Twelve Angry Men – Book Report
How does your background and peer pressure influence your opinions and decisions? The play we read “twelve angry men” shows how a jury makes such an important decision of either sending the defendant to his death or keeping him alive – the jury determinates the fate of a 16 year old boy. As the title suggests that there are 12 men in the jury who do not know one another, and do not know the defendant, but these jurors have to work as one united group to argue and reach an agreement. They all have to be convinced wither the boy is guilty or not. The trial is about a sixteen year old boy accused with the murder of his father. The story has no plot because it tells us how these 12 jurors argue about the case in a small room and reach the final decision. They have to think as a group because, otherwise, it could not work, that means that they will get to the wrong decision, and cause or the release of a killer or the death of an innocent young man. The play emphasizes how they deal with the case and how they make a decision vital for the boy’s life. The jury is actually a group of randomly chosen members of society. Each one of them represents a particular class of the society, not only as a mass of people, but also the way this class of society thinks and behaves. Therefore, every one of them is sensitive to different issues and social norms and also each one of them confirms to different society standards and values of society. It is very important to note that each one of the characters- the jurors- is an ordinary person, has an ordinary life, problems and family and is surrounding by an ordinary people. They exhibit different perspectives, points of view, analysis and behavior in specific situations they experienced at the trial. Although there is plot, but the attitudes and behavior of the jurors constitute the main “actions” in the story. The juror’s perspectives, beliefs and attitude are the only thing in the story that let us infer about their personality and allow us to see how an individual behaves in different situations and events during his lifetime. For example, at the beginning of the story when conducted the first vote, only one of the jurors was convinced that the boy did not kill his father and voted for “not guilty”. The other eleven men assumed that the facts and the evidence were true and that the boy deserved to be sent to the electric chair, to his death. The 8th juror who dissented on the first vote started to contradict the other jury members by presenting the evidence and the facts again while looking into the details more closely and deeply. The 8th juror was not sure about all the testimonies in the first place, he proved and convinced the others step by step, that the evidence they have and all the testimonies were false. On the second vote two jurors call “not guilty” vote. However, we all know that people do not change their minds easily especially when they know they are wrong and simply they do not want to admit it. Their behavior is probably affected by internal attitudes and external influence. These social influences are, sometimes, the main reason why we act, behave and talk in a particular way. For an example, in the story the 7th juror has a baseball tickets for a game on the same night of the trial, so he prefers to go to the game, not caring about the defendant’s life. He tries to make the process as hurried as possible, and reach the final decision so he can be free to go to the game. The 3rd juror is so aggressive and he tries to convince all the others that he is right. He has no doubt about the truth, in his words. He has a really bad experience by living among, working and dealing with the group of people that he calls “criminals” which led him to reject these people and believe that anything they say and do is wrong. That makes him believe that the defendant who comes from this low sector of society is guilty without questioning or discussing.
The character of this juror shows the normative social influence that is a strong force in forming a person’s behavior. He believes that the boy is nothing different from all the others low class kids. We can infer that he thinks that if someone mixed with “bad people” he will be influenced him in a bad way. According to him, they are all criminals and stands for his social norms that he was younger and living among them, which now conduct his behavior. As a delegate of a particular class of society, this character expresses the opinion of the higher classes about neighborhoods called Projects. (It is like other word for place where poor Afro-American and low classes, who use drugs and are criminals live). This juror is very strong in the story because he always tries to tell his points and to convince everyone else with his opinions by arguing persistently and even yelling when he has to defend his arguments and perspectives. On the other hand, there is the character of the 8th juror who was the first one to oppose the presented evidence and tried to take a deeper look into important details before putting his belief in the testimonies and facts that they have. He presents to the others every single detail, starting with the smallest to the very bigger and important one. His arguments influence the whole group of jurors. They start to doubt the facts, the testimonies and the truth of the trial. He voices out what information the jury has on the case and tries to persuade the others to express what they also know and feels sure about in the trial. This sways the members of the jury who were not sure and feel uncertain about their positions. The information that the 8th juror’s presents to prove his point influences the other jurors and it continues to materialize throughout the story to the end of it. Through presenting new information, the 8th juror makes the others really think more deeply, as he does. And as we know, most of the people accept other people’s views because it contains valuable and true information that they did not know or think about, so they can learn from it. He studies each detail very closely and presents new information about it. Therefore, the other members of the group change their mind influenced by the information they are exposed to. Nevertheless, here comes the conformity of each member to his group standards. These 12 men have different way of thinking each of which is influenced by the social norms and standards they grew up in or live by presently. An example of conformity to a group is the 12th juror who changes his opinion in the story several times. He tries to adjust his way of thinking and behavior to the standard set by the group itself. So he is influenced several times by the opinions of the others and in order to be part of the group he sets the same opinion too. That means that the 12th juror feels that he is an outsider, he does not feel that he belongs to the group. In order, he changes his mind, so he can feel among. However, when he is pressured by the other members of the group, who believes the boy to be guilty, he changes his mind quickly and votes “guilty”. This is an example how a person is unsure in himself and adjusts himself to a group that its standards and beliefs influenced strongly by the opinions of the others. This goes to show that this person has very weak personal control and personality and can not form his own opinion about the trial. On the other hand, of the 3rd juror is an elderly man who realizes his own drama through the story. He has problems with his son, which are so bad that they have not spoken for years. This man is very sure that the boy is the killer of his own father, but at the end he realizes that he has been swayed by his own drama. This character is very strong in the play because he gives the whole action in the story. He is jumpy and nervous. He even shouts and wants to fight the opposition because they do not accept the facts and distort them. This sets an example of weak personal control and also shows what a huge extent our past dramatic events in our life affect our present behavior. The aggressiveness of some of the jurors in the play “Twelve Angry Men” shows weak personal control that makes them vulnerable to other opinions. They behave in a way dictated by their social status and personal background. Through the play the 8th juror leads the other members of the jury to accept small things in order that at the end, they understand the whole picture and to accept the vital truth whether the boy is guilty or not. There is also a group of jurors that occur when people in a group discuss things that most of them either favor or oppose. In the story there are several jurors that change their positions only because more members of the group do. And the very obvious example is when the 8th juror votes “not guilty” while everyone else votes “guilty”, the other jurors begin to think deeper into the 8th juror’s decision and to change theirs. Towards the end of the play, only two jurors are in favor that the boy is guilty of killing his father. These are the 3rd juror; the elderly man whose son abandoned him years ago, the 10th juror; who claims that he lived with the low class all his life, and the 4th juror; who claims that the boy’s story is a total bullshit and a huge lie, because the boy could not remember what movie he saw when the cop asked him at the same night. The 10th juror, at the end, realizes that the most obvious or the thing that comes first to his mind is not always the right thing or the obvious truth. The 10th juror gives up also because he can see that he will no longer be able to change anyone’s mind. And, the 3rd juror realizes that he should not be so aggressive though he is a lonely and a sad person. The 4th juror changes his mind because one of the jurors claims that what happened with the boy is a result of emotional stress, so he asked him if he remember what is the last movie he saw with his wife, the 4th juror could not remember either, because of the pressure he is under, so he changes his mind. The final vote is “not guilty” and the boy is discharge with the prosecution. The play shows us how your personal control and behavior designed by the social class we belong to and the background we come from and how that is the reasons for most of what we do and say.