of being for Levi everything he needed her to be. 

This also leads me into another point I don’t think I’ve ever seen discussed, and that has to do with Kuchel’s decision to have Levi at all, and how that choice is, simultaneously, both entirely selfless, and entirely selfish. 

Kenny tells his grandfather that he tried to talk Kuchel out of having her baby, trying to explain to her how bringing a baby into the kind of situation she was living in wasn’t viable.  It was only going to make, not only her own life worse, but in turn, the baby’s life was going to be awful too.  We later see, in Kenny’s memories, a scene in which Kuchel is holding Levi as a newborn against her chest and crying tears of happiness.  Kenny recalls this as part of his monologue about dreams, and the desperation of dreams, and the ability of dreams to corrupt us.  This is important to acknowledge.  Because again, while Kuchel’s intentions in giving birth to Levi were pure, and her love for him was absolutely pure and genuine, still, she DID bring him into a situation of extreme poverty, desperation and violence.  In a way, Kuchel prioritized her dream of motherhood not only over her own well being (this being the selfless aspect of her decision), but also over Levi’s well being (this being the selfish aspect).  She knew her own living situation was terrible, filled with suffering, cruelty and pain.  She knew this, and she was aware, from Kenny’s own words, that bringing a child into that situation was only going to make things worse, for both of them.  But she chose to do it anyway.  She chose to give birth to Levi, and to keep him, knowing the sort of deprivation and desperation he would be exposed to.  Knowing the kind of violence and cruelty and ugliness he would be exposed to, being born and raised in a brothel, in which she was working as a prostitute, relegated to a single room with him in it. 

Chances are high, extremely high, that Levi saw his mother raped.  Maybe she sent him out of the room when she was with clients.  But maybe she wasn’t able to.  We never see any evidence of Levi having ever left their single room as a child, and even if he had, the building they were in was a brothel, catering to men seeking and paying for the sexual services of women.  It isn’t an environment that is, in any way, suited to a child, friendly to a child, or even tolerant of a child.  It’s almost 100% certain that Levi was, at one time or another, exposed to sexual violence against women, whether it was his own mother, or someone else.  He would have been exposed to violence in general too, because men who sexually assault women are also very likely to physically assault them.  I don’t think it’s any kind of a stretch, even, to assume that Levi himself might have been on the receiving end of physical violence, at the least, in a place like that.  Men who wouldn’t want some little kid around while they force themselves on the women there probably would have little qualm with hitting Levi to make him go away. 

Again, going back to Levi’s “unfriendliness” when Kenny first takes him in, I think we can extrapolate that a lot of what Kenny was perceiving as unfriendly behavior was in fact just Levi being withdrawn.  He seemed sullen and mute to Kenny.  We see this in children who have been abused.  They tend to go within themselves and make themselves as unobtrusive as possible, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, because whenever they have, it’s always resulted in them somehow being hurt.  Levi’s body language when Kenny first meets him speaks to this as well.  He’s curled against the wall opposite his mother’s bed, literally making himself as small as possible, his knees hugged to his chest, his head bowed close to them, etc…  Like he’s trying to hide.  Again, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to assume that Levi fell victim to the violence of the men who frequented that place.  The Underground in general was filled with violent and cruel men who made a living out of criminality, who in fact wouldn’t think twice about committing murder, etc… 

This is the world Kuchel brought Levi into.  A world of physical and sexual violence, a world of depravity and illness, a world of poverty and starvation.  Kuchel loved Levi with all her heart.  That isn’t for a moment in doubt.  But by choosing to have him and keep him, she also trapped him into a life of pain and suffering of his own.

Kuchel had to know, if anything were to happen to her, that Levi’s chances of survival were next to none.  He was helpless without her, and that too is evidenced by the fact that, when Kenny finds them, Levi is literally starving to death.  He’s just sitting there, resigned to his fate.  There’s no indication whatsoever that Levi ever even left their room to seek food, or help of any kind.  He just sat there, trapped with his mother’s rotting corpse, waiting to die.  And nobody there cared enough to even check on him or his mother in the span of time between when she fell ill and when she died.  Nobody there cared enough about either of their lives to see if they were okay, and we can assume, because Levi didn’t seek anyone’s help, that he didn’t think anyone would help him, which tells us all we need to know about how he and his mother were generally treated in that place.  Kuchel must have known, as she was dying, that without her, Levi was going to die too.  She had no way and no cause to know or think that Kenny would come by to rescue him.  And, indeed, if Kenny hadn’t shown up right when he did, Levi almost certainly would have died in that room with her.  I can’t even imagine the pain this must have caused her, knowing she was dying, and knowing as a result, that her son was going to die too.  It would have been unbearable.  But again, this is also the risk Kuchel took when she chose to give birth to and keep Levi.  She knew this was a possibility.  That her child would die a slow and painful death without her there to protect and take care of him.

So this sort of sunny, idealistic picture that tends to get painted of Levi’s life with his mother seems both unrealistic and unfair to them in terms of understanding their actual situation.  This wasn’t a happy or good life they were living together.  It was a life full of misery and pain.  Levi’s monologue later on to the 104th recruits, about not knowing if you’ll wake up and get to eat that day, or if your friends will still be alive, wasn’t just a reflection on their lives living with the threat of titans.  It was a reflection of his own life living in the Underground, living a life surrounded by poverty and violence and uncertainty.  That was Levi’s existence for the first 25 years of his life.  That was Levi’s childhood.  Violence and starvation, cruelty and deprivation.  Kuchel’s love, as pure and as genuine as it was, wasn’t enough on it’s own to overcome the scars of all that. 

One last note to end this on. 

There’s also a tendency to paint Kenny’s rescue of Levi as this very heroic and selfless act on Kenny’s part.  A moment in which Levi was pulled from the jaws of certain death and given a chance to live by his uncle.  And while, yes, Kenny certainly did save Levi’s life and give him that chance, I think it’s also important to acknowledge that Kenny’s treatment of Levi was abusive, and ultimately caused him more harm than good.  Kenny, we have to remember, went down to the Underground to rescue Kuchel.  He went to that brothel with the intention of pulling her out and bringing her to live back up on the surface, able to do so now that he had ended the persecution of their family through his connection with Uri Reiss.  But by the time he got there, Kuchel was dead, and she’d left behind her only child in Levi.  Kenny could have so easily brought Levi up to the surface with him, the way he’d been planning on doing with Kuchel, and given him a good and happy life.  He could have saved him from the hell of living in the Underground City.  A world of perpetual darkness, a world of constant danger and desperation and illness.  People talk about how Kenny gave Levi the tools to survive in such a harsh environment, and treat this as if it’s something to somehow be applauded and praised.  But Kenny shouldn’t have had to teach Levi to survive in a cut-throat environment at all.  He’d made it possible for those with the Ackerman name to live free of persecution up above.  He could have easily taken Levi with him and given him a good, traditional education, fed and clothed him, given him shelter, given him the chance to grow up in fresh air and sunlight, given him a chance to make friends with other children, to learn social skills and just live a normal existence with the opportunity to actually be happy.  But instead Kenny chose to keep Levi in the Underground, to teach him how to kill, to teach him to be violent, and not much else, before simply abandoning him there and never going back, forcing Levi to survive on his own in the most dangerous place inside the walls.  What Kenny did to Levi wasn’t a kindness.  A kindness would have been rescuing Levi from the Underground entirely and giving him a real life above.  A kindness would have been Kenny giving to Levi what he’d planned on giving to his sister.  But Kenny was too selfish to do that, and that’s the bottom line.  He didn’t want to have to take care of and raise a child.  He didn’t want the responsibility.  Whether that’s tied to Kenny’s own, negative perception of himself or not doesn’t matter.  He still chose not to take Levi with him and give him a real life because actually caring for and raising a child would have been too hard, too much work, too much responsibility.  By leaving Levi there in the Underground, he sent Levi the message, clear as day, that he wasn’t wanted.  And so Levi spent the entirety of his childhood, and a good portion of his adulthood, believing that, and living in the Underground, living a life of violence and desperation and suffering.

I don’t think the suffering Levi went through as a child gets discussed or acknowledged enough, or examined enough.  I don’t think people often look at it with enough objective realism to realize the extreme harm and trauma Levi experienced and was left with.  It’s genuinely a miracle that Levi turned out the way he did.  That Levi is as good a man as he is.  Nothing in his life growing up can really account for that.  Everything in his life growing up would evince that he should have become the sort of man Kenny was, selfish and cruel.  It’s truly against all odds that Levi became the exact opposite.  Selfless in the extreme, kind, caring and compassionate above and beyond anyone else in the series.  Someone who fights for and gives his life in dedication to the dreams and lives of others.

In many ways, Levi is, himself, the greatest miracle of all.