12 Angry Men is a film about a jury consisted of twelve men all of whom have their own system of beliefs which is hard to change. They are members of the community and are supposed to reach a verdict because they are jurymen. The legal system has flaws which is why the jurors need to decide about the guilt of the defendant. The defendant is an eighteen-year-old boy who allegedly stabbed and killed his father although there is reasonable doubt that he did not commit this crime. The juror Number Three is the man who looks for answers within his reason and he manages to make other jurors question their rationality.
The jurors believe what they are presented and they do not care about thinking for themselves because they let the witnesses and the lawyers think instead of them. They accept what was said in court as the truth: “Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already” (Fixation, p. 1). That is the case with eleven jurors at the beginning of the film and only one juror, Number Three is ready for questioning his own reason and the evidence which was gathered throughout the process. All twelve men have two agree on the same verdict because otherwise the verdict cannot be reached. They have to vote unanimous and they have to stay in the room for as long as necessary until they decide on the guilt. The boy is lucky because there is the juror Number Three to protect his interests.
Men are eager to go home and return to their everyday life and they do not want to spend much time on thinking about the guilt of the boy because they are convinced of his guilt. “The object of reasoning is to find out from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we don’t know” (Fixation, p. 2). Therefore, the juror Number Three begins to use this method and he embarks on the process of making other jurors question their rationality. What all of them know is that there are witnesses who claim that they saw the boy kill his father. They accept this as the truth and do not want to think for themselves. Moreover, they accept the trial as fair and do not question it. This is wrong and Number Three is the voice of reason who makes the rest of the men try to think about what could also be the truth. He declares that he does not know whether the boy killed his father or not, but he proves that the witnesses were not reliable. For example, the woman wears glasses because of her poor eyesight and could not have had time to put them on in time to see the boy stab his father and the old man could not have had the time to reach his front door in time as well. Moreover, the knife which was used as the weapon could have been bought by anyone although it was unusual. The juror Number Three conducts his own research based on what he already knows to find out something he does not know which is related to the boy’s guilt. Once it is established that there is reasonable doubt about the boy’s potential guilt, the rest of the jurors have to agree on the boy’s innocence because nobody can be sure of his guilt. The boy cannot be convicted if there is no proof that he committed the crime. People need to learn how to use their reason and logic because of such cases in which they might wrongly accuse a person of committing a crime.
People are creatures of habit and the jurors are inclined to think that everything said in court must be true because of the fact that it was said in court. “That which determines us, from given premises, to draw one inference rather than another, is some habit of mind, whether it be constitutional or acquired. (Fixation, p. 2). There is always the possibility of human error because in the case of the boy who is accused of killing his father, there are no reliable witnesses and there is no evidence which means that reasonable doubt has to be taken into consideration. Nobody can be convicted based on belief because there has to be firm evidence before accusing somebody of doing a savage act.
Each person has a unique way of thinking and it is acquired through experience which is hard to change. “The problems that present themselves to such a mind are matters of routine which he has learned once for all to handle in learning his business” (Fixation, p. 3). This is a great problem in court because each juror sticks to their own reasoning and they believe that what they were presented during the trial is true. Nobody has doubt except the juror Number Three and since the system of justice has flaws, the jurors have to be unanimous in reaching the verdict and they can set a person free if there is reasonable doubt which exists in this case. The boy comes from an underprivileged background and everybody is eager to convict him. The society as a whole is merciless and most of the people on this jury are people who belong to the upper-middle class and they have prejudice. The juror Number Three is the only man who listens to the voice of reason and questions everything in order to be just. “Our beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions” (Fixation, p. 4). People are not ready to change their beliefs so easily and that is why it takes so much time for the juror Number Three to convince the rest of the jurors to think about their verdict. They have prejudice, especially the juror who has problems with his own son. He refuses to believe that the boy who is supposed to be convicted is innocent because he is mad with his own son. People bring their personal problems into their professional lives, which makes them think irrationally. However, when they are confronted with truth, they change their opinion. “The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief. It is certainly best for us that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our actions so as to satisfy their desires” (Fixation, p. 4). People go through a real struggle to change their belief about a certain matter because it makes them question everything in life. Therefore, it is hard for people to change the way they think about anything as it shakes the core of their personalities.
It is difficult for men to change their opinion on anything, but once they are assured that something is true, they will change it because there is the evidence of something being different than what they thought. Aristotle says: “Just as all men have not the same writing, so al men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also ae those things of which our experiences are the images” (Interpretation, p. 1). Therefore, the mental experiences are the most important because they can change a person’s belief. This is what the juror Number Three does while trying to convince other jurors of the fact that there is not enough evidence to convict the boy. He is civilized in his actions and in the way he talks and he lets everybody express their opinion. However, he makes people question their reasoning because they are ultimately wrong. People make mistakes because they have prejudice, because they trust the legal system and because of the set of beliefs they have acquired. However, the legal system is flawed which is why it is up to the jury to reach the final verdict. The juror Number Three is the only person who accepts the possibility of the boy being innocent because it really is possible.
Doubt should be always present in people’s minds because they might do much wrong to the humanity if they think that only their opinion matters. “To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency – by something upon which out thinking has no effect” (Fixation, p. 7). The juror Number Three suggests that people should have doubt about the evidence presented in court and once they accept the fact that nothing is certain, they accept the existence of reasonable doubt because doubt is the most reliable method of making conclusions. Logic fails many times and since people’s system of reasoning is flawed, doubt should be valued.
The eleven jurors find it hard to resist the general notion which was accepted in court and it is related to the fact that the boy is guilty and the whole world seems to think so because of the fact that the boy is aggressive because he was never treated well in life. “The peaceful and sympathetic man will, therefore, find it hard to resist the temptation to submit his opinions to authority” (Fixation, p. 9.). This is the case with the eleven jurors because they feel that they are supposed to respect the court and the court has decided that the boy is guilty. It seems that the work of the jurors is mere formality.
Belief is hard to change in men because they are led by their desires and they rely on their way of thinking which is hard to change. The jurors have many difficulties to accept the possibility that they might be wrong because they think that their opinion was formed in a logical way. People have to be questioned by reason and by men who are capable of resisting authority because it is the only way for the justice to be satisfied.
Works Cited
Rose, Reginald. Twelve Angry Men. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2016. <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1irVXTuMAQESSwtoqOtQiC_-5dZa59LCmOxA_IQzlxww/edit>.
Aristotle, "On Interpretation ." The Internet Classics Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2016. <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/interpretation.1.1.html>.
Peirce, Charles S. "The Fixation of Belief." Popular Science Monthly 12 (1877): 1-15. Web. 25 May 2016. <http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html>.
