Save Walter White! The desperate old man has stage four lung cancer and his doctors won't accept the insurance provided by his poor job as a high school teacher. What a sad soul with such a devastating and predestined deadline. Wrong! Walter White was no more a victim of cancer than a cat is a dog. Indeed, White's death sentence was the greatest gain of all: the one every drug kingpin wants and needs to ascertain. He did not fear death. White's cancer awakened him from the tasteless coma that called his life. Over the course of the series, Walter White appears to be in decline and on his way to being silenced. It seems to viewers that it is only a matter of time before cancer takes the long-worn Walter White to the grave; however, this has never been the case. Indeed, while every fan was struck with sympathy for his plight, Walter White was just on his way. Vince Gilligan and his fellow Breaking Bad writers never intended for the chaos-wreaking disease to weaken or destroy Walter White. Instead, they decided to use something that is infamous in the real world for consuming man unconditionally to build Heisenburg's monstrous drug empire. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the pilot episode of the series, White comments to Jesse Pinkmen that cancer woke him up. A Fox News 411 article touched on this issue; it read: “Walt's terminal cancer diagnosis was not so much a death sentence as a reminder to live. It turns out that Walter White's bucket list included things a little darker than skydiving or seeing the Eifel Tower. This phenomenon may have been apparent to many viewers, but it was never directly addressed in the series. White begins to “do poorly” shortly after receiving his cancer diagnosis. A nerdy science teacher known to all as the chemistry geek, Walter White is a man who would most likely be last on the list of possible drug lords, yet he quickly dives into the world of crime and street violence. One can imagine the courage it would take for a high school chemistry teacher to start committing crimes on a regular basis, but even more courageous was Walter White's remarkable lack of hesitation in diving headfirst into a universe that was no more familiar to him than any another American doing it. not making a living making the hardest synthetic drug on the planet. The cancer diagnosis he received symbolized a wake-up call, a sign that he would start his life before it ended. It is not scandalous to say that without ever suffering from this terminal illness, Walter White would have lived many happy years with his family until his death from natural causes. His diagnosis led him to really take a step back and analyze his life, as anyone would who could clearly see the sand in their hourglass diminishing. Once his rational mind juggled the intangible future and weighed his burdensome illness, it became clear to Walter that leaving his debt-choked family on the off-chance of not entering remission had proven imprudent and reckless. Instead of following the normal path of many cancer patients before him, White began using his brilliant mind to create the greatest methamphetamine ever abused by addicts. This decision formed the basis of a ladder with rungs that lead to infamy. Walt's awakening allowed him to overcome his fear of death. Shortly after the "breaking bad" ofWalt, we start to see him branch out and do things that seem crazy to the viewer. Walt starts doing things in a way that suggests he really is a daredevil at heart. The first real example the audience sees of this is the scene in drug kingpin Tuco's office. Walter walks into what should have seemed like a dangerous trap and manages to pull off the most Rambo-like thing possible. This example is just the first of hundreds that will follow this season. Walt's rational mind convinced him that he had no reason to fear death. In his head he was already a dead man with the clock ticking. It was only a matter of time before the cancer put him to rest. Walter slowly loses connection with his old self through these actions. His mental immortality gave him the courage to do the things necessary to be a drug lord. He began to learn to develop his new identity by imitating the fearless characteristics of Tuco and Gustavo Fring. White saw how feverishly they wanted control and how “courageously” they acted as if they never thought they might be killed or captured. Walt soon understood the cruel nature of all drug lords, regardless of their professional and non-professional business operations. Heisenburg evolved from this. A simple mathematical equation can explain these things: Walter White plus no fear of death equals Heisenburg. Walt soon learned that he could indeed live as if he were immortal. Death no longer rattled the boots of a man who had to look death in the eye every day as he underwent intense chemotherapy treatments and dealt with the stress of lying to his family. Without a cancer diagnosis, White would never have found the courage to overcome those who stood in his way or, in more poignant words, put a bullet in those who stood in his way. His immortality is responsible for his drug empire. Once he gained this new confidence, the old Walter White no longer existed, and simply became Walter's body filled with the soul of a dead man. It is evident throughout the series that author Vince Gilligan never intended for Walter White to die as a victim of cancer. He makes this more apparent when he introduces Walter's terminal cancer diagnosis in the first series. If Gilligan had wanted his main character's death to be from cancer, he would not have presented the evidence of the diagnosis so directly and directly. An author aware of his target audience knows that it would be impossible to sustain the life of a dying man with stage 4 cancer for multiple seasons of a hit television show. Mirroring the good guy-conquering-evil archetype in every hero story, this not-so-good guy will eventually overcome his cancer. I believe the cancer diagnosis was intended to do exactly what it did: give Walter virtual immortality. He serves no purpose in the series other than to telegraph Walter White's life. Cancer brings his family closer, but only to hide the horrible things Heisenburg was doing in the background. This unfortunately includes money laundering through his son's "Save Walter White" website, which ultimately destroys the family even more. Walter's cancer is the catalyst for all seasons of "Breaking Bad." The drug making, killing, lying, and nailing of the King were the direct result of Walter White and his lack of a natural fear of death. I believe Gilligan knew all of these things before each episode of “Breaking Bad” was created and aired. He intentionally gave Cancer to the protagonist because he knew it would be exactly what he needed to fall.