Breaking down the question
The command word is “explain”, and the phrase “as propounded by R.K. Merton” fixes the framework you must use — his strain theory and its typology of adaptation. The examiner also asks for “suitable examples”, so each mode you describe must be pinned to a concrete case. In a 10-marker every sentence must earn its place; there is no room for a long preamble.
The intellectual pivot is the word “coexist”. Merton's originality was to show that conformity and deviance are not opposites belonging to different kinds of people, but responses generated by the same social structure. Both flow from the gap between culturally prescribed goals and the legitimate means available to reach them. Making that shared origin explicit is what the question is really testing.
For the fuller treatment see our note on Merton's functions and reference groups and the concept of anomie.
How to approach it
State the theory compactly: society sets universal cultural goals — in the American case, monetary success — while distributing legitimate institutional means unequally. The resulting strain produces anomie, and individuals adapt to it in patterned ways. Present the five modes of adaptation as a set, making clear that only one is fully conforming and the rest shade into deviance.
Then organise the answer around the “coexist” demand. Show that conformity (accept goals, accept means) and the deviant modes arise from the same structural pressure, differing only in how the individual is placed relative to opportunity. Attach a crisp example to each mode so the abstraction stays grounded, and close by underlining that a single social order manufactures both order and its transgression.
Model answer
Robert K. Merton's strain theory explains deviance not as individual pathology but as a normal product of social structure. Every society, he argued, holds up certain cultural goals as worthy of pursuit — in modern societies, material success above all — while also prescribing legitimate institutional means, such as education and steady work, for reaching them. When the goals are urged upon everyone but the means are distributed unequally, a strain opens up between aspiration and opportunity. This condition, which Merton borrowed and reworked from Durkheim, is anomie, and it is the source from which both conformity and deviance spring.
Merton identified five modes of individual adaptation. The conformist accepts both the cultural goals and the institutional means; this is the stance that keeps society stable — for instance, a student who works hard through legitimate education to secure a good career. Every other mode involves some deviation, yet each is generated by the very same structural strain. The innovator accepts the success goal but rejects legitimate means, turning to illegitimate ones — the entrepreneur who commits fraud, or the individual who turns to organised crime to attain wealth denied by blocked opportunity. The ritualist abandons the lofty goal but clings rigidly to the means — the low-level bureaucrat who obeys every rule while giving up on advancement. The retreatist rejects both goals and means, dropping out of the game altogether, as with chronic addicts or vagrants. The rebel rejects the existing goals and means and seeks to replace them with a new order, as revolutionaries and radical reformers do.
The force of Merton's argument lies in showing that these responses coexist because they share one root. The conformist and the innovator are not different species of person; they face the same cultural pressure to succeed and differ only in their access to legitimate means. Where opportunity is open, strain resolves into conformity; where it is blocked, the same ambition is diverted into innovation, or exhausted into ritualism and retreatism. Thus a single social structure, by broadcasting universal goals over an unequal terrain of means, simultaneously produces the law-abiding and the law-breaking. Order and deviance are two outcomes of one mechanism, which is precisely why they persist side by side in every society.
Examiner's perspective
At 10 marks the examiner wants precision and coverage, not padding. The frequent errors are omitting one of the five modes, mislabelling them, or attaching no example. List all five cleanly, each with a one-line illustration, and the descriptive half is secured.
What distinguishes a strong script is the treatment of “coexist”. Many candidates merely catalogue the adaptations; the better answer explains that conformity and the deviant modes are generated by the identical strain and differ only by position in the opportunity structure. Linking the strain back to Durkheimian anomie shows lineage, and a closing sentence that names the shared mechanism converts a list into an argument.