Nine Ten by Warren Leight

658 Words2 Pages

The major conflict in the play, Nine Ten by Warren Leight is jury duty. The first thing people think when they hear the words “jury duty” is sitting in a courthouse all day and night disagreeing whether a person is guilty or innocent. For most, the immediate thought when getting that letter out of the mailbox is that they do not have time. Their lives are full enough with running the kids to school and to after school activities. Their next thought may be, ‘but I’m going out of town soon’, just because a select few are going to jury duty does not mean that time will stand still and wait for their duty to be done. The last thing to cross most people’s mine, is that jury duty is a right, a civic duty, to allow a fellow man to speak to a member of his peers. However, just because most people dislike jury duty does not mean everyone does, some people may take great pride in deciding the fate of another person. The first question that comes to the mind of those chosen for jury duty is “how long is this going to last?” Everyone knows whether by experience or word of mouth that jury duty is usually time consuming. And most people do not have enough time in their busy schedule to sit in a Courthouse all day. According to the characters is the play, “Two days is eternity” which is how long their case is going to last (page 771). Not to mention the grace period that most people do not know about, “They say eight-thirty so that most people get here by nine. And around nine-ten they start calling names” (page 768). For first time jury members they could get extra anxious just sitting around for 40 minutes until someone finally comes in to explain the grace period to them. Luckily, jobs and schools have to allow a person to miss days the per... ... middle of paper ... ...8). However, if it was them who had been accused of a crime, surely they would be very happy to have a jury, instead of one person deciding their fate. There are hundreds of Americans who are selected for jury duty every day. Just like the characters many of them believe jury duty is a major conflict in their lives. They may say they do not have time to participate, which may be true, but the law will make sure you have time. As always, life and time keep going, and nobody wants to miss it. No one prefers to sit in court when they can be doing something productive but it is not going to kill them. Everyone deserves to have a jury hear them and surely they would want that for themselves. Works Cited Leight, Warren. “Nine Ten.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. 7th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010. 767 - 771. Print.

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