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12 Angry Men Certainty Vs Certainty Essay

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McKenzie Wheeler Mrs. Page English VIII - 1 February 2023 Certainty or Doubt? Twelve Angry Men is a play written by Reginald Rose in 1954. This play is about a homicide trial. A twelve-man jury has to come up with a verdict that says if the nineteen-year-old boy is guilty or innocent. In Twelve Angry Men doubt is more important than certainty in the conclusion. Doubt is more important than certainty because someone's life is on the line, and when there's a chance that the truth is invalid, it's important to talk about it. At the beginning of the play, all the jurors had to vote if they believed that the boy was guilty or not. Everybody voted guilty except for Eight. When Three was confused about why Eight voted not guilty, Eight said “There were eleven votes for guilty. It's not so easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without …show more content…

Toward the end of the play, a majority of the jurors end up changing their vote to not guilty. Three and Four are the only ones who voted guilty for the nineteen-year-old. Four ends up changing his vote and says “I'm sorry but there's reasonable doubt in my mind.” (Rose 31). The other ten jurors changed their votes because of doubt. The more they talked about the testimonies, the more they realized that things didn't add up. At the start of the play, almost everyone except Eight voted the boy guilty. If Eight had not said to talk about it, the boy would have been sent off to die for a crime he didn't commit. The only reason the jurors changed their votes in the first place is that they felt like something was off with the testimonies. The men talking amongst themselves also influenced their vote change. Other men were able to convince Three that the testimonies didn't add up. Even though he thought he knew for sure that the boy did it, he ended up getting proven wrong and changed his vote because of

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