It was the best of chemists, it was the worst of chemists, it was the age of purity, it was the age of danger, it was the epoch of protection, it was the epoch of provision, it was the season of anonymity, it was the season of infamy, we had nothing before us, we had everything before us.
In the land of enchantment called New Mexico, a baby named Walter Hartwell White entered this world in 1959. Born to a strict father who died when Walt was six, young Walt was raised in humble means, sharing a bed with his younger brother. Though mere pocket change was all the boys had between them, Walt's brilliant mind held riches that could not be measured in dollars and cents.
His talents emerged early in the field of science. Walt's skills crystallized in high school chemistry where he dazzled his teacher by building a vacuum tube to produce waves of mercury vapor. His future seemed assured when he met classmate Gretchen Schwartz who shared Walt's passion for chemical inquiry. Their bond was forged over hours in the school lab analyzing compounds and dynamics.
Walt's promise carried him to graduate school in California where he moved with Gretchen to further plumb the mysteries of the physical world. Though from disparate stock - Walt's father a rugged outdoorsman, Gretchen's wealthy and refined - Walt and Gretchen found common cause in their academic ambitions and affections. A proposal seemed imminent as crystalline as their rising careers.
However, prideful doubts undermined Walt's plans. On a holiday visit home, Gretchen bonded more with Walt's family than Walt could bear. Further talk of her family's contribution to launch their laboratory drove Walt suddenly to abandon Gretchen and their future, fleeing without warning or goodbye. Back in New Mexico, Walt turned down more prestigious job offers to teach high school chemistry.
In his classroom Walt discovered his true calling mentoring students like Jesse Pinkman, who, though struggling, revealed aptitude in chemistry. Sadly, Pinkman would not follow Walt's path to higher education. Meanwhile, Walt settled down with Skyler, his bookkeeper wife who supported his modest teaching income and grew concerned by Walt's lack of worldly ambition.
Cancer soon shattered Walt's comfortable existence. With bills mounting and infant daughter Holly to provide for, Walt's diagnosis with inoperable lung cancer made his humble life insurance policy inadequately lean. Combining desperation and chemical credentials, Walt plotted an audacious scheme with Jesse Pinkman to cook methamphetamine for cash, assured his purity would stand out in the drug market.
The dividends were immediate but the danger soared. Cooking in Winnebagos and basements, Walt adopted the alias Heisenberg as he dodged drug lords and DEA to rake in mountains of crystal blue meth money. As clients multiplied, Walt convinced himself he acted not from greed but the need to provide for family, though the moral corrosion had commenced.
Soon Walt expanded from meth cook to drug kingpin by building a network. He enlisted lawyer Saul Goodman, nerveless assassin Mike, and others to distribute internationally, eluding the law with silver tongue and golden gun. His mastery of science gave cover and advantage at every turn outfoxing rivals young and old. But at home, secrets and lies alienated wife Skyler and son Walter Jr.
Empire spawns enemies. Walt soon stood opposed by cartels, former associates and his DEA brother in law Hank. Complications compounded when Jesse Pinkman, recognizing the merciless monster his old teacher had become, turned conscience-stricken informant against Walt. Inevitably the bloodshed overflowed until no relationship or outlaw bond remained unbroken.
Having turned 52, Walt surveyed the chemical wasteland his sinister alter ego Heisenberg had sowed. Where once family nurtured his heart, now only money piles soothed his ego. Lonely were the days when honor and love shone above dark impulses. Greed had metastasized in Walt’s breast. But the cancer recurred in his lung forcing a reckoning.
In his last redemptive act, Walt used his cunning and chemistry savvy to rescue Jesse from neo-Nazi captors, killing them with an M60 rigged in his trunk. No longer would Jesse be enslaved cooking meth. Free but shattered, Jesse drove into the night as the police arrived at the Nazi compound. Walter White, his life ebbing fast, smiled faintly before collapsing onto the meth lab floor. The game had ended. Chemistry’s king was dead.
In fifty-two years, Walter White traveled the spectrum between virtue and vice, from gifted teacher to meth emperor. His moral descent paralleled his rise in the underworld, which he justified as a means to provide for those he loved. But Walt's story distills a clearer chemical truth - that power into which we tap, though it promises fortune, often yields only corruption. Such is the lesson of the tragic antihero Walter White.
