The Awakening of Heisenberg
Breaking Bad’s Walter White is not a sweet man taken down a dark path, but a conflicted man who unleashes his darkness
There’s an image that does the rounds from time to time online showing how Breaking Bad would play out in the UK. Walter White is told he has cancer, his treatment is covered by the NHS, and his life continues as normal. It’s a joke, and aimed at the state of healthcare in the USA, but it’s based on an opinion of the show that I see frequently, and that I disagree with.
A common understanding of the story seems to be this: Walter White is forced into making meth to be able to pay for his cancer treatment and for the care of his family, but while he starts off with good intentions, his questionable decisions lead him down a dark path as he morphs from mild-mannered Walter White into ruthless meth-maker Heisenberg.
In the very first episode, though, we get clues into Walt’s motivation from the very start, and they tell a different story.
Show creator Vince Gilligan is purposefully painting a certain picture of Walt’s mentality. The pilot is littered with images showing us a sense of dissatisfaction. Some of these can be construed as simply derived from the Whites’ money problems, and fit in with the idea of this being Walt’s motivation — e.g Walt’s job at the car wash, and Skyler selling items on auction websites for extra cash.
Others, though, are more clearly trying to show us quite simply that Walt isn’t happy with his life. One of the first images we see after the cold open is Walt on a stair-stepper in the early hours of the morning, staring wistfully at a plaque commemorating his contribution to Nobel Prize-winning research. After this, we watch Walt trying to enthuse a classroom full of teenagers who don’t want to listen, Walt being told by his brother-in-law to ‘get a little excitement in (his) life’, Walt receiving a disinterested hand-job from his wife… through it all, Walt is clearly unhappy.
The last thing he sees before he collapses and is taken to hospital is a young woman in a green dress, having her car washed while she chats on the phone (a BMW 850i, which would set you back tens of thousands of dollars to buy.) I think this image is chosen as it’s a simple picture of what Walt feels he’s missing; money, success, women (in the original pilot script, an interaction is written in where Walt clearly has his eyes on a coworker.)
Walt’s reaction after being told he has cancer is also important. He doesn’t panic about his health, and he doesn’t panic about money; he stares blankly at his doctor and tells him he’s got mustard on his jacket.
He’s overwhelmed, but it’s not just that. He’s not breaking down, deeply upset because he’s been told he’s going to lose the life he loves. Rather, he’s being forced to confront that this life that he’s trundling through, unhappy and unsatisfied, never having got the success or wealth that he feels he deserved, is going to end without ever having gotten any better.
This confrontation with his own mortality is a catalyst for change. He decides he’s not going to just lie down and take what the world gives him anymore.
I believe a large part of Walt’s motivation is a sense of injustice. In his eyes, his research has made Gretchen and Elliot Schwartz billionaires while he’s struggling for money; meth-makers perform shoddy chemistry and make a killing while he, with his vastly superior scientific ability, has to work two jobs to get by; his students who disrupt his classes and don’t put in effort in school stand and laugh while he’s down on his knees cleaning their sports cars. After his diagnosis, he decides he won’t take this any more, he’s going to get his just desserts by whatever means necessary. This self-assessment of Walt as a dispenser of justice also explains later actions of his unrelated to making money, for example attacking a bully for making fun of Walt Jr, and blowing up the car of a big-headed lawyer.
We get further confirmation of Walt’s state of mind during moments of honesty later on in the series. In season 2 Walt, after admitting to his doctor that his fugue state was not real, says the following when asked why he ran away:
“My wife is seven months pregnant with a baby we didn’t intend. My fifteen-year old son has cerebral palsy. I am an extremely overqualified high school chemistry teacher. When I can work, I make $43,700 per year. I have watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable. And within eighteen months, I will be dead. And you ask why I ran?”
Not to say that the money is completely irrelevant, or only important as a symbol of success. Walt does seem to genuinely care for his family, as revealed in his highly emotional state at the beginning of the pilot. The importance of the money in providing for his family is shown in the season 2 opener; after a frightening encounter with Tuco, Walt calculates exactly how much money he needs to provide for his family. While this might be partly just to reassure Jesse by putting a time limit on their relationship with Tuco, his priority in that moment does seem to be ensuring that his family are provided for once he’s gone.
This, though, I believe is a brief lapse in a moment of panic. Inevitably, anyone going down the road Walt goes down would have doubts, and in these moments Walt justifies his actions to himself by pretending he’s doing horrible things for his family, not himself.
It is not really debatable that Walt is at least not solely concerned about supporting his wife and kids. If this were the case, he would take the money offered to him by Elliott and Gretchen to cover his treatment — clearly pride plays at least a small role.
One of the clearest indicators for me though comes from a discussion between Walt and Jesse, just after Walt has handed Jesse the money to buy the Winnebago. Their conversation is as follows:
Jesse: Wait. Wait. Hold up. Tell me why you’re doing this. Seriously.
Walter: Why do you do it?
Jesse: Money, mainly.
Walter: There you go.
Jesse: Nah, come on, man. Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass all a sudden at age, what, 60, he’s just gonna break bad?
Walter: I’m 50.
Jesse: It’s weird, is all. Okay, it doesn’t compute. Listen, if you’ve gone crazy or something, I mean, if you… If you’ve gone crazy, or depressed. I’m… I’m just saying. That… That’s something I need to know about. Okay, I mean, that affects me.
Walter: I am awake.
Jesse: What?
Now, it makes sense that Walt wouldn’t tell Jesse about the cancer, since he hadn’t told anyone yet. However, the answer he gives when pressed has to either be dismissed as nonsense, or taken to mean something. I believe it means something, and that it confirms Walt’s motives from the start. His diagnosis of lung cancer has awoken him out of his slumber; he’s no longer going to accept whatever life gives him, rather he’s going to do what he probably believes everyone else does; take all that he can for him and his family.
This scene mirrors a scene from the final episode of the series, and the two together demonstrate Walt’s character arc. In the first episode he’s called out by Jesse for lying about his motivation, and gives his true reasoning as shown above. In the last episode, he’s called out by Skyler for lying about his motivation, and admits to her “I did it for me.” This is a change from the beginning of the series, where Walt has a genuine desire to provide for his family (even if its out of a selfish position of wanting to be respected, and to be seen as a strong provider). By the end of the series, his pride and selfishness have become so all-consuming that he’s let them destroy his family’s lives, and his motivation has become entirely corrupt.
This is Walt’s true character arc, and I think this is important because it hugely affects the show’s message. It’s not about a nice, sweet man who is thrown into a horrible situation, forced to do terrible things, and becomes warped into the monstrous Heisenberg along the way. Rather, it’s a story about a man who had Heisenberg inside himself all along, and uses his cancer and his family as an excuse to let it out. It’s about that dark part that’s inside ordinary, unassuming people that craves power and success, to be respected, feared and revered.
Walter White’s motivation was bad from the start and it’s that lie that he tells himself and others, that he’s doing it all for his family, that allows him to carry on down a darkening path, blind to where it’s taking him.
