12 Angry Men Character Analysis

The dramatic play of Twelve Angry Men, authored by Reginald Rose in 1955, focuses on a jury's deliberations concerning a homicide trial. The trial revolves around a 16-year-old boy who is accused of stabbing his father to death. A guilty verdict means an automatic death sentence for the boy. Throughout the play Juror three displays his flaws as a result of his prejudice but he is not the most flawed as others demonstrate similar tendencies. Nevertheless, he is quite unrealistic, like his fellow jurors. In the heat of disputes over the facts of the murder case juror three, amongst other jurors, exhibits unseemly character traits. Furthermore, he and other jurors put forth unrealistic arguments based on impossible evidence. However, in both situations, the cause is
In an attempt to defend his position as deeming the boy “guilty of murder” he states that “Anybody [who] says... ‘I’m gonna kill you”... the way he said it…they mean it”. This piece of evidence is faulty because the third Juror is testifying the evidence as if he was present at the murder scene which he was not. The Fifth Juror also presents unrealistic evidence to prove that the boy would only have murdered his father by handling the knife a certain way. He claims “anyone who’s ever handled a switch knife’d never handle it any other way”. However, the 5th Juror cannot be so sure that the boy did not use the knife a different way when he murdered his father because he did not witness the crime. Another example of unrealistic evidence is provided by Juror Ten as he mentions numerous times “these people are born to lie and murder”. One cannot simply assume something so definite about anyone, let alone an entire group of people. This clearly demonstrates the fact that there are many instances of unrealistic evidence and the 3rd Juror is amongst those who provided such