Juror 4 example essay topic

Having the power to decide whether a man lives or not, is a great responsibility that you cannot just decide on irrelevant material, but put a lot of thought process into the matter at hand... This responsibility is taken by twelve men in a trial for murder in the movie Twelve Angry Men. These men are assigned to look at facts and hear witnesses to the murder and then decide if the man is guilty or not. If found guilty, they will punish him with the electric chair. Many of these men, called jurors, all of the jurors but one were convinced that the defendant was guilty, but a single man had the power, persuasion and intelligence to change their way of thinking and finally he made them realize that the man was not guilty at all. We can see that everybody in the jury had a very different way of thinking and a different way to interpret the thing said at the trial.

For example juror eight thought that the defendant was guilty at first, but he wasn't ready to charge a man with murder without looking closely into the facts. Juror 4 in the contrary, he just looked into the facts as they were told. Both of these men were very intelligent, but they had a different ways of seeing things and that is why they had a different opinion on the trial. Juror four was a stockbroker; he was very wealthy and very intelligent.

He always knew how to talk and how to make his opinions very clear. "I don't see any need for arguing like this. I think we ought to be able to behave like gentlemen". Juror 4 page 186. He thought of himself as a better person than every body else in the room, this is one of the reasons he was so hard to convince.

We can see this since the beginning of the play when every body got into the room and started talking to each other. Juror four just sat down and didn't talk to anybody. Juror 3 even tried to get a conversation with him asking about the paper and he replied in a superior way when he said that he was looking at the stocks. He showed us the way he thinks about himself when he stated his points (his tone of voice showed his superiority). He had his point and thought that it was the most intelligent thought of all and thought that every body was stupid because they didn't follow his ideas.

He never thought that someone would think more than him and get a better perspective of the scene. He also showed us that he felt superior when he never takes his coat of. The room was very hot and every body took their coats off but he didn't because it's a way that he feels more professional and more respectful. He was trying to show that he has no discomfort with it because he always wears a suit and he is used to have it at all times.

It was like a way to show his pride and even if he was hot, he wasn't willing to take it of. Unlike juror 8, he looked himself as an equal to every body; he respected every body's opinion and put in consideration what others had to say. He was always trying to motivate everybody to give their opinions. He talks with respect to everyone and talks in a simple way.

Even though he is also a professional and very well educated like juror 4, he takes of his coat which makes him seem like the rest of the jury. At the beginning, unlike juror 4, he talks to everybody about personal things, we see this when he is at the window and he starts talking to juror 11. He is always socializing no matter who the other person is, even in the bathroom, he talks to two men and even tries to make them make sense of why he is doing what he is doing. Another aspect of juror 4 is that he just kept thinking that the facts were there and that they determined the guiltiness of the defendant. "If we are going to discuss this case let's discuss the facts" Juror 4 page 186. We are shown this when he starts saying that the boy said he was at the movies but he couldn't even remember the movies he went to see.

He thought the boy was lying because everyone who goes to a movie has to remember what they had seen and that was a fact for him. He didn't accept that the boy might have been in shock and couldn't remember. He stays with this idea about facts until the very end. He had to be convinced with facts.

We see this when he says that their was a witness who saw the murder and that was everything he needed to know. The facts about the witness actually being able to see were the facts that made him change his mind, but still the had to be facts in order for him to believe them. Juror 8 was a man of justice; he was not willing to prosecute a man without analyzing the facts deeply. "I'm not trying to change your mind.

It's just that we are talking of somebody's life here. I mean, we can't decide in five minutes. Supposing we " re wrong?" Juror 8 page 184. Although he believed the man was guilty at first, he stated that he hadn't had a fair trial because he didn't have a good lawyer. "I kept putting myself in the place of the boy. I would have asked for another lawyer, I think".

Juror 8 page 192. He analyzes every fact and gets a possibility out of it and that is how he ends proving his innocence. Through out the whole play he shows his way of looking into the facts. For example when he even went to walk around the place and bought a knife that looked just like the murder weapon. He analyzed that anybody could have that knife no just the boy. Also when he analyzes the testimony of the old man.

He ends up making a recreation about it to show that there might have been a chance he couldn't look well enough to see who the murderer was. Also at the end, with the help of juror 9, he analyzes the woman's testimony and ends up proving that the woman couldn't see well because she didn't have her eye glasses on..