The Rowboat Painting

This post is deticated to one of my favorite examples of the symbolism in subtle things in Breaking Bad.

The rowboat painting first appeared when Walt was in the hospital after devising a plan to fool his peers and loved ones into thinking that dehydration and heat exhaustion caused him to blackout and end up naked passed out in a supermarket. In reality, Walt had thinly escaped death and even more thinly escaped being caught by his brother in law DEA agent, Hank. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING in Breaking Bad is done by accident. Walt stares deeply into the painting with no emotion at all, a painting which shows a man, alone, rowing away from his family into the abyss, if you will. We see the painting again during the first meeting between Walt and Uncle Jack. Lets start with the painting itself, in my interpretation, the painting theoretically resembles Walters journey farther and farther into "bad". When we first see it, Walt is first leaving shore, lying to his family and friends, barely escaping death, starting to go into the deep. By the time you see it again, many murders and unspeakable acts later, Walt is attempting to organize the murder of 10 men, all without showing one bit of remorse. Showing the painting yet again means a lot. My interpretation: this is it. Once Walter commits these murders, there is absolutely no turning back. We saw it before, Walt was just getting started. We see it now, Walt's family that he was drifting from at this point in time are simply hostages in his meth empire. The painting is also showing the significance of Jack, who would successfully organize the prison murders and end up murdering Hank in the future at gunpoint.