Prejudice In Twelve Angry Men By Reginald Rose

When a person is met with the challenge of judging someone's innocence or guilt, it’s hard to do it impartially. Prejudice can be found everywhere- even in a courtroom, as can be seen in the play “Twelve Angry Men,” by Reginald Rose. The play revolves around the jury’s thoughts and decisions regarding a case of first-degree murder committed by a teenager against his father. During the three acts, three specific jurors were very obvious about their prejudices in one way or another and allowed this to effect their judgement: Juror number 3, Juror number 5, and Juror number 10. Firstly, in the case of Juror number 3, his prejudice is shown in how personally he takes the case; he relates the boy on trial with his son and is more prejudiced against

Having had some bad experience with the poor and the people in slums, he believes them all to be the same thing: lying, cheating, and dangerous. Of course, as stereotypes often are, this is not always correct and keeps him from being able to hear other people’s point of view on the case and makes him less likely to give the boy the benefit of the doubt. His beliefs are obvious in his speech during act three, when he says: “Look, you know how those people lie… and lemme tell you, they don’t need amy real big reason to kill anyone either… that’s how they are… there’s not one of ‘em who’s any good.” Juror number ten honestly believes that the people from slums and from worst neighborhoods, by virtue of their very nature, are violent and without any chance of redemption. There is no question that this would affect the way that he would view a young man accused of murder from these poorer neighborhoods. From his point of view, people from slums would have no moral dilemma and wouldn’t care if they killed even someone as close to them as their father. So, he would be very reluctant to give the boy the benefit of the doubt and, being a very stubborn man, would not want to listen to the evidence put forth by the other