Comparing The Book And Play 12 Angry Men

The Novel and play 12 Angry Men, by Reginald Rose, takes place in a courtroom in 1957. 12 Angry Men is about the trial of a young 18 year old boy who has been accused of stabbing his father to death. It is up to the 12 jurors, each with a unique and contradicting personality, to decide whether the boy is innocent or guilty. If proven guilty the boy will be sentenced to death, but this can only happen if all twelve jurors vote the boy is guilty. The conflict begins when Juror 8 votes not guilty and sparks the debate among the jurors. The jurors argue in the courtroom for hours, and as the story progresses the reader will start to discover who the good jurors are and the not so good ones. Juror 10, who makes himself out to be a loud mouthed …show more content…
Although some might say Juror 10 is a racist, that may be debatable due to the fact that Rose never specifically ties the boy to a certain minority group, and is played by a white actor in the play and movie. Nonetheless the man is clearly a bigot. Sense the race of the boy is speculated by the reader, and not confirmed through the text. We as readers can say instead of being bigoted towards a certain race of people we can instead say that he is bigotry lies in the economic and social status of the boy. “We don't owe him a thing. He got a fair trial, didn't he? You know what that trial cost? Look, we're all grown-ups here. You're not going to tell us that we're supposed to believe him, knowing what he is. I've lived among 'em all my life. You can't believe a word they say “ He is clearly talking about the inner city, Slum culture that the boy grew up in. He uses this bigoted generalization as evidence to why the boy is guilty. That's not all though. Juror 10 continued to make generalizations based off of bigoted thinking to use as evidence. “They are wild animals. “They're against us, they hate us, they want to destroy us.”(18) Hey but on the bright side at least he thinks a couple are ok “Sure, there's some good things about em, too. I'm the first one to say that. I've known a couple who were OK, but that's the exception.” Juror …show more content…
This may of added towards his impatience to the voting process, and added towards his quick temper. Juror 10s loud mouth is his demise in the end when most of the other jurors vote not guilty and in an attempt to sway them back he goes on a large rant about the boy and his background solely based off of bigoted ideology. This backfires and it causes his fellow jurors to look upon him in disgust. He soon after will change his vote to not guilty. Most readers would argue that Juror 3, who is the last juror to vote not guilty, would be the worst juror. Yes he did stall out the voting process in the end, and was arrogant and close minded towards other people's ideas. At least though he based his argument off of hard facts presented through eyewitness testimony during the trial. Unlike Juror 10 who used rash and bigoted generalizations based off the boys socio-economic

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