12 Angry Men By Reginald Rose

12 Angry Men

“It’s easy to stand in a crowd but it takes courage to stand alone” - Indian lawyer, non-violent, protest activist, and leader Mahatma Gandhi. This suggests that it's easy to follow a crowd and share their same opinion but it takes courage to have your own opinion.

This idea fits in the play “12 Angry Men” by Reginald Rose, In this play there are 12 men chosen for jury duty to decide the fate of an 18 year old boy from a poor part of town who allegedly stabbed and killed his father. There were two witnesses that said he did it. One is an old man living on the floor below the boy. The other was a woman that said she saw the boy through the el train, stabbing his father. At first, all the jurors chose guilty without giving it a second thought and looking at the evidence. They thought he was guilty because they either didn't want to be there and wanted to be done with the trial or had their own opinions on his

In doing so, he displays the courage to stand alone. The reason behind his vote was that “There were eleven votes for guilty - it's not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.”(Act 1 page 15). Juror 8 reenacted how the old man that lived in the apartment under the boy and his father said he heard the boy scream and run down the stairs, he said that when he heard the scream he ran to his door and the old man said it took him 15 seconds to go to the door and open it and saw the boy run down the stairs. But when Juror 8 walked the same layout as the old man's apartment it took him 41 seconds. This proves that the old man isn't reliable. “And you’re trying to tell us he lied about the whole thing? ( said juror 12). No, he wouldn’t really lie. But perhaps he’d make himself believe that heard those words and recognized the boy’s face.” Said juror 9 (Act 2, p34). This means that there is reasonable