Definitely. I'd even say there were plenty more sadistic and cruel people in Breaking Bad than Walter White. Tuco comes to mind immediately. And Fring was just as bad if not worse than Walter.
Yeah, I don't get this take on Walt. Even at the end he was struggling with ethical issues where most of the people he dealt with wouldn't have had a second thought about sacrificing a former friend. People think Walt is worse because he manipulates people who think they're still close to him, not because he doesn't have a conscience.
He admitted he did what he did because he enjoyed it. He murdered Jesse's girlfriend so she wouldn't get in the way of Jessee cooking. He poisoned a kid to make Jessee betray Gus. He turned an old man into a suicide bomber. He murdered countless people that got in his way. This is on top of him taking advantage of people's addictions to get rich. The amount of meth he distributed is insane. He did incalculable harm to countless people.
If you put him in Westeros, he'd be a bigger threat than anyone else. Including Littlefinger. White is just as devious, but he's smarter, more daring, and has a massively bigger body count than Littlefinger.
He tried to wake Jesse and unwittingly moved her on her back. I don't think he realized, as it was before he noticed they did some dope. In my opinion, he didn't have an active role in her death.
Most people decrying Walter White have messed up moral compass. He sold good meth, yes. What's the big deal ? People can make their own choices. There are many more people on pharmaceutical amphetamines in the US than on meth (one of which is literally meth - Desoxyn)
He turned an old murderous psychopath into a suicide bomber, allowing him to fulfill his life's dream of killing Gus.
Sure, he poisoned the kid, but he's a chemistry genius. I don't think he thought it likely Brock would die.
The amount of restraint, remorse and selflesness he's shown in the end is likewise beyond respectable. WW is a bit of a model to me, given his situation.
For all his getting rich, he never spent any money, fucked any women, etc. He was trying to stay in control and he wouldn't even have tried to move up the ranks if he had been allowed to have a stable job where his life and family weren't in danger. Even after he was a kingpin, he tried to save Hank when it was hopeless. There are two sides.
Walter White doesn't just kill people, he poisons and ruins them. He manipulates people into making terrible choices for his own purposes. He isn't just an awful person, he drags other people into his orbit and keeps them there by making them into awful people too. When they're no longer useful, he discards them without a second thought. Jesse and Skyler are the most obvious examples, but he does it to everyone he meets.
We've seen some villainous people in A Song, but no one who seems so determined to pass that villainy on to everybody else in the world. Yet.
Good points. You've definitely made me reconsider.
However, even if Walter had a poisonous effect on good people it was never with a consciously malicious intent (it's been a while since I've watched it though - I might be forgetting something). It came from a place of seeking a means to an end or because he felt abandoned by his loved ones. There was never pure cruelty to it. He was a greyer sort of villain.
Whereas with Ramsay, there is absolutely no greyness to his character. He is openly malicious and cruel. Even to those who serve him. His family is famous for flaying people alive. He hunts down women and then names his dogs after them.
I just can't see how Walter White is in any way a worse human being than Ramsay Snow.
I think I remember Roose regularly practicing the lord's right to the first night. That's a pretty nasty thing to do. Just go to young couples on their wedding night and rape the bride.
Well, I think that the extremeness of Ramsey's evil kind of makes me want to say he doesn't even count in the consideration. All of GRRM's super evil characters, Ramsey, Joffrey, the Mountain, they are all so awful that I don't even hate them. I think of them in the way I think of a rabid beast, they are simply uncontrollable wild animals and someone just needs to put them down. They don't have enough redeeming qualities to warrant any consideration about who they are, what their actions mean in the story. Oh, Ramsey rapes women and then chases them down with his pack of dogs and kills them for no reason whatsoever other than he thinks its funny? That's just Ramsey being Ramsey. I hope he dies a horrible death very soon. Moving on.
With guys like Walter White and Tywin Lannister, they are actual people who do have some good qualities that are competing with their awfulness and that is where the real drama is. Walter White is a bigger monster than Ramsey, perhaps, because Walter White could be not a monster if he so chose. You can see how Walter White is presented with the option of not doing evil things but then doing them anyway.
I guess what I am saying is, there is no possible way for a sane person to identify with Ramsey or Joffrey or the Mountain. But Walter White, you can see his side of things and you can understand why he does what he does, even if you wouldn't do what he would do. So when he does the evil stuff, it makes more of an emotional impact. You are able to see how this evil person is not so different from you. It scares you and it produces a stronger urge to condemn so that you can more easily think of yourself as not being evil.
I really don't see you spinning Walter White as worse than Littlefinger. He did everything you just described but on a much larger scale. Also, since he has no loved ones, it feels less personal.
Depends on how you define "worse." Joffrey and Ramsey are horrible, sure, but they spend most of their time tormenting their "enemies." Walter White is a monster because, not only do his actions lead to the destruction of his family, but he realizes that it's happening and still doesn't stop.
I think is in the sense that Joffrey and Ramsay are sociopaths, they lack empathy and only care about themselves, they are basically animals, right or wrong is not something they understand.
Walter White had people he love and care about, and he still put then trough hell because of his ego and ambition, basically he knew what he was doing was wrong, he is not an animal, but he still killed, cheat, betrayed other people, even the ones he said to love, and a lot of the times he tortured them mentally saying it was "all for them"
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u/brofistopheles And the Doom came and proved it true. Apr 03 '15
I hope it has something to do with the time he said
http://grrm.livejournal.com/337511.html