Walter White: Breaking Traditional Views

Walter White from the hit television show “Breaking Bad” is an unusual character. To give a little background, Walter White was once a very promising chemist, co-founding a multi-billion dollar company. For personal reasons, White sells his portion of the company and becomes a chemistry teacher at the local high school, as well as working part-time at a car wash for extra money. White starts becoming more and more ill, until he caves and goes to the doctor, where he is diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. He is given only a small time to live and wants to make sure that his family is not left without any money, on top of having to pay all of his medical bills. His wife, Skylar, is pregnant with their second child, and they have a son, Walter Jr., in high school that has cerebral palsy. His brother-in-law, Hank, is a DEA agent.
After a ride along to a drug bust of methamphetamine dealers, Walter became amazed at how much money these dealers have the potential to make. Since he was already trying to find more ways to make money, he decides to team up with a former student, Jesse, and put his chemistry expertise to the test. Methamphetamine becomes his top and seemingly only priority. Although he may seem like nothing more than a humble chemistry teacher to everyone else, and may even appear docile, he is everything but that as the show rolls through the sixty two episodes.
Walter spends his days lying to everyone around him. He quits his job at the carwash without telling his wife and family, and instead of going to work in the afternoons, he begins cooking methamphetamine in a recreational vehicle with Jesse, which was stolen by Jesse’s friend. White’s wife becomes suspicious of his strange behavior, and proceeds to question Wa...

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...e and not stable, based on the situation. When thinking about what Mr. White has gone through, and what he has done, many would say that he is high in this category, meaning he is distressed, nervous, and has low self-esteem. In other words, he may seem weak to some. On the other hand, he can appear to be calm, relaxed, and cocky. His power gets to his head and makes him feel invincible, leading to this display of behavior.
As we can see from this analysis, Walter White is someone who does fit the typical stereotype of the everyday family man who teaches high school chemistry. Walter White demonstrates the following traits: openness, conscientiousness, disagreeableness, introversion, and some neuroticism. This can all be seen through the trait approach.

Works Cited

(2010). The Big Five. In J. M. Burger, Personality (pp. 159-162). Belmont: Cenage Learning, Inc.