“The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness
to challenge misfortune.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Breaking Bad is considered one of the best television series ever made.
It tells the story of Walter White, an unremarkable chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal
lung cancer.
Shortly after the diagnosis, Walter decides to cook methamphetamine with former student
Jesse Pinkman.
And so his metamorphosis from a timid, awkward man to a ruthless underworld kingpin begins.
During his evolution, Walter White leaves a trail of destruction.
From the beginning, he justifies his actions by telling himself he wants to provide for
his family, as he won’t be able to look after them anymore after his illness kills
him.
From this perspective, he rationalizes earning money by cooking and selling meth as a selfless
act.
But throughout the series, it becomes clear that his family isn’t the only reason he
does what he does.
Walt feels defeated by life and seeks redemption by becoming the best meth cook in the region
under the pseudonym ‘Heisenberg.’
His distinctive blue crystals quickly become infamous with the underworld and the Drug
Enforcement Administration, or DEA.
The character of Walter White shows an interesting
psychological transformation throughout the series that has been discussed and analyzed
for years.
Was Walter White simply a frustrated man gone evil?
Or was there more to his evolution into Heisenberg?
Could it be that Walter White achieved what many others only dream of, namely, to overcome
himself?
Through the lens of Nietzsche’s idea of the ‘Overman (or Übermensch),’ this video
explores the psychology of Breaking Bad character Walter White.
Please note: this essay doesn’t condone Walter White’s actions, nor does it encourage
people to imitate him.
Also, this video contains Breaking Bad footage and imagery which belong to Sony Pictures,
and it does contain spoilers.
In the first episodes of the series, we meet Walter White as a timid man, showing characteristics
of low self-esteem and an inferiority complex.
His posture is slightly bent forward.
He generally speaks softly, half muttered, and rarely maintains eye contact.
As a high school teacher, his pupils don’t respect him in the slightest, and at home,
he’s henpecked by his wife, who loves him but doesn’t seem to acknowledge him as an
equal within the household.
At a surprise birthday party, we see his macho brother-in-law and DEA agent Hank Schrader
poking fun at Walt’s masculinity.
To make ends meet, Walt has taken on a second job at a car wash, where he receives continual
disrespect from his boss Bogdan.
When a couple of his students see him washing a car, they laugh at him.
His mediocre life is in stark contrast with his actual capabilities.
Walt is a brilliant chemist who has obtained a Ph.D. and was once part of a startup called
Gray Matter with two friends from graduate school, Gretchen and Elliot.
Gretchen and Walt were romantically involved at that time.
But for personal reasons, Walt sold his share of the company to Elliot for $5000.
Gretchen and Elliot eventually married each other, and Gray Matter became a multi-billion
dollar company.
Walter later felt that Gretchen and Elliot stole his work and blamed his financial problems
on them.
Despite his setbacks in life, Walter White remains a very prideful man.
He refuses to take help from Gretchen and Elliot, who offer to pay for his cancer treatment.
Walt loathes the fact that his son looks up to Hank but looks to Walt with pity and eventually
enforces his role as a father upon him.
Also, he doesn’t want his wife Skyler (who’s pregnant with their second child) to work,
as he wants himself to be the provider of the household.
Walt’s ego gets particularly hit when Hank tells him, undoubtedly with good intentions,
that he’ll always look after his family (something Walt feels incapable of doing).
His pride, his unwillingness to accept the past and how his surroundings perceive him,
and his persistent feelings of inadequacy, shame, guilt, and resentment, are factors
that propel him into his psychological transformation.
Walter White feels cheated by life and seeks redemption before he dies.
Teamed up with his old student and drug-dealer Jesse Pinkman and later the “criminal lawyer”
Saul Goodman, he becomes a successful and respectable player in the underworld after
many setbacks and bloodshed.
His original motivation – providing for the family – slowly fades to the background
as he realizes his full potential as a methamphetamine producer and a drug lord ruling an empire
feared by many competitors.
Looking at the beginning of the Breaking Bad timeline, just before Walter White broke bad,
we see that he had other options that would have made more sense rationally and practically.
For example, he could have taken Gretchen and Elliot’s money for his cancer treatment.
He could have taken the outstretched hand of Hank and Marie.
Walt would have received plenty of support from the people around him.
His family would probably have been able to make ends meet after his death, either through
the help of their environment or by fending for themselves.
But Walt didn’t accept other people’s help.
He was done being the meek, impotent shell of a man unable to take care of business,
always living in the shadows of those around him.
Deep inside, he had a burning wish to ascend, to have lighted the sky briefly before he
passed away.
In his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche professed his idea of
man’s ultimate state.
Zarathustra is a prophet-like character who decides to share his wisdom with the world
after a period of seclusion.
He declares that “God is dead,” pointing to the fading influence of Christianity on
Western civilization.
Even though Nietzsche criticized Christianity, he also predicted that Western civilization
would fall into nihilism without the guidance of religious morals.
Nietzsche argued that people don’t live by bread alone; we need meaning in our lives.
How could people survive and thrive without an overarching purpose?
In an attempt to save people from the soul-crushing hands of nihilism, he proposed the idea of
the Overman (or Übermensch, in German, not to be confused with Hitler's Übermensch),
which comes to fruition in the story of Zarathustra.
The Overman is a fully self-actualized being, a vision of what someone could be (which differs
per person): an ultimate potential to aim for.
The Overman rejects collective morals, like those presented by Christianity, and creates
his own morals.
Nietzsche described a human being as a tightrope over an abyss between beast and Overman; attempting
to cross the abyss is a dangerous but fulfilling undertaking.
But to move away from being a mere human animal, man must strive to overcome one’s human
nature and become an Overman.
I quote:
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb
of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man?
What is the ape to man?
A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.
And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.
End quote.
Opposed to the Overman, Nietzsche placed the so-called ‘last man.’
The last man nihilistically concerns himself with short-term pleasures and works to fulfill
them.
As a herd without a shepherd, the last men all want the same thing; some little treats
for the day, some little pleasures for the night, which, added together, constitute what
the last men call happiness.
I quote:
Lo!
I show you the last man.
“What is love?
What is creation?
What is longing?
What is a star?” asks the last man and blinks.
The earth has then become small, and on it there hops the last man who makes everything
small.
His species is ineradicable like that of the ground flea; the last man lives longest.
“We have discovered happiness”—say the last men and blink thereby.
End quote.
Until his cancer diagnosis, Walter White represents Nietzsche’s “last man.”
He seems tired of life, risk-averse, and unable to actualize his full potential.
His life revolves around earning a living for himself and his family by engaging in
a mind-numbing routine of trying to teach chemistry to unmotivated high school students
that don’t respect him and cleaning cars.
From the morality of the herd, Walt is, in many ways, a great man.
He is humble, works hard, and even took a second job to provide for his family.
He plays by the rules, obediently doing what’s ‘good’ rather than what he desires.
Ironically, his terminal illness was his first unintentional break with the last man archetype,
as it would radically shorten his lifespan.
If Walter didn’t get the diagnosis, he’d probably have continued his mediocre life,
dead-end job, and his little treats for the day and little pleasures for the night.
An example of the latter is the passionless birthday present given by his wife Skyler.
But Walt’s abrupt change in outlook evoked a paradigm shift, evaporating barriers that
previously held him back.
When time is running out, and longevity isn’t an option, one often starts to live more immediately.
Walt’s paradigm shift paved the way for reinventing himself, redeeming his unfulfilled
life as a cowardly, meek person disguised as humble and moral.
“He’s just decent, and he always does the right thing,” thus Walt Jr. described
his father during a local news item about the website he created to collect money for
him.
But Walt’s decency wasn’t so decent: it was weakness.
In reality, he was resentful of those who had it better (especially Gretchen and Elliot)
but felt impotent and powerless and unable to change his life’s circumstances.
He was a genius who settled for a mediocre life: a docile sheep conforming to what the
world imposes on him.
Nietzsche stated:
“There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has
evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about
him.
He is wholly exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bag of clothes.”
End quote.
Deep inside, Walt longed for greatness or, from a Nietzschean point of view, his will-to-power
– the irrational, striving force inside of him – demanded to be expressed.
He found an opportunity to snatch that power through partnering up with Jesse and cooking
meth.
And thus, his escape from being Nietzsche’s “last man” began when he answered to the
deep-seated longing for heroism and self-actualization.
Or, as he stated to Jesse: “I am awake.”
Scholars are divided on what Nietzsche’s Overman would look like exactly.
But the ideas of self-command, self-overcoming, the willingness to say ‘yes’ to life,
determining one’s own values, and reaching one’s full capacities seem collectively
agreed upon when describing the Overman.
Nietzsche admitted that becoming the Overman is rare and possibly too difficult for most
of us to accomplish.
A more realistic goal, however, is to at least walk the tightrope between beast and Overman,
away from the “last man” archetype, towards fulfilling one’s higher potential.
Such a pursuit characterizes the Higher Human.
Looking at Walter White climbing the meth business, we see a man overcoming himself,
affirming life, and creating a higher purpose, despite the destructiveness of his trajectory.
One of Walt’s realizations after his awakening is how fear had always held him back, and
for a significant part, he has overcome fear.
He is free in ways he previously was not.
When his brother-in-law Hank has PTSD, Walt tells him, and I quote:
“I have spent my whole life scared.
Frightened of things that could happen, might happen, might not happen.
Fifty years I spent like that.
Finding myself awake at three in the morning.
But you know what?
Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just fine.
And I came to realize it’s that fear that’s the worst of it.
That’s the real enemy.
So, get up, get out in the real world and you kick that bastard as hard as you can right
in the teeth.”
End quote.
Nietzsche was disgusted by what he called ‘slave morality,’ which he saw as human
weaknesses turned into virtues.
His Overman, therefore, was amoral, which isn’t the same as immoral.
Amoral, in this context, means rejecting traditional values and creating one’s own.
Evidence of Walter White moving towards the Overman ideal is him shedding off old, collective
morals and adopting new ones – or creating his own.
This moral transformation is a testament to independent thinking and self-command that
lie at the basis of his ascent to power.
Instead of turning the other cheek, Walt physically attacks his son’s bullies in the clothing
store.
Instead of presenting himself as meek and timid, he begins to assert himself and stand
up against tragedies.
Instead of refraining from killing – considerably one of the worst crimes from a general moral
perspective – Walt reluctantly kills drug dealers Krazy8 and Emilio early on in the
story.
And later, he ruthlessly liquidates anyone who stands in his way to the top.
Walt also employs revenge instead of (quote-unquote) “weaker” morals like acceptance or forgiveness
when dealing with his enemies Gretchen and Elliot.
He isn’t shy from using deceit and manipulation to reach his goals and replaces his humbleness
for pride as he wants the world to feel the impact of his activities, ingenuity, and skill.
Nietzsche stated:
“What is good?
All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.
What is bad?
All that is born of weakness.
What is happiness?
The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.”
End quote.
Driven by the will-to-power, Walt intends to establish himself in the world, make his
presence known, and exploit his brilliance by creating the purest meth ever produced
in the region.
Unlike the mediocre, docile existence he lived before, his life under the pseudonym Heisenberg
allows him to use his intelligence to serve a more fulfilling purpose.
Aside from producing meth, he applies his genius in various ways, from using ricin as
poison to using a giant magnet to wipe off evidence from Gus Fring’s laptop and stealing
methylamine from a train.
Walt’s longing for power becomes more apparent when he tells Jesse he isn’t in the meth
business but the “empire business.”
After his most prominent opponents, Gus Fring and the Salamanca’s, have been wiped off
the map, he proudly exclaims to his wife: “I won.”
Wrap up
With his activities, Walter White sows death and destruction.
From a traditional moral perspective, he turned “bad” – he became evil – and unsurprisingly
became one of the most wanted criminals in the country.
However, his transformation into Heisenberg generated psychological and physical benefits:
he felt better, happier, and in control, his libido returned, and his cancer went into
remission.
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy,” stated Nietzsche.
At the end of the series, Skyler asks Walt why he did what he did.
Instead of repeating his mantra (saying he selflessly did it all for the family), he
finally makes his true intentions known.
I quote:
“I did it for me.
I liked it.
I was good at it.
And, I was really…I was alive.”
Thank you for watching.