Twelve Angry Men Essay Examples

Twelve Angry Men is a 1957 drama in which twelve jurors decide the faith of a boy who is on trial in court for alleged murder of his own father. The film presents a picture of the decision-making process based on the concept of reasonable doubt, which, when present, does not allow the jury to proclaim the defendant guilty. Jury members have no names and go by numbers, and the audience is presented with their reasoning and thought process through their monologues and dialogues. Although this is quite an explicit way to convey what a character’s position is, it is not as explicit when it comes to portraying the reasons for it, so a lot of personal inner drama of each character is left out for the audience to figure out.
Ultimately, the driving force for the plot and the characters’ development is the concept of doubting everything and importance of stepping out of conventional way of thinking in order to become as clear and unbiased, as possible. An integral part of challenging the common thinking framework is paying attention to details, which otherwise would be considered unimportant. People often get caught in their usual flow of thought and may not even realize that, probably, on the unconscious level they always build and understand arguments in a certain way, which is usually far from being objective and unbiased. Crucial details of the particular situation get omitted and, as a result, wrong decisions are made; while in the everyday life this would cause some trouble, in case with the jury, attention to details and challenging the convenient and comfortable way of thinking bear grave importance.
Initially Juror 8 opposes eleven other jurors, who seem to have decided the faith of the defendant even before they entered the jury room. What first looks like an inconvenient delay for them develops into an argument that eventually crushes all the evidence presented by the prosecution and makes eleven jurors switch sides. What began as a fairly obvious trial turns into a vivid portrayal of narrow-mindedness and prejudice a lot of people share when it comes to making important decisions.
On the surface the case seems absolutely clear: a woman in the opposite house sees the boy stab his father to death and run away to be seen by his old neighbor who walked out of his apartment to check on the noise he thought he heard from the apartment where the murder occurred. Prosecution presents the testimonies of these two witnesses in addition to the knife the “old man” was stabbed with, which is said to belong to the boy, because he was seen buying it before the murder occurred. Defendant’s testimony about him being in the movie theater and losing the knife even before he got home seems shaky in the face of such solid evidence against him.
However, Juror 8 expresses doubt, saying that it cannot be denied that boy’s testimony is true; he initially does not present any evidence to support his claim, however, it is enough to confuse another eleven men, who prior to this were sure that their decision is an absolutely undeniable truth.
The first solid piece evidence to crumble is the prosecution’s claim that the knife “the old man” was stabbed with is of a unique design and is one of its kind. Juror 8 presents others with the knife that looks exactly the same and says that the knives of this design are ubiquitous in the slum the boy lived in and that anyone there could afford to buy one. It seems like police officers did not bother to test the claim of the person who sold the knife to the boy and just added it to the case as an undeniable evidence of his guilt.
The attention to details helps the jurors to properly analyze the testimonies of the witnesses. Boy’s neighbor, an old man claimed to hear the argument and the boy threatening to kill his father a few hours before the murder occurred. While this could be true, nobody at first seemed to pay attention to the part of his testimony in which he describes how he got to the staircase in order to see what happened. Having recently suffered a stroke and being of an old age, the man could hardly walk and had to be walked in the courtroom. At the same time he testified that it took him approximately fifteen seconds to get from his bed to the door that leads to the stairs, which was proven impossible by the Juror 8 right in the jury room. Has it not been for the attention to the details, this inconsistency is witnesses’ testimony would have slipped away. Moreover, as the house in which the murder occurred is located right next to the train tracks, and it is a fact that at the moment of the murder a train happened to pass by causing a lot of noise, a doubt is raised about the old man actually hearing the argument and the sound of the body falling on the floor.
As for the woman’s testimony who claimed to be an eyewitness to the murder, a closer look reveals that her words cannot be fully trusted as well. A tiny detail, two spots from the eyeglasses, many of the jurors noticed on her nose, but never gave any thought to, raises the question about her eyesight and, therefore, the reliability of her testimony.
The boy is acquitted and, despite all the personal altercations, jurors leave the room feeling like they have done a right thing after all. They have managed to break out of the rigid thinking framework they were used to and have actually put some thought and attention in their work rather than following a well-defined pattern and, in doing so, reevaluated their attitude towards small and, at the first glance, insignificant details.