Post 4: Walter White, a myth, and a paradox.

So, there is a well know and quite beloved series called Breaking Bad. This series, made by the american writer, producer and director Vince Gilligan is a crime drama and thriller with a lot of black humor, staring the awarded actor Bryan Cranston as Walter White, who was also Hal in the comedy series Malcolm in the Middle and also appeared in the acclaimed film Little Miss Sunshine, Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman and the well-known actor Dean Norris as Hank Schrader, among other famous actors.

Jesse and Walter

Hank Schrader

This series shows us the path in which a regular chemistry teacher, Walter White will start cooking methamphetamine, an extremely dangerous drug called by many as "crystal meth", until he builds a drug empire in which he will be the king. Of course, he will not start cooking from one day to another, but he will get "introduced" to this shady market by one of his students, who is a drug addict named Jesse Pinkman, who is not very skilled in the act of "cooking" crystal meth. On the other hand, Walter White is a chemistry teacher, who won a nobel award by taking part in a proton radiography protect, is far more skilled than the latter. Moreover, he has lung cancer, so, knowing that he will die in a few months, decides to help Jesse so as to get enough money for his family to have a good future (for example his son's studies, etc). Furthermore, as his business grows, the Drug Enforcement Administration (a.k.a. DEA) will start looking for him, this of course is quite ironical, as his brother-in-law Hank is a DEA agent, and also will be some kind of introduction for Walter to the world of drug dealing during one of his raids.

Walter White, and Heisenberg, Walter's facette as a "drug lord"

In this series we find a myth and, as paradoxical as it is, hero and antihero at the same time, and that character is Walter White. In fact, this character represents the self-made man, in fact he is a regular man, with a mediocre life, that will become a rich man, having a drug empire. Of course this is not good, but he still succeeds, even if he took the "bad guy path". This also makes him an antihero, but even if we could consider him a "bad guy", he does it for a noble cause, that being his family's future. Also, he still is humanitarian and he is not a bad person. Besides, he manages to "leave the average", and so, he becomes what we know as a hero. Of course, there is a twist to this, that being that he doesn't stop cooking after gathering the money he wanted for his family to live well. He then became a negative character, having to kill some people and being the embodiment of our inner evil. But, even if this seems ironical, his evildoing is still justified by the fact that he finally became important, and finally found happiness, which is what we humans have as a goal in life.