Father Son Relationship In Twelve Angry Men

In all facets of human life there is a constant pressure. One of the most potent forms of this is peer pressure. It affects how humans make decisions, in all facets of an everyday life. Peer is a force that can bring out the best and worst of humanity. Additionally, in the context of Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men peer pressure is used to highlight the best and worst aspects of the American judicial system circa 1954. A further understanding of peer pressure and its effects on people helps to provide a deeper understanding of Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men.

When asked why he voted not guilty, juror eight stated “Look, this boy has been kicked around all his life. You know---living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year in and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That’s not a very good head start. He’s had a pretty terrible sixteen years. I think maybe we owe him a few words. That’s all.” (13) In the movie, juror eight said basically the same exact statement with the exception of a few words, only instead of saying the boy was sixteen, he said that the boy was

No. 8: I think that the jury system we have today has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, a jury that consists of jurors who are biased could be manipulated by ‘outsiders’ through bribery or some jurors, as we have discussed before, might have some personal prejudices/beliefs that may affect their decision making. But there are some advantages as well because the decision that is made by the jury is thought out very carefully by a group of people.

He displays the tendency of an introverted Pragmatist with the Thinker preferences. Therefore, it takes him very long and requires several opinions laid out by other Jurors to change his mind from ‘guilty’ to ‘not guilty’. At the same time, he was firm and unafraid to stand up for himself once he changed his vote. He is sympathetic towards the boy as he grew up in the slum himself which caused him to disagree with Juror 3 numerous time. Therefore, his own upbringing in the slum makes him more knowledgeable about how the boy could have handled the switchblades and also the traits of living in the slum in

In the play 12 Angry Men, a murder case is being reviewed by a jury. This jury must decide if a kid who killed his father is guilty or not. Two jurors that were on opposing sides for most of the play was Juror Eight and Juror Three. The reason they were on opposing sides was because Juror Three believed the kid was guilty, while Juror Eight believed there was not enough evidence to convict him. Most of the jurors wanted to settle on having reasonable doubt, so another jury could be called in. Reasonable doubt is when there’s not enough evidence or if the jury is not completely sure a person is guilty. When reasonable doubt is present in a case, it means they cannot convict the person because they are not sure if they are truly guilty. Juror Eight would not settle for this and continued to try and change the minds of the jury, so an innocent kid would not be convicted.

What if one day, twenty years from now you were chosen to discuss the fate of an eighteen year old boy. What would you do? Would you take your job and do it responsibly, or would you do it like some of the Jurors in 12 Angry Men and blow it off so you can finish early and leave. Even though there was a lot of controversy in that jury room, I noticed that Jurors 3,7, and 9 used their personalities, beliefs, and views of their responsibilities to bring the boy on trial to justice.

“A person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.” In the play, Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, a nineteen years old is on trial for the murder of his father. After many pieces of evidence were presented, the three that are weak include the one of a kind knife, the old men who heard the words “I’m going to kill you!” and the woman who is in question because of her glasses. Based on these, the boy is not guilty.

Some of the arguments and issues with the case that he seems to care most about are the knife Juror #8 bought that is similar to the murder weapon and how fast it took the old man to get to the door. In Act 1, Juror #4 begins to explain that the knife used is very unusual. That even the store-keeper that sold the knife had never seen a weapon like that before. Juror #8 then argues that someone could have possibly gotten a knife similar to the one the boy had and then “reaches into his pocket and swiftly withdraws a knife...they are exactly alike”(23). Juror #2 finds it “interesting that he’d find a knife exactly like the one the boy bought”(24). Afterwards, the 8th Juror suggests that the old man, one of the witnesses, lied because of the point Juror #3 tried to make. Juror #3 says, that the old man “[ran ] to his door and [saw ] the kid tearing down the stairs fifteen seconds after the killing”(42). Juror #8 then suggests that the old man could not have done that because of his stroke. He then decides to recreate what the old man said he did on the night on the murder. Juror #2 seems really interested in this argument and even volunteers to help with the time. In the beginning of Act 2, the jury decides to vote once more. At the time, Juror #2’s vote was “not

"Don 't judge a book by its cover" is a famous saying that some of us heard it before and some of us experienced it. 12 jurors were experiencing this quote when they gathered to decide whether a young boy is guilty by killing his father or not. Juror 2 stated, "Well, anyway, I think he was guilty" (6). Juror 2 represent most of us, as sometimes we judge from what we hear and not from what we see. The 12 jurors are from various backgrounds and each one has a distinctive personality. What is worth our attention in this movie is how in the beginning they are trying to convince each other to vote guilty. 11 juror voted guilty and only one voted not guilty. Their judgments were based upon either their past personal experience which created their thoughts and behavior or upon facts. Juror 8 represents the conscience. He stood up for his inner feelings that the accused young boy is innocent. Moreover, when everyone decided that the boy is guilty, he suggested that they should talk about it first. Furthermore, he said that he didn 't

People act upon what they think. Within “12 Angry Men”, all of the jurors have an opinion but some voice their more than others. One juror in particular, Juror Ten, voices his opinion about the boy in question. Repeatedly throughout the play, Juror Ten makes many thoughtless and hurtful comments about a certain kind of people. It is clear that Juror Ten’s uncompromising belief that the accused is guilty is because of his dislike for the boy’s race. His prejudice is clear when he says that “I’ve lived among ‘em all my life. You can’t believe a word they say” when speaking about the boy (16). Juror Ten’s prejudice causes him to disregard all of the facts that are presented to him by Juror Eight that can prove that the accused is not guilty. Juror 10 allows his prejudice to blind him of the truth. That is until he is called out by his fellow jurors. Throughout the whole play, Juror Ten remains stubborn in his decision that the defendant is guilty. Yet, at the end the finally sees that there is reasonable doubt (62). Interestingly enough, on the previous page Juror Ten is called out by Juror Four (60). The foreman also has some prejudice at the beginning of the case. He brings up another case that is similar to the one they are doing. He says the defendant accused of murder was let off and “eight years later they found out that he’d actually done it, anyway” (12). Prejudice clouds a person’s judgement and does not allow the individual to see all the facts. It only allows them to

First, is juror number twelve. He can’t decide what side he is on, so arrows going back and forth would fit his personality. He tends to go with the crowd and doesn’t have much to say; hence, the diagram above shows the arrows are smaller than the other two shapes. At the beginning, he was not taking the case seriously. “He draws a tic-tac-toe square on the same sheet of paper on which NO. 12 had drawn the train. He fills in an X and hands the pencil to NO. 12.” (12 Angry Men). He thinks the only pieces of evidence are the witnesses because they said they saw the killing even though there was flaws within their testimony. After further investigation, he agrees the boy is not guilty. Then, juror number three persuades number twelve

One can be easily mislead or persuade in a direction they do not agree with. However this is not the case with Juror 8 (Mr. Davis) in the film 12 Angry Men. In this film, twelve jurors try to identify whether or not the convicted eighteen year-old boy is guilty of murdering his father with a switchblade knife. If the puerto-rican boy is found guilty, he will be sent to the electric chair and sentenced to death. The movie begins in the humid jury room by taking a vote to see whether or not the boy is guilty: eleven guilties and one not guilty. At this point Mr. Davis (the only not guilty vote) could have easily switched his vote and sentenced the boy to death, however he did not. This is where some men get aggravated. This film shows the many ways the men try to persuade one another to change their vote through the characters of Mr. Davis (Juror 8), Juror 4, and Mr. McCardle (Juror 9).

At the beginning of story, Juror #3 immediately claimed that the case was simple and the defendant’s guilt was obvious. Although he was not a new juror and ought to be experienced

After viewing the movie 12 Angry Men the group was able to implement the ideas of group think immediately during the start of the movie. Since the men briefly established a relationship from the time of witnessing the trial to start of deliberation n the empty room and reaching a unanimous decision, they found that all of the men initially achieved a verdict of guilty accept for juror 8. After this surprising decision the men began to show their true colors and distinguish how one may believe something and another juror may believe another. The group takes time in pleading individual opinions while deciding on the guilt or innocence of a young boy

Twelve Angry Men is in many ways a love letter to the American legal justice system. We find here eleven men, swayed to conclusions by prejudices, past experience, and short-sightedness, challenged by one man who holds himself and his peers to a higher standard of justice, demanding that this marginalized member of society be given his due process. We see the jurors struggle between the two, seemingly conflicting, purposes of a jury, to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. It proves, however, that the logic of the American trial-by-jury system does work.