Robert Merton's Strain Theory In No Country For Old Men

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The movie No Country for Old Men is set in 1980 Del Rio, Texas, and is about a man, Llewelyn Moss, that discovers a satchel of money in the desert from a drug deal gone wrong. Another man, Anton Chigurh, kills practically everyone he meets, and is hired to retrieve the money. Moss does all he can to try and keep this money, only to be killed in the end by another group of Mexican drug dealers. The character of Llewelyn Moss is an example of Robert Merton’s Strain Theory, how a person is prone to deviance if they don’t have access to socially acceptable goals. There are five different forms of this theory, with two being represented by Llewelyn Moss, conformity and innovation. Inferring from the setting of this movie, the socially acceptable goals of the time were more than likely for a man to settle down and provide for his family. Moss attempts this conformity for as long as he can, until a better opportunity, the money, comes along. He decides that his current life isn’t enough for him, and attempts to innovate to raise his status in life. Unfortunately for Moss, he gets randomly killed by a separate party for the money, coinciding with the basis of Merton’s theory, that crime serves as a way to enforce these …show more content…

Throughout this movie, Llewelyn sees Mexican cartels innovating and elevating their status through the illegal means of trading narcotics. He feels no qualms about taking this money because of its previous owners didn’t really earn it. However, as the events unfold, he becomes more and more desperate to escape the mercenary and keep the money. He forces his wife to abandon their property and what she couldn’t carry to go to her mother’s, he endures getting shot at multiple times. Ultimately he’s killed by a different gang for the money, and his wife is killed just on the principle that he tried to escape the

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