Doubt In Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men

Theme is the most important part of a story because it is the message the author is trying to teach readers and they often use literary elements to demonstrate them to the readers One of the many themes is doubt. We are always trying to be right or we have opposing opinions with someone else and with that comes doubt. Doubt is the strongest theme in Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men in which he uses the character foils of Juror 3 and Juror 8 along with third person omniscient point of view, and authorial voice using Juror 8 to convey his theme. One of the first literary devices Rose uses is character foils. He decided to include character that were complete opposites. By doing this he was able to create doubt against all the jurors. It all started when Juror 8 raised his hand and voted “not guilty” and said, “There were eleven votes for ‘guilty’. It’s not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it” (Rose 12). By having doubt and wanting to look at the case from multiple perspectives, Juror 8 was able to start a conversation and. On the other hand, Juror 3 seemed to be convinced as soon as he walked to the courtroom. In the …show more content…
In the play we have lots of disagreement which initiates doubt between the jurors. They work together to break apart the case and come to a conclusion. Juror 9 came up with a logical suggestion when he proposed that the woman who said that witnessed the murder had dents on her noses from wearing glasses but could not have proposed it without Juror 4’s help (Rose 69). By working together and expressing their thoughts, the jurors were able to come to a unanimous decision. If it were in a different perspective like first person point of view, it would not be reliable as we are capable to forget things that occurred. This way all characters are involved into the discussion and arguments which created