Twelve angry men is a play about twelve jurors who have to decide if the defendant is guilty of murdering his father, the play consist of many themes including prejudice, intolerance, justice , and courage. The play begins with a judge explaining to the jurors their job and how in order for the boy to be sent to death the vote must be unanimous. The jurors are then locked into a small room on a hot summer day. At first, it seems as though the verdict is obvious until juror eight decides to vote not guilty. From that moment on, the characters begin to show their true colors. Some of the characters appear to be biased and prejudice while others just want justice and the truth. Twelve Angry Men Despite many of the negative qualities we see …show more content…
The first vote ended with eleven men voting guilty and one man not guilty. We soon learn that several of the men voted guilty since the boy had a rough background not because of the facts they were presented with. Although numerous jurors did make racist or prejudice comments, juror ten and juror three seemed to be especially judgmental of certain types of people. Juror three happened to be intolerant of young men and stereotyped them due to an incident that happened to his son. In addition, the third juror began to become somewhat emotional talking about his son, showing his past experience may cloud his judgment. Juror ten who considered all people from the slums “those people” was clearly prejudiced against people from a different social background. Also, Juror ten stated in the beginning of the play “You 're not going to tell us that we 're supposed to believe that kid, knowing what he is. Listen, I 've lived among 'em all my life. You can 't believe a word they say. I mean, they 're born liars.” Juror ten did not respect people from the slums and believed them to all act the same. As a result, Juror ten believed that listening to the facts of the case were pointless. For this reason, the tenth juror already knew how “those people” acted and knew for sure the boy was not innocent. Even juror four mentioned just how the slums are a “breeding ground …show more content…
Despite knowing how angry the other men would be at him, the 8th juror stood up for the defendant and did what he could to make sure the boy had a fair trial. From the beginning, Juror eight was clearly confident in what he believed in and did not care about how foolish he looked. The confidence he showed brought the other jurors to rethink their vote. Juror nine was the first person to recognize the amount of courage it took for juror eight to stand up against the men. After being the first to change his vote nine explains “This gentleman chose to stand alone against us. That’s his right. It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone even if you believe in something very strongly. He left the verdict up to us. He gambled for support and I gave it to him. I want to hear more. The vote is ten to two.” The 9th juror agreed with the eight juror about wanting justice. By standing up for justice he gave nine the courage to stand up for the same reason. Juror eight continued to be consistent with what he believed in. Never did he
As a juror in any court case it would be difficult to come to one conclusion with twelve different opinions. The fictional play Twelve Angry Men proved this to be true, however, the jurors in the Sandusky trial found it relatively easy to decide on a verdict. Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State assistant football coach and founder of the 2nd Mile charity, was convicted of fifty-two accounts of child molestation. Although members of the jury would like to discuss every aspect of the case, in the end, convicting Sandusky guilty would be a simple task.
By the end of the movie, Juror Eight summoned the courage to oppose all the rest in the room and force all of them to check their intuitions multiple times.
The movie, 12 Angry Men is about twelve white men deciding the jail sentence of an 18-year old boy who has allegedly committed murder by stabbing his father. The men must decide if the boy is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt awaiting a death sentence by electric chair. The first scene of the movie is the jurors waling into one room and Juror number 1(foreman) is seen leader of the deliberation. He tells the jurors to gather around a table and explains that the goal of the deliberation is to vote on the sentence of a boy’s guiltiness and innocence. After no deliberation at first, everyone quickly unanimously votes guilty. Everyone except one juror; who explains the reason why he couldn’t cast his vote guilty was because he couldn’t decide such
Ever wonder why the play “Twelve Angry Men” is such a good classic. It’s because prejudice is the major plot. and everyone has to go through prejudice in their lives from their backstory and preferences and go with their gut that is only based on opinion. And quite frankly that’s how this play’s conflicts appear and get solved by being unbiased and using empathy.
Jury service is an important civic duty that every citizen of the United States will ever perform. Legal knowledge or education is not required to perform the duty; all that is asked is that you keep an open mind, free of any preconceived ideas, personal bias or prejudices when presented with a case. In the 1957 movie 12 Angry Men, the jury consists of twelve white-males who are judging whether or not a young Puerto Rican boy from the slums stabbed his father to death. From the beginning of the film, all the jurors except one¬, Juror number 8, are convinced of the young boy’s guilt simply because of his social economic background. Although, the young boy was destined to be guilty from the start, the decision of Juror number 8 to not conform influenced the remaining jurors to objectively review the evidence, changing the minority vote of not guilty to become the majority.
There are many issues with the jurors in a case having a preconceived opinion of a certain group of people or about the suspect or the crime itself. The people whose lives are at stake will, as a result, not receive a fair hearing. This is a serious obstacle in issuing the proper punishments or deciding whether a suspect is innocent or guilty in a case. In the most serious cases, someone could be unrightfully pegged as guilty or an extremely dangerous criminal could be released without any consequence, and the ability to repeat the exact same crime. The short play, 12 Angry Men, by Reginald Rose, was set in the late summer of 1954 and focuses on twelve jurors arguing whether a boy murdered his own father. At the start, the vote is 11-1, the
We hear many discuss how the case is open and shut, preconceived notions about the accused and that more than one juror wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. The first vote for a verdict is taken and while some hesitate to raise their hand, all but one votes guilty. Davis is the only one to raise his hand for not guilty. When men question, make a few snide comments and ask if he really believes he’s not guilty he simply states, “ I don’t know.” In the conversation that follows he admits it wasn’t easy to raise his hand for not guilty but it’s not easy to send the boy off to die without talking about it. He further states to juror #7 I am not trying to change your mind. This is an excellent choice of words that in many ways set the tone for everything that followed. He is not confrontational, doesn’t say I’m right and you are wrong but simply asks for a
Juror Eight was to first to fully overcome any bias and really look at the entire case with perspective. While all the other jurors voted guilty purely because the boy was raised in a slum and was Puerto Rican, Juror Eight was determined to work out the entire truth. He was willing to go against eleven other men, who were not only grumpy but quite violent, to look at the facts and compare them with other evidence. “It’s not so easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first (Pg 315),” says Juror Eight when asked why he voted not
The play shows the idea that one person can impact other’s beliefs in a group. At the start juror eight was alone in this view of the defendant as not guilty, by the end he had changed the minds of the other eleven men. It also introduces the idea that for an individual’s beliefs to be taken seriously when everyone else has a different view, he should have evidence. In this Juror eight introduced many different ideas about the evidence that would turn them into evidence of guilt instead of evidence of innocence. With each new piece of evidence he changed more minds and eventually the whole
A few of the men changed their vote and the vote went from eleven thinking guilty to now be that nine men were voting guilty. The argument from the architect showed that he was a very intelligent, caring man who believed what he thought was right and that he wouldn’t change his mind just because some of the men were growing angry at him for thinking differently. The architect even went as far as doing his own investigating on the case to check out the crime scene and playing out the facts as they were told in court. Eventually, as time goes on the architect starts getting other jurors to be on the same page as him and they too started to think harder on the
Davis (Juror #8) was an individual who cares about justice and who was willing to stand up against a crowd to do the right thing for another individual despite his mistakes. In the beginning of the movie he came off "as very soft spoken but throughout the movie he changes that. There were eleven votes for guilty. Juror 8 was the only opposing vote. Juror #8 believes that the defendant deserves a little empathy and believed that he could influenced that to the other jurors. I believe that Juror #8 was the knowledgeable juror of the 12 jurors on the case. Juror #8's arguments was not catching the attention of the other jurors
At the start of the jury deliberations, Juror #1, Martin Balsam, the amicable jury foreman, wanted to achieve the goal of keeping the jury proceedings in order. He suggested a preliminary vote and six of the jurors - numbers 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 12 - quickly put their hands up to vote “guilty”. Then due to peer pressure, jurors numbered 2, 5, 6, 9 and 11 hesitantly joined them in voting “guilty”. Only Juror # 8 opposed them stating that he was uncertain whether the defendant was guilty or not guilty - he was not convinced that the prosecution proved that the accused was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
12 Angry Men is one of the best plays I have read so far, the humor and the sense of mystery captivates readers into reading more of the play. So far, as I have finished reading Act 1 of the play the readers have learned that twelve jurors must deliberate a murder case ultimately deciding the fate of one 18 year boy to be sent to the electric chair. The trial so far has taken six days far too many for some of the impatient jurors. The evidence of guilt seems overwhelming but Juror #8 thinks otherwise he believes that maybe the boy could be innocent and votes not guilty during the first vote. At first, Juror #8 says he just wants to talk for a while about the verdict. He brings up certain details of the case that have been bothering him, but
Therefore, the conflict begins. The men agree on taking a preliminary vote, the end total was eleven guilty and one not guilty. The ending of the vote leaves the men in a conflict of convincing one man against eleven. Right of the bat Juror #3, George C. Scott, gets in a query with Juror #8, Jack Lemmon, which creates another conflict right there. We see throughout the movie that Juror #3 does not let anything go very easily, facts are facts it doesn't matter how one feels. Later they reveal his personal situations that he again “won’t let go” of, it has now become a problem in proving if the boy is guilty or not guilty.
One noticeable conflicting value is in regards to Juror #10’s value in ridding the streets of the Hispanic defendant. From the beginning, Juror #10 makes his bigotry known to the group, which makes most of the members either offended or uncomfortable. As the man repeats his ignorant belief that most people from the slums are likely to commit crimes, Juror #5, who grew up in the slums, has an obvious conflicting view of the matter and ultimately turns away from the bigotry. From this obvious stance against Juror #10, one by one each jury member begins to ignore Juror #10. While the jury members may not be able to rid Juror #10 of his bigotry, these jury members actually form an interest group in order to objectively silence and remove this conflict. From this not only does Juror #10 fall silent, but also ultimately his bias falls to the extent that he votes not