/lit/ - Literature

In this thread, I will make a case for Rei's monologue in Eva episode 14 being one of the greatest things ever written.

Monologue in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZIHOHHA5vA

>”Mountains, heavy are the mountains. But that changes with the passage of time.”
When you think of a mountain from a basic, human perspective, it is something that has always been there and always will be there, indestructible and unwavering. Yet with the very first sentence, Rei alludes to a mountain as being something that becomes less heavy over time, or essentially gets eroded and destroyed over a long period of time. This is an extremely clever way by Anno to signal to the audience that Rei is not entirely someone ordinary and that she perceives reality much differently than the average person. Of course, it is later revealed to us that Rei possesses the soul of Lilith, the goddess in the Evangelion universe. In the final scene of the End of Evangelion movie, it is also made clear that Lilith can transcend time as there is the same apparition of Rei watching over Shinji in the very final scene and in one of the first scenes of the series. This makes it more clear why Rei says such a thing referring to mountains in the first place, as part of her soul is a goddess that transcends linear time and can perceive large chunks of time at once.

However, this is not the only meaning of this sentence. In the End of Evangelion, there is a scene where the nature and the environment makes the shape of a (pregnant) woman's body with two mountains representing the breasts in the background. Therefore this sentence could also be interpreted as a woman's natural beauty fading over time and with that, also her fertility. This seems especially topical since Rei expresses concern about her lack of fertility later in the monologue (a woman that does not bleed). It must be noted how it is extremely tragic that the woman carrying the soul of the mother of all beings on Earth is unable to have children herself and is instead reduced to a mere instrument of war in the plans of others. Furthermore, Rei is sitting in Unit 01 at the time of this monologue and Unit 01 is powered with the soul of Shinji's mother Yui, who became immortal through merging with the Evangelion, therefore becoming kind of a demi-goddess of her own. In her state, she's also unable to bear any more children due to the lack of a physical body. Of course, it could also be interpreted as describing the usual way any woman's or female being's life goes. In conclusion, these first two sentences are also a commentary on both Rei's and Yui's existence and the suffering of women in relation to aging and loss of beauty and fertility in general.