12 Angry Men is a novel written by Reginald Rose in 1955. The story takes place in 1957 in the jury-room of a New York Court of Law. It is about a young delinquent who is on trial for the murder of his aggressive farther. Eleven jurors are directed by the judge to gather on a hot afternoon to declare if there is any reasonable doubt as to why the boy is not guilty. One, even though far from convinced of the boy’s innocence, feels that some of the evidence against him is ambiguous. By the end of the day that juror has reversed opinions of all eleven jurors.
Prejudice: There are many significant views and values that Reginald Rose demonstrates in 12 Angry Men the most important one being that prejudice constantly affects the truth and peoples judgement. As the jurors argue between themselves as to whether a young boy is guilty of stabbing his father it is shown that “It’s very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this.” This is most evident in the way juror #3 and juror #10 come to their decision that the young man is guilty as they bring in there prejudice against young people and people from the slums to make their judgement without considering the facts of the case. Rose uses juror #8 who can see the whole trial because he is calm, reasonable and brings no prejudice as a prime example of what a juror is supposed to be like.
Juror #10 is the character who brings in the most prejudice to the jury room as he has formed his decision