Twelve angry men can sound like a mob chasing after an ogre, but in this case Twelve Angry Men refers to a jury of men who have to decide the fate of a young boy that is on trial for killing his father. In the end of this story the twelve men acquit the boy despite the hard evidence against him. The author also never informs the reader if the boy actually committed the murder or not. Leaving the reader unaware of whether the defendant committed the murder or not is a strength. The twelve men are to decide the life of this young teenage boy. This boy has hard and convincing evidence against him and no real evidence showing that he didn't commit the horrific crime. The boy had an argument with his father in their small apart …show more content…
There was an old man downstairs that testified that he heard the boy scream at the top of his lungs from downstairs “I'm gonna kill you” then he heard a body hit the floor. After that the man ran to the door and saw the boy running downstairs (Rose 18). There was also an old woman in the building across the street on the same floor that testified that she saw the boy stab his father through the el-train (Rose 19). The boy has a previous history of violence as well. At the age of fifteen he was sent to reform school for knife fighting and stabbing someone (Rose 20). The boy also didn't have a reliable alibi for where he went after the argument with his father. He claims that he was at the movies during the murder but he didn't remember what movie he saw, he had no ticket stub and no one that worked at the movies remembered him (Rose 18). All of this evidence is going against the boy, but the evidence that is in his favor isn't as strong. The knife that the boy bought was a very unique knife. It was a switch blade with a wavy blade. The storekeeper said that it was the only knife of its kind (Rose 23). Yet one of the jurors had a knife just like it and presented it to the other jurors (Rose 24).