“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.” — Winston S. Churchill.
SPOILERS AHEAD
One of the most dominant motives in storytelling is one’s love for family. From Hamlet to The Lion King, The Ballad of Mulan to Interstellar, we’ve been crafting stories that explore the sacrifices we make for our parents, partners, and children. Most of them are motivating and invigorating, inspiring us to emulate the heroes or heroines’ determination to set sail on a perilous journey for nothing and nobody but our loved ones.
While in quarantine, I picked up Breaking Bad where I left it a year ago, towards the end of season three (I know, I’m seven years late). After finishing what is now my favorite show of all time, I became more ambivalent in regard to that journey. To save money for his family, Walter White (or Heisenberg) commits ruthless crimes and callously manipulates his allies. He killed, he threatened, and he became, as most would say, an inhumane, cold-blooded monster in the last few episodes of the show.
As I witnessed his fall and as the perfectly fitting song Baby Blue played in the last episode, I fixed my eyes on his face, stunned by what he was able to pull off, the length to which he went for his family (he’s also an ego, I’ll get to that later). This is a man who simply does not give up and has all the determination in the world to earn as much money as he can for his family.
But dissecting Walter White alone is redundant; too many people have dissected this character from the inside out. In this blog, I want to involve another character, and if there’s any other parent from my personal volume of novels, films, and shows who goes as far as Walter White, it’d be Keller Dover from Denis Villeneuve’s 2013 masterpiece Prisoners.
(For those who have yet to see this amazingly crafted thriller, I highly suggest you do, ideally before reading this blog. Spoilers ahead.)
Before celebrating Thanksgiving with another family, Dover’s daughter goes missing. A hunting enthusiast, impulsive father, and often humorous but always wary man, Dover risks everything to find his daughter. Throughout his journey, he secretly imprisons and tortures an intellectually challenged suspect, plays hide and seek with a detective investigating this very case, and just risks everything to try to find his daughter, even after being shown police scans of one of her socks.
To me, there are similarities between the two characters, but also important differences that distinguish the two. Let’s start with the similar.
It’s quite obvious that both men do what they do to better their families. For White, a man with terminal cancer, a less than ordinary and often bullied chemistry teacher, and a car washer, he knows that to provide for his family when he dies, he needs to change the status quo. He must take drastic steps to change his mundane job, somehow, and turn his life around before it’s too late — — through whatever means the end requires.
For Dover, it’s for the same reason: to somehow make progress and change the fact that his daughter is out there somewhere waiting for her father. He wants to reunite with her, through whatever means the end requires.
And they do, indeed, commit some horrific crimes trying to accomplish their goals. White commits his first and far from last murder in the very first episode. From there, he goes as far as to plant a bomb in Hector Salamanca’s wheelchair to kill Gustavo Fring and to order the murder of ten men in prison in less than three minutes without feeling remorse.
Dover also shows no mercy to Paul Dano’s Alex Jones, the mentally challenged suspect whom Dover tortures to near death. From punches to spraying near-boiling hot water, he wants Jones to admit that he was the one who abducted Dover’s daughter. As we the audience witness these actions on screen, we feel empathy even if their actions are ruthless. But since we know exactly how ruthless those actions are, the question we keep asking ourselves is: does the end justify the means?
That’s where I think one critical difference between White and Dover is on full display. While their means are comparably horrendous, their ends are not quite the same. Dover’s one and only goal throughout the story is to find his daughter. Nothing else. No back story, no past traumas. In a story world characterized by trauma from the loss of family, Dover is just another victim of those who wanted to wage a “war on God.” He took it a step further, but he still is just a man trying to see his daughter again.
White, however, is one of the most complex and dynamic characters in television history. When he first sets sail on the journey to meth production, I’d say that 99.1% (haha get it) of his motivation to involve in meth production stems from his health condition, with the rest from the belief that this path can potentially become the thing he can excel at and have control over. When we see him reject a huge financial offer from his former partners at Dark Matter, we know that he is an ego who can’t let go of his pride; the offer can totally help sustain the family’s future long after his death, but he chooses to take on that task himself. As the story progresses, his ego only takes more control of his decisions, rather than his determination to provide for his family.
Here, many of you reading might think that I’m one of those “he did it for himself” people and not “he did it for his family” ones. I’m here to say that I’m neither.
To me, the dichotomy of family versus pride doesn’t quite hit the mark. I would like to argue that he only has one singular motivation: to be a capable man.
That includes running, as he calls it in season 5, a drug empire. That includes having vigilance, courage, and intelligence to kill the biggest drug kingpin. That also includes being able to protect his family from the danger of this business and to provide for them, ALL THE WHILE running an illegal, drug business. But this strive to become the “capable man” doesn’t downgrade his love for family. That’s clearly shown when he is willing to give up all he has been working towards to save Hank from Jack and his people. His definition of capability is to be able to handle all of this mess perfectly and without endangering anyone he cares about. That’s his true ego.
Both Dover and White ends up in a worse place than they hoped. Dover is buried barely able to breathe, while White gives a small portion of what he worked for and dies in the place he most felt alive. Neither accomplished what they intended to.
“A man provides, even if he’s not appreciated.”
I think this quote from Gus Fring best conveys what I’m trying to say. In the case of Dover, this quote somewhat applies. He “provides” by devoting his time and energy entirely to the search for his daughter. He is somewhat appreciated, but the detective suspects him, his wife disagrees with his approach, and he also loses it with his son. He is not appreciated, but he does what he does to save his daughter.
In the case of White, this quote applies almost perfectly. In the end, no one appreciates or even understands him, not even his own son, with whom he has been the closest. But he still tries his best to deliver the money he has with him to his son and Skyler, his wife. Though for this quote to work perfectly, we need to expand the definition of “provide”. Besides his family and perhaps more so, he provides for himself. He provides for the lie that one man can handle so much without endangering his family.
While the two characters have much in common, they also differ in compelling ways. But above all else, their determination to help their families makes them great characters in great stories, and that drive is what draws the connection between Dover, White, and most importantly, us. So the question must be asked:
How far would you go for your family?
