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12 Angry Men Truth

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Perception is the New Truth
Growing up, we were all taught that we live in a world which is in black and white, where there is a clear evil and a clear good. Unfortunately, this is not true; and the distinction between what is the truth and what is false is sometimes very vague. Thus, more often than not, I find myself struggling to distinguish what is the truth and what is not, and I’m often stuck in an unclear grey area where it could be either one; or it could depend upon the person’s perspective. While there are some universal truths that we cannot deny, such as stealing being bad, and helping animals being good, some truths can be up to the person’s perception depending on the circumstances. For instance, we would all agree that it was …show more content…
As the 10th Juror describes people living in the slums as “wild animals” (Rose 65) and refers to them as “[t]hese people” (Rose 64), his strong prejudice against people living in the slums is evident. Rose further extends this argument through the end of the book, as the 3rd Juror claims that he knows “[w]hat [kids] are like” (72) because of his past experience with his own child. His unhealthy relationship with his son drives him to be biased against unfaulty children, calling them “rotten” and finding guilt in the defendant even though the burden of proof has not been met (Rose 72). In the play, Reginald Rose criticizes the faulty justice system in the US, and touches on many important points about truth and justice. While there are many more messages that the reader might convey from the text, I believe that one of the most important ones is explicitly written by Rose towards the end of the play: “prejudice obscures the truth.” ( …show more content…
Throughout the book, Curley’s wife is overtly sexualized, to a point where Steinbeck is describing her hair as “rolled in clusters, like sausages”(34) and called derogatory terms by the men in the ranch. This portrayal - the perspective that Steinbeck builds in the reader's mind - belittles her character, makes the reader repulsed by her actions, and prohibits the reader from seeing the objective truth: that Curley’s wife is lonely in a ranch full of men who degrade her, is full of sorrow and disappointed because of her dreams that she could not achieve, forced to marry a man she doesn’t love, and insignificant, so much that Steinbeck does not refer to her using her name but rather calling her “Curley’s wife”. Once the reader realizes this and sheds free of their negative perspective on Curley’s wife, they can realize that she is not guilty of anything but being a woman. Ergo, through Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck makes the reader realize that our perspectives can have a strong impact in our judgement on

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