Analysis

Analysis: Breaking Bad

What would you do for your family? In the TV show Walter white does some pretty awful things for is family. If you do not know the show, it is about a man who is diagnosed with stage three-lung cancer. Being a high school chemistry teacher (though you later find out that he is a genus) he does not have very good insurance and doesn't make the salary for treatment. He realizes this, so he wants to make money for his family to live off of when he passes. So he goes into the manufacturing of crystal meth. There is more detail than this but that is for later. What this television show conveys is that family comes above all else, that greed will eventually take hold of the good motives, and that a good man can easily become a bad one.

During the first season, Walt is shown as a family man and a loving husband and father. So he does what he needs to help his family when he is diagnosed with cancer. This is the production of meth. Walt does this for his family so it is a noble cause. This gives the viewer an idea that family is the most important thing. Some people do not have a family per say but the message stays the same. Instead of laying around feeling sorry for himself, Walt decides to act to give his family what they need. Family is indeed what is most important to him. Family is what makes him do the things he does. A main plot point throughout the whole of the series is that family is what drove Walter and what eventually led to his downfall.

The idea of family being behind Walts downfall is also just as crucial to his success. When he and his wife got a divorce, he started going into a downward spiral. This included shooting and killing people and trying to kill his boss. In a way this is an analogy of the broken home. Walt goes into his low point when he and his family get torn apart. The message of that would be that a broken home leads to his downfall. Yet through all this he still provides money to his family.  So this could convey the message of loving your family even though they don't feel the same. So Walt shows is that family is his life and that he would do anything for it. This drove Walt to do things that he thought he was never capable of.

The next theme that this television show conveys is that greed will eventually take hold of even the purest motives. Like stated earlier, family was Walts main motive to begin with. But after he sees how much money he begins to rake in, he becomes very greedy. In most cases he nickels and dimes people. In one instance a junkie robbed on of his dealers. Walt wants his partner to find that junkie and get his money by any means necessary. His partner explains that this was just a menial fraction of the whole profit. This conveys the theme that greed overcame his desire to help his family. Later in the series he starts getting more and more money, but doesn’t help his family. He starts to separate from them and eventually they have nothing to do with him. Greed overcame him in the since that he could have stopped making meth when he hit a million dollars (which would have been plenty to live off of) he kept making meth and digging his hole deeper. He thought he could fill the void of his family not being there with the money. He realizes that it could never fill that hole that his family had left. He was to late to get them back. Greed made him become a ruthless drug lord that had no sympathy or empathy for anyone. He even turns on his own partner multiple times in the series. So in a way he turns on his own family and friends because of his greed and lust for more money is a strong message. So this idea that greed can blacken the even most pure of motives is a strong theme throughout this whole entire series.

In the whole scheme of the show the last two themes can be easily identified, his love for his family and his greed spoiling his good motives, but this next theme is also a very apparent one. Greed is one of the many things that Walt was guilty of. But in the beginning of the series he is shown as a loving father. How can a good man become an evil drug lord? This idea of good man turning into an evil person is a main theme throughout the show. Not only was he greedy, He also developed a bad lying habit. At the start it was to keep his wife from knowing the truth so she wouldn’t worry about where the money is coming from. When she eventually catches the partner, Walt lies about what he and his partner have been doing. So he just keeps building and building this tower of lies. Which eventually comes crumbling back to earth. So on top of the lies Walt also is only out for his own self-glory. In one instance, he doesn’t want to lander the money so it looks clean; instead he wants his family to know that he provided for them. So not only does he go from being a good man to a greedy man, he becomes a liar and he also becomes vain.

Breaking bad shows that a good man can turn into an evil one, it shows how greed can overtake someone, and it shows that family comes above all else. These are just some of the main themes running through the whole series, there are many more and many in just each individual episode. Breaking Bad shows the length in which one would go to provide for his family even through the hard times. This shows the drastic measures of which one would go to help his family. What would you do for yours?

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Giligan, Vince. Breaking Bad. Dir. Michelle MacLaren. FX. 20 Jan. 2008. Television.

Response

Response: Hope

What is hope? Hope maybe more of a question rather than an answer. People are always so strange in the way they look at the world. Why do people look at the world like they do? Hope seems to protrude through everything we do, but it never seems nailed down to a specific thing. Some people in other parts of the world look like they have no hope. But do they really have hope? If they do why do they hope? Do they hope that their life will somehow turn around and become something that is not so miserable? Do they hope for some kind of savior to save them from the place in which they dwell? Regardless of what your religion or non-religion is, these are questions that seem to be unanswerable.

It is up to what the perception of the beholder is. Do people that view the world from an evolutionary standpoint have hope? Do people who have a god have hope? Is this why they are at each other’s throats constantly?   If you look on the news you see people constantly fighting each other about what is fact and what is fiction. Why can’t we hope to live in peace? If people would stick to what they believe instead of force feeding it through the throats of school children and let the people believe what they want to believe. If people all hope for something, shouldn’t they be helping each other instead of trying to make them choose a side? People are constantly saying that you should believe this or believe that. How do we know what to believe? How do we know what to hope for. Maybe people are at each others throats because they think that it will make the other loose hope and they will win the argument. Do they want to make the other side lose hope? If the human race is hoping for each other to lose hope, why are we even hoping?

But getting away from the religious part of it.  Why is hope so evident in the ones who seem like they should have none? Go into a hospital and people will be full of hope. Why is that? Maybe its because they feel that they can change they feel. Or maybe because they feel like it’s the only option they have. They feel as if they are in control of it and that if they tell their brain that they are hoping to get better it will magically happen.  Can you use hope to cure a disease? Can it be the cure to something that we do not know about? If hope is a cure to a disease, can you measure it? Can you measure if hope is working or not? If you look in cards at the store they say, “I hope you get well soon. Why is that? Is hope some kind of prayer to a god that exists? That is a strange idea to think about. Why do we throw this word around as a way to save face? If you truly cared about them wouldn’t you do more than hope?  Some people just view hope as a way to cope. If there loved one is sick and all they do is hope, they feel as if they are doing all they can. In some cases this maybe true. But in most instances it is not. In most instances they can love the person and care for them. Are those just synonyms with hope?

            People who are sick hope, but what about everyone else. Do people have a choice about hoping for something? Can people not hope?  This is a strange question that doesn’t seem to answer itself. People sometimes say that the world is a hopeless place. Does that mean people in the world do not hope? People all hope for something at one point or anther. If you turn in a paper to a teacher and you hope to get a good grade, is that hope or just some form of well wishing? Or is hope just some form of lust? If people hope to get newest car with the next paycheck, or hope they get a bb gun for Christmas, is that truly hope? Or is it just lust disguised as hope? Hope looks like lust in some cases but it tends not to be viewed as that way.  Could hope just be lust that has a nice ring to it? If that is true then why are we hoping for things to happen? Isn’t that just a form of lusting?  Greed is also synonymous with lust, so if we hope are we just being greedy?

            Why do people even hope in the first place?  Is it a way to escape the real world? Hope gives people that feeling of satisfaction or the feeling that they have mad a difference. Can we hope for bad things? If people are getting bullied at school and they hope they bully will pay for what he has done, is that not a form of bullying itself? Can hope have a negative connotation? Look at the way people phrase hope sometimes “I hope you die,” or “I hope you pay for what you’ve done.” And then something bad does happen. Is that just a product of chance or did your hope magically cast judgment on them. In this case hope seems to have a bad taste right? But is a good thing in the eye of the beholder. Is hope one of those things that is neutral and can be either good or bad?

            Hope can be viewed as a wonderful blessing or a curse. It is the way that the person chooses to view it. Why do we hope? What is hope exactly? Those are questions that people will probably never know. Should people ever lose hope? Can a person hope in a hopeless world? These are two questions that people will have to answer themselves.