Walter White

**Walter Blackwell**"**Walt**" White **Sr.**, also known by his clandestine pseudonym and business moniker **Heisenberg** and also frequently referred to as **Mr. Black**, is a former chemist and major narcotics distributor from Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose drug empire became the largest meth operation in American history, surpassing both Gustavo Fring's drug empire and the Cartel's. Before entering the drug trade

## Walter Blackwell "Walt' White Sr.

, Walt was a respected chemist and scientist who later worked as an overqualified high school chemistry teacher at J. P. Wynne High School alongside working at the A1A Car Wash to financially support his family (his wife Skyler, son Walt Jr., and infant daughter Holly). After being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, Walt started manufacturing chemically pure crystal methamphetamine to provide for his family upon his death. Knowing nothing about the drug trade, Walt enlisted the aid of his former student, Jesse Pinkman, to sell the meth he produced.

Walt's scientific knowledge and dedication to quality lead him to produce crystal meth that is purer and more potent than any competitors'. To avoid the tedious collection of pseudoephedrine required for production, Walt devises an alternative chemical process utilizing methylamine, giving his product a distinctive blue color. His crystal meth, which is given the street name "Blue Sky," dominates the market, leading to confrontations with established drug makers and dealers. Although Walt and Jesse began as amateur small-time meth cooks, manufacturing the drug out of an RV in the deserts of New Mexico, and being met with very limited success, Walt and Jesse soon climbed up the drug hierarchy, killing or systematically destroying anyone who impeded them. Because of his drug-related activities, Walt eventually finds himself at odds with his family, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) through his brother-in-law and accomplished DEA agent Hank Schrader, the local gangs, and the Mexican drug cartels (including their regional distributors), putting him and his family's lives at risk.

Walt adopted the clandestine pseudonym and business moniker "Heisenberg" (referencing the theoretical physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg) as an alias as he immersed himself in the drug trade. While initially heavily reluctant to use violence, Walt gradually came to see it as a necessity, and eventually developed into a ruthless drug lord motivated largely by vanity, ego, and greed. He also comes to find his new status as a drug lord psychologically rewarding, leading him to become increasingly willing to resort to criminal acts such as theft, extortion, money laundering, depraved indifference, and murder. He employs a number of enforcers, and has personally killed both rivals and allies. Walt's descent into the criminal underworld unearthed immense levels of deeply repressed ambition, rage, resentment, vanity, and an increasing ruthlessness. Walt soon worked his way up to the international level in the drug trade, becoming a famous and feared drug kingpin. By the time he retired from the drug business permanently, Walt had accumulated over $80 million USD from his involvement in the drug trade.

## Background Information

**Walter Hartwell White**, or simply known as Walt, was born on September 7, 1958, and was the only child of Mr.White and Mrs. White. When Walt was young, his father's health rapidly deteriorated upon developing Huntington’s disease, and all the good memories that friends and family tried to implant in the boy’s head never supplanted the terrifying memory of visiting his father in the hospital just before his death . He remembered the twisted body, the empty eyes that didn't seem to focus on him, the terrible disinfectant smell of the hospital, and his breathing: Walt described it as “this rattling sound like if you were shaking an empty spray paint can—like there was nothing in him” He recalled being tested for Huntington's disease as a child as well as working in a cardboard box factory as a teenager whilst in high school . He presumably grew up somewhere other than Albuquerque, New Mexico, given the fact that he would have to fly to visit his mother.

Walt studied at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) with his best friend Elliott Schwartz, where he proved himself a brilliant chemist with a specialty in X-ray crystallography . In 1985, Walt's groundbreaking research regarding photon radiography contributed to a project that was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded jointly to Herbert A. Hauptman and Jerome Karle for outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures .

Following his education, Walt went on to co-found Gray Matter Technologies with Elliott. At this time, he was dating his female lab assistant, Gretchen ("...and the Bag's in the River"). Though the two were briefly engaged, Walt abruptly left her without explanation after meeting her family on a Fourth of July weekend, unable to cope with the feelings of inferiority their wealth and success stirred up in him ("Peekaboo"). Soon after, Walt sold his share of the company to Elliott for $5,000 ("Buyout"). Gretchen eventually went on to marry Elliot, and Gray Matter became a highly successful, multi-billion dollar company. Walt would come to feel that the fruits of his hard labor had been stolen from him and bitterly blamed Elliott and Gretchen for his financial problems and overall lot in life, despite the fact it was his own decision to leave. Walt refused to acknowledge his own failures for leaving Gray Matter and regretted his decision of leaving and selling out, which would later become a contributing factor in his decision to build a meth empire ("Buyout").

By the turn of 1990, Walt was working in Application Labs ("Cancer Man"). He also worked in a chemical lab near Los Alamos, where he met his wife Skyler Lambert, who worked as a hostess in a neighboring restaurant ("Cancer Man"). He moved to Albuquerque to work for Sandia Laboratories just prior to his firstborn's birth ("Full Measure"). In Albuquerque, he and his wife settled into a home at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, despite his desire for a larger house in light of recent business success.

Walt either left or lost his position at Sandia Laboratories and he eventually went on to become a chemistry teacher at J. P. Wynne High School where his son, Walt Jr., also attended as a student. At some point, he became the Chair of the Science Department at J. P. Wynne as well. Financially, this job was not enough to support his family, so Skyler did side work writing short stories and selling items on the internet. When Skyler became pregnant with their second child, however, Walt took on a degrading second job at the A1A Car Wash.

## Personallity and Traits

Walter White starts off as a milquetoast, highly overqualified high school chemistry teacher. The job does not pay well, so to supplement his income, he has another job at the local car wash. Though hired to work the register, his boss forces him to wash cars outside, which often proves to be extremely humiliating when he has to clean the cars of his students. At home, his sex life appears to be passionless; Skyler seems more involved in selling their household items on eBay than sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom, and Walt has trouble getting "inspired" in any case. Furthermore, Walt has an alpha-male brother-in-law, Hank, who has a flashy job as a DEA agent and is infinitely more impressive to Walt Jr. than his own father.

It is clear from the start that Walt is suffering from a mid-life crisis. He feels frustrated, overwhelmed, beaten down, stretched thin, passed over, cheated, unappreciated, emasculated, exploited, and unfulfilled. Even the field where he has the most skill, chemistry, falls on the deaf ears of his disrespectful, apathetic students. Even before his diagnosis, Walt felt like a failure, unable to adequately provide for his family and fulfill the role expected of him by American society. The news of his terminal lung cancer leaves Walt numb and he shows almost no emotion upon learning of it, as if he was already dead. Learning that his life will be unexpectedly cut short, coupled with the knowledge that he's going to leave his already financially struggling family bankrupt, is the final slap in the face, the last humiliating insult life can dish out.

When Walt partners up with Jesse to make meth, he claims that his motivation is his family. He says that before he dies he wants to be able to take care of his loved ones. He wants Skyler to be able to pay off the mortgage, to cover college educations for his children, and medical bills for the whole family. At one point he even calculates an exact figure of how much money he needs to make in order to provide the essentials for his family over the next 20 years ($737,000), and then he'd quit selling drugs once he reaches that number. While deciding to make meth is morally dubious, the anger Walt feels about having to scrounge for every dollar while being trapped in an monotonous cycle, his life passing by day by day without any job or fulfillment, is legitimate, and it's compounded by the importance placed on the "traditional" patriarchal family unit, as well as the pressure and expectation put on men to provide for their families.

After surviving his first foray into the dangerous drug underworld - a foray that was life threatening, terrifying, and violent - Walt feels invigorated for the first time in years. He goes home and sleeps with his wife. Skyler, surprised by his sudden sexual advance, asks, "Walt, is that you?!" as she gasps for breath. When Jesse questions Walt about his decision to enter the meth business, Walt reveals that he feels "awake." In addition to his chemistry expertise, Walt was shown to be a good mental calculator, as he calculated most of the numbers to his deals within his head and with no calculator.

Walt more frequently uses the concept of providing for and protecting his family as a justification for his actions and crimes, but his true motivations are gradually revealed to be personal satisfaction, pride, authority, and power. He wants to shed the image of the nerdy science teacher who can't take care of his family. Walt wants respect, and wishes to seek revenge against the society that he views as having screwed him over, undervalued his worth, and overlooked his potential. Walt does what he does to give himself a sense of worth and pride, and he justifies his murderous, nearly insatiable greed by claiming he's just doing it for the good of his loved ones even as he pushes them away. Underneath that thinly veiled altruistic excuse is a naked desire to dominate others for the sake of unfettered growth and power. Walt finally reveals to Skyler in the final episode of the series that truly everything he did was for himself, admitting he enjoyed it and that it made him feel alive.

Walt is an extremely prideful, egotistical, arrogant, ignorant and megalomaniacal man, yet deeply complex and insecure. When he and Skyler need to buy a business to launder their drug money, Walt gradually becomes determined to purchase the very same car wash that wounded his pride when Skyler mentions that the owner, Bogdan, insulted his manhood. Walt also refuses to let Bogdan keep his framed dollar on the wall, and out of spite he decides to use that dollar to buy a soda from the vending machine ("Cornered"). Walt's pride, ego and arrogance is what keeps him from accepting any form of financial aid such as Gretchen and Elliot's "charity" (offering to pay for his treatment) and an offer to return to Gray Matter and is further shown by his barely concealed fury and disgust at his son asking for donations through the website SaveWalterWhite.com. Furthermore, he tells his son Walt Jr that he doesn't want to be remembered as a weak, dying man ("Salud"). While drunk at Hank and Marie's house, Walt's can't stand listening to Hank (who has ended his involvement with the case) laud Gale's genius. A prideful Walt insists Gale was not a genius, but was rather copying off someone else's work and that this genius could still be at large. This action convinces Hank to re-open the case, which eventually leads him to evidence incriminating Gus ("Shotgun") and eventually to evidence incriminating Walt himself ("Gliding Over All").

It is evident that Walt is also a complete hypocrite and his beliefs and claimed moral standards rarely conform to his own behavior. His hypocrisy is mainly exemplified by his common excuse and justification that his reasons for becoming a meth manufacturer and kingpin are solely to provide for and protect his family when in reality it is all for his own interest and pure enjoyment, with his family's welfare being barely a second priority and constantly makes decisions that only further endanger his family. Walt also rarely, if ever, admits responsibility for problems that are clearly his own fault and is quick to blame others and find an excuse for said problems. Notable examples of his ignorance in this regard include him bitterly blaming his former colleagues Gretchen and Elliot for ruining his life and stealing his work all the while completely ignoring the fact that he himself chose to leave the business he helped to co-fund, later revealed to be due to feelings of inferiority to Gretchen's family and set himself down pathways to failure. Another noted example is evident when he blames Mike for screwing up and putting the DEA on his own trail while refusing to admit that his killing of Gus did nothing but cause disaster and put the DEA on all of Gus' former associates. Walt's severe ignorance makes him almost the polar opposite of Jesse who actually faces and feels remorse for what he has done and accepts responsibility for it. This is highlighted by Jesse blaming himself for Jane's death (even though Walt is responsible) and the subsequent aircraft disaster caused by her father, Donald while Walt is quick to point out other variables such as a possible radar malfunction and poor technology and overall claiming he blames the government for the disaster rather than himself.

Every time Walt comes up against someone with more power than he does, instead of retreating he systematically destroys them directly or indirectly and takes their place, starting with Krazy-8, then Tuco, Gus, and finally Mike, until only he is left holding the keys to the kingdom. He is shown to possess a kingpin's unbeatable survival skills: sociopathy, cunning, emotional manipulation, meticulousness, and violence – or at least the threat thereof. Bryan Cranston said by the fourth season: "I think Walt's figured out it's better to be a pursuer than the pursued. He's well on his way to badass. Over the course of the series, he’s evolved as a businessman, but he’s turned into a sociopath in both his personal and professional lives. He’s shed basic empathy and has no idea how much his colleagues and wife loathe him."

As Walt delves deeper into the criminal underworld he increasingly sees people as expendable pawns, who he either manipulates to further his interests or eliminates. Early on such as in Season 1, Walt has great difficulty bringing himself to murder, but by the end of Season 3, he barely gives killing a second thought as shown by ordering Jesse to murder Gale and later was also capable of poisoning a young child without any remorse at all. Nothing can stand in the way of his growing empire, and being in the position of power numbs his empathy for other human beings. He also comes to find his new status as a drug lord as psychologically rewarding, leading him to become less and less reluctant to resort to criminal acts such as theft, extortion, money laundering, and murder, showing pleasure, enthusiasm and even a sort of depraved indifference in these acts to a degree. Walt's Machiavellian descent into the criminal underworld reveals a surprising level of repressed ambition, rage, resentment, vanity, and an increasing ruthlessness which has alienated him from his family and colleagues.

Walt proves himself to be a natural liar. According to Vince Gilligan, "[Walt] is a man who lies to his family, lies to his friends, lies to the world about who he truly is. But what I think makes him a standout liar is that first and foremost he is lying to himself." Even Skyler, who deceived Marie by telling Walter's money came from gambling, said that her talent of lying had come from "the best", referencing Walt. It is also interesting to note that, even though he refuses to admit it, Walt appears on numerous occasions to be itching for the chance to tell his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank that he is Heisenberg, the mild mannered chemistry teacher that everyone's always overlooked and laughed at, who's been the mastermind behind the legendary blue meth all along. This shows to an extent that Walt is more than willing to be captured and arrested for his crimes and take all the credit and recognition as the mastermind rather than have anyone else, such as Gale, receive any credit for his work.

Despite his evolution in a ruthless, amoral drug kingpin, Walt still refused to ever physically hurt his family, growing angry at Saul's suggestion to kill Hank even after he learned that Walt was Heisenberg and threatened that he would do all in his power to bring Walt to justice. Before Jack killed Hank, Walt begged and bargained for Hank's life with his entire $80,000,000 fortune and was utterly broken when Jack fired the shot. Getting revenge on Jack and his men became one of his driving motivations in the final episode of the series in order to avenge his brother-in-law's death and protect his family from being harmed by the murderous gang. His final actions were also driven by his pride, returning to Albuquerque after seeing his former colleagues discredit him on television. Walt was also greatly against the idea of killing Jesse until it seemed necessary to him, and at the end took a bullet to save Jesse's life during the massacre of Jack, Todd and their crew, leading to Walt's demise as well, going out on his own terms.

### "Heisenberg" persona

>
> "*There was a moment nobody ever really wrote about in the first or second season...when he was in remission from his cancer and he decided even though his hair was growing back, he decided to shave his head some more. And that was big thing for me because it made a statement that he was truly accepting this new life of his.*"
> ―Bryan Cranston about Walter White[src]
>

Walt borrowed his "Heisenberg" pseudonym from the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg, a chemist who was also diagnosed with lung cancer. The German physicist is most famous for the Uncertainty Principle, which in its most basic form speaks to the general probabilistic, uncertain nature of quantum mechanics - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle holds that even if some properties are known, other equally important properties will be uncertain.

Walt's Heisenberg persona is first "born" when Walt goes to confront Tuco after Tuco beat up Jesse and took his meth without paying. As a result of hair loss caused by chemotherapy, Walt shaved his head earlier that episode. When Tuco asks him who he is, Walt introduces himself as "Heisenberg" for the first time ("Crazy Handful of Nothin'"). Bryan Cranston said, "I think he takes on that name - and that look - in order to not recognize himself. That as long as he doesn't recognize the man in the mirror, he can sort of keep going." As his first action as Heisenberg, Walt throws a piece of fulminated mercury onto the floor, triggering a large explosion. Vince Gilligan said, "For my money, this is the moment in the series where he really breaks bad."

In his entire adult life, Walt had been capping his emotions, and he begins to feel more as he embraces the darker side of his personality. The sides of Walt's personality have been described as "sociopath and family man, scientist and killer, rational being and creature of impulse, entrepreneur and a loser." Walt eventually transforms fully into his Heisenberg drug kingpin persona, which makes him confident, strong, authoritative, patient, manipulative, and cruel. As Heisenberg, Walt prefers to die in a fight and leave a legacy (good or bad) instead of giving in. The argument can be made that the cancer was merely a catalyst for Walt (generally family-oriented, employable, and mild-mannered) embracing another side to his personality—the Heisenberg side, the side that is gratified, feared, ruthless, and powerful—that was there all along.