No Country for Old Men

Curtisha Jones

English 1301

Dr. E. Childs

08 December 2012

It’s Your Choice

Choices…. We all have them.  In the movie No Country for Old Men, we see greed, bad choices and consequences for some of the bad choices.  Llewellyn Moss had a choice from the beginning of the movie to the end.  What is the thought process behind people making bad decisions?  Some would argue that there is a medical issue or a chemical imbalance in the brain such as depression to trigger these actions.

            From the beginning Moss had a decision to make.  As he was on the mountain, he spotted an antelope.  He shot to kill, but did not succeed.  In disbelief, he left the mountain top and followed a trail of blood to hopefully finish the job of killing the antelope.  Instead he stumbled upon what appeared to be a drug deal gone terribly wrong.  There were dead, decomposing bodies everywhere; not to mention a dead dog as well.  At this point Llewellyn had a decision to leave the scene to go get help for a man who was shot, but was still (at the time) alive.  Instead he saw an opportunity.  The movie suggests that Moss knew there had to be one man remaining who has possibly ran off with the money.  Once he spotted the last man standing, Moss made his first of many bad choices.

            Moss made a choice to take the money.  He did not know the consequences of his actions.  What makes people make bad choices?   To determine what leads people to make bad decisions, it’s helpful to consider what we would need to create the ideal decision-making environment.  Most theories on decision-making are made on what the so-called “rational” decision-maker will do when faced with perfect information including a complete and total knowledge of all possible outcomes with absolutely no uncertainty.  Moss did not have any information.   If he had information on where the money came from, and who would possibly be looking for the money and not to mention if the satchel contained anything that could trace it back to him.  He did not think twice about taking the money.  As Huebscher mentioned, “most of our poor-decision making stems from the subconscious ways we trick our brains to make choices that we later realize are complete wrong.”

            A study conducted by researchers at University College London reveals that making a difficult decision can result in poor decisions and could be associated with depression. Could Llewelyn Moss been depressed?  He was a Vietnam War veteran who lives in a poor-looking trailer park home, with a wife who works at Wal-Mart.  Maybe he felt he deserved better and taking the money was his opportunity to live like he wanted to live.  In an article from the General Medical and Health Lab, it states that we are in a mad rush for achieving success in the shortest possible time even if it means resorting to means that are not exactly honest and fair.

         Bad information or no information at all can lead to bad choices, too.  Before you compare the options available, you must make another decision: where to see the information you desire.  A wrong choice here will lead to a bad choice when it comes time to make the decision before you.  And if you're confronted with too many options and too many choiuces, your brain overheates, and you lose the ability to ssift and analyze only the information that's helpful.  Is it possible to fight your own worst instincts? Only if you can spot these flaws in your decision making process.  But first, you'd have to make a the good decision to look for them.