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Breaking Bad - Walter White: Hero or Villain?

5.703 Words / ~15 pages sternsternsternsternstern_0.2 Author Alan S. in May. 2017
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Breaking Bads Walter White-hero or villain?


30.03.2017

Otto-Hahn Gymnasium Bensberg

Table of contents


Contents

Table of contents 2

1) Introduction 3

1.1) General information 3

1.2) Characters 4

1.3) Synopsis 5

2) The function of heroes and villains in fiction 7

3) Characterization of Walter White 8

3.1) Walter White in Season 1 9

3.2) Walter White in Season 3 10

3.3) Walter White in Season 5 11

4) Conclusion 13

List of references 14


  1. Introduction

This skilled work is about the question if Walter White from the series Breaking Bad is a hero or a villain. I chose this topic, since the series really impressed me with its complex characters. In the first part I am going to give a short overview on the series and explain the characters and make a short synopsis of the series. Then I am going to tell the function of heroes and villains in fictions, then I make a characterization of Walter White in the first, third and fifth season and describe his development in the course of the series.

At the end I make a conclusion and answer the question whether Walter White is a hero or a villain.

Breaking Bad is an American TV series which is broadcasted in the United States and Canada on the Channel AMC. It premiered on January 20, 2008. The series aired a total of 62 episodes in 5 seasons. The series ended on September 29, 2013. Break­ing Bad is widely regarded as one of the best series of all time and in the Imdb list of top rated TV shows the series is on the fifth place (breakingbad.wikia.com).

    1. General information

The title of the series “Breaking Bad” has several meanings. One meaning is, in con­nection with the word news “Breaking Bad news” means very bad news, for example in the case of Walter, that he got the diagnosis, that he has lung cancer. Another meaning from Breaking Bad is that somebody strikes a criminal career. This you can also see at the example of Walter, because after his diagnosis he starts a criminal career.

The series takes Place in Albuquerque, a little town in New Mexico at the border to Mexico, where many drug dealers and refugees from Mexico live.

The series is build up like a classic drama. It follows the rules of a drama in connec­tion to the model of Gustav Freytag. The first act gives an introduction to the theme of the series and shows the conflict that will develop. The second act intensifies the plot and steers the action in one direction. The third act is the climax. From now on everything deteriorates.

The fourth act is the moment of the last tension. Maybe the hero could be saved and no one has to die any more. This is the middle of the fifth season in Breaking Bad. The fifth act is the disaster. The hero dies.

It is about Walter White, a chemistry teacher who also works at a car wash to earn enough money for feeding his family (his son and his wife). One day after he collapsed at his job in the car wash, he got the diagnosis that he has lung cancer in the stage 3. The doctor informed him that the cancer has already spread to other parts of the body. His brother-in-law Hank Schrader is a DEA agent.

One day Walter ac­companies him on a drug bust. He met Jesse Pinkman, a former school student, but Walter hides this from his brother in law. Later on, he contacts Jesse and asks him, to teach him how to sell Crystal Meth, because selling Crystal Meth would be his best option to earn enough money to finance his treatment and support for his family. Thus, Jesse and Walter are both drown deeper and deeper into the abyss of organized drug trafficking.

1.2) Characters


Walter “Heisenberg” White: He is the main character of the series, the father of Walter Jr. and Holly. He is the husband of Skyler White and the brother –in-law from Hank Schrader. At the beginning he works as a teacher and in the car wash, but later he starts to “cook” methamphetamines.

Skyler White: She is married to Walter White, the mother from Holly and Walter Jr. and the sister from Marie Schrader. She does not work, because she has to take care of Walter Jr. and when Walter Jr. gets old enough she h.....[read full text]

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Season 3:

After Skyler forces Walter to leave the family, he regrets, which then leads him wanting to reunite the family. Skyler is still suspicious about Walter`s second life. Walter tells her, that he produces methamphetamines. He thinks that when he tells her the truth, she will believe him again. However after he told it to her, she demands a formal divorce. He also accepts the offer from Gus and earns 3 million dollars for three months of work.

Jesse still cooks methamphetamines by himself and Walter has another assistant, Gale Boetticher. Hank, who wants to investigate Jesse, gets attacked by the brothers of Tuco Salamanca. Tuco Salamanca was killed in the sec­ond season by Walter and Jesse, because he was a rival. After Jesse found out who killed Combo he wanted to get revenge. But since Jesse has no Chance to kill them alone, Walter rescues him and kills the two guys with a car.

Walter has many dis­putes with Gus, he wants to kill Walter, and hand the lab over to Gale. So Walter calls Jesse and tells him that he has to kill Gale. Directly after this call, Jesse kills Gale.

Season 4:

After Jesse killed Gale, Gustavo enforced stricter policies in the lab. He also tries to break the friendship between Walter and Jesse by giving Jesse a new job. From now on, Jesse escorts Mike (a killer and the security boss of Gustavo). Gustavo`s plan goes on and a big distance between Walter and Jesse increases. Meanwhile, Hank, who is recovering from the attack of the brothers of Tuco Salamanca, finds out, that Gustavo Fring is the boss of a big drug cartel, but he does not have proofs for his thesis.

Gustavo fires Walter and tells him that he will kill Hank. Walter and Jesse reconcile with each other and decide to kill Gustavo. Walter convinces the grandfa­ther of Tuco Salamanca, Hector Salamanca, who lives in an old people`s home, to kill Gustavo with a suicide bomb. Hector agrees and kills Gustavo.

Season 5:

After Gustavo is killed, the police and the DEA search the one who built the bomb for Hector and seizure everything of Gustavo. After Walter, Jesse and Mike notice that the police also seizure the laptop with the recordings of the laboratory, they de­stroy it with an industrial electromagnet. When Skyler tells Walter, that she used 600.000 dollars to pay the tax deductibles of Ted Beneke, Walter says, he has to start cooking meth again.

So Walter, Jesse and Mike start a partnership and begin cooking Meth in the houses which the company “Vamonos Pest” has to clean from termites. Walter and Jesse change their laboratory every day. When Mike tells them they have to give one part of the money to the former workers of Gustavo as hush money, Walter gets aggressive, but at least he agrees.

Skyler says Walter, that she is just waiting for the cancer to come back and that she wants him to die. She also gave away Walter Jr. and Holly to Hank and Marie to raise them.

Walter and Jesse need methylamine to keep producing the meth, so they rob it from a train. A child in the desert sees them at the train and Todd, the worker from Vamonos Pest shoots the boy to death. After this, Jesse and Mike want to sell their methylamine altogether for 15 million dollars, but Walter refuses and says it is more worth than that. Walter arranges another deal with Declan, who wanted to buy the methylamine and gives Mike his 5 million dollar.

When the DEA investigates Mike, he decides to go to New Mexico, but Walter kills him. Then Walter hires Todds uncle Jack, the leader of a gang, to kill the nine former workers of Gustavo. Jesse said, he does not want to cook meth anymore, Walter cont.....

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Walter drives back home and wants Skyler, Walter Jr. and Holly to bugger off with him, but Skyler realizes that Hank got killed and refuses to come with him. They argue and Skyler cuts his hand with a knife and calls the police. Walter runs away and asks the guy who makes new identities to make him one. Then he lives in a cabin in New Hampshire for a few months. One day he goes to a tavern and sees Elliot and Gretchen Schwartz on TV.

He steals a car and drives to their house with his 10 million dollars. He orders them to give the whole money to Walter Jr. on his 18th birthday, because nobody will get skeptical when billionaires give 10 million dollars to a boy who has been suffering for the error of his father. In the evening Walter drives to Jack and his gang with a machine gun in the back of the car, which can be remote controlled.

When he gets in their house, they want to kill him, but he says they promised him to kill Jesse and he knows that they still keep him in captiv­ity. Jack summons Jesse and after Jesse gets in the room, Walter throws him on the ground and starts firing the machine gun in the car. The whole gang gets killed also Walter gets hit by a bullet and dies. Jesse runs away and feels happy to be free again.

  1. The function of heroes and villains in fiction

Everyone knows: in every fictional text and movie we have heroes and villains. But why do they exist in fiction? In the following I am going to examine the function of them, but first I will give a short definition of a hero and a villain.

The villains seek power for their own sake and their actions are powered by their own interests. The villains do not care about other people. They are mostly violent and ruthless.

The heroes do not seek power for themselves, but for the good of others. Their ac­tions are not only motivated in defending themselves, they are also motivated in de­fending others and often in the risk of their own lives (narrativefirst).

The heroes and villains are the most important characters in movies and books, be­cause the reader/ viewer establishes a connection to the hero (protagonist). In the series “Breaking Bad” Walter White, the main character, is the bad guy, because he cooks Crystal Meth and kills everyone who wants to stop him, but nevertheless is he the protagonist.

So you can see that the protagonist is not the same like the hero and the antagonist is not the same like the villain. There can be big differences between hero, protagonist, the same as villain and antagonist. It can also exists several protagonists and several antagonists, but there will always be only one main protagonist and one main antag­onist.

The protagonist is the central element of the story and the reader/viewer emphasizes with him or her. Mostly the story is told out of the perspective from the protagonist. The inner development from the protagonist is the same as the plot of the film/book. Without the protagonist the viewer/reader loses interest very fast. He has no one he can sympathiz.....

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3.1) Walter White in Season 1

In the first season, Walter is very restrained. He cleans cars in a car wash, just to earn a little bit more money for his family. On Walter`s 50th birthday, Hank shows the family and their friends a film of a police operation against a drug cartel and Walter looks very jealous on the money the police had found. After this, Hank gives a pistol to Junior and also wants Walter to hold it once, but Walter does not like the weapon and asks Hank to take it back.

This shows that Walter is against violence and does not like weapons in the beginning of the series. He is also very correct and against crime. After he gets the diagnosis of the lung cancer, he hides it from his family, be­cause he does not want to disturb them. When he accompanies Hank at a police op­eration, where they catch some Crystal Meth cooks, he sees his former student Jesse Pinkman fleeing out of the house.

Instead of telling it Hank, he asks Jesse, if they can cook Crystal Meth together. Jesse says yes and then they buy a Caravan and begin to cook Crystal Meth in the desert. This shows Walter Whites reaction under pressure and when he is desperate. When he is desperate and does not know a way out, he is willed to do everything. You can also see this in the second episode, where he kills the two drug dealers, which want to buy the Crystal Meth Jesse and Walter cooked.

When the dealers make trouble, Walter and Jesse kill them. After this Walter does not want to cook meth anymore and cancels the contact to Jesse. On a barbecue evening with his family, he tells them, that he has lung cancer. Jesse asks him, if he wants to continue cooking meth, but Walter says that he does not want to cook meth anymore. After he talked to Jesse, he tells Skyler that he does not want any therapy, because he does not want to drown out in debts.

This demonstrates, that he loves his family and sets the well-being of his family above his own and wants to care for them also after his death. Skyler talks to him again and again and at least she persuades Walter to make a therapy. Walter`s old friends Gretchen and Elliot, who are the owners of a company Walter and Elliot founded, offer him to pay his therapy, but Walter does not want the money.

He is too proud and says it is under his honor to accept the money and so he starts cooking meth again. He tells Jesse that he does not want to sell Meth anymore. He is responsible for the production of cooking meth and Jesse is responsible for the marketing and has to sell the Crystal. Walter does not want bloodshed anymore. It seems like Walter learns out of his mistakes.

He does not want to hurt anybody for his own business. He still cares about others and do.....

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These are all character traits from the caring father and teacher and not from the murderer and meth cook.

When Walter finds out that Skyler cheats on him with her employer Ted Beneke, he gets very aggressive and wants to beat him, but Ted calls the police and Walter flees. In this scene Walter behaves more like Heisenberg, because he acts out of an affect and is very unpredictable. He also wants to hurt Ted Beneke very bad, what Walter White would never do.

Gustavo Fring offers Walter 3 million dollars for 3 months cooking. Walter first de­clines the offer, but finally he accepts it, because he thinks he needs the money. This scene shows that Walter White refuses to cook again, but Heisenberg is more powerful, because in reality Walter has enough money to pay for his treatment and care for his family, but nevertheless he continues cooking meth.

Walter tries to convince Jesse to start cooking meth again in exchange of half of his money. This shows that Walter likes Jesse very much. Another reason why Walter prefers Jesse is that Gale Boetticher, Walter`s assistant is also a chemist, cooks meth very good, but has his own will. Walter prefers cooking with Jesse because he likes him and he does not want an assistant who has his own will.

Gale makes many things on his own and Walter wants to be the boss and have the control about everything. This is another characteristic of Heisenberg. Many times, when Walter White gets aggressive, it is because somebody else did not ask him what to do but did it by him/herself. He persuades Jesse to start cooking again and throws Gale out. He talks to Gustavo and makes a permanent contract with him and earns 15 million dollar per year.

This is the point where it can be seen that Walter does not cook to care for his family, but also because he likes the money and cooking meth is fun for him.

Walter tells Jesse that the perfect moment to die is over, because he already has enough money to care for his family after his death, before Skyler did knew that he cooks Crystal Meth. This indicates that Walter thought, the cancer would kill him earlier, so that Skyler would not get to know that he cooked Crystal Meth. On this point it shows, that Walter began to cook Crystal Meth because he wanted to care for his family, but when Skyler found out, that he cooked Crystal Meth, he said himself that nothing matters anymore and he could also continue cooking Crystal Meth and does not have to care about Skyler, because she knows everything.

On this point, his motivation of cooking meth changes completely. From now on, he just cooks meth because he has fun and he likes the money he earns. He does not cook anymore because o.....

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This shows that he gets unsatisfactory. He does not just want money he also enjoys the power he has. He is frustrated, that he cannot control the cancer, so he wants to control the Crystal Meth market. In episode seven, he says Jesse, that it is very unusual, that you are the best in one thing. He also says that when you are the best in one thing, you have to do this and you should not throw it away.

He tells this to Jesse to convince him to continue cooking Crystal Meth. This also underlines the thesis, that he enjoys the power he has.

When Mike wants to get away with his money and get a new identity, Walter kills him. After he killed Mike, he orders the uncle of Todd to kill the 9 former workers of Gustavo and their employee, because they knew too much. In this scene Walter is more ruthless, than in any other part of the series. He orders to kill ten people, just because they know too much and could tell something to the police.

He gets more and more ruthless and aggressive. He kills everyone who gets in his way.

After Skyler showed him how much money he earned, Walter is convinced to stop cooking Crystal Meth and he really stops. This shows that Walter recognizes, that he has enough money for several lives and also his children will not be able to spend this money in their whole live. So apparent by he reached his goal and is happy and stops cooking meth with a good conscience. In this scene it looks like he turns good again and becomes Walter White.

This is the point of the last tension because it seems like the series could have a happy end, but then Hank finds the book with a dedication and realizes that Walter is Heisenberg.

When Hank finds out that Walter is Heisenberg, Walter tells it to Saul who advises him to kill Hank, but Walter says that it is not possible, because Hank belongs to his family. This scene shows that Walter loves his family and sets their wellbeing above his own. There he is Walter White again, because he cares for his family and tries to be a good man.

When Jesse wants to burn up Walter house he wants to kill him and hires Todd`s uncle Jack to kill Jesse. This shows that he gets angry very fast and when someone tries to hurt his family, he gets rut.....

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My result: He is the ruthless murderer and Crystal Meth cook Heisenberg.



List of references

Autor, U. (kein Datum). narrativefirst. Abgerufen am 26. 1 2017 von

breakingbad.wikia.com. (kein Datum). Abgerufen am 18. 02 2017 von

Hopp, J. (kein Datum). . Abgerufen am 4. 2 2017 von

Masson, S. (19. 9 2012). writerunboxed. Abgerufen am 26. 1 2017 von

thescriptlab. (kein Datum). Abgerufen am 26. 1 2017 von


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