Ethos, Logos And Actions In Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men

In his play Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose brings us back in time to 1957, to a jury room of a New York Court of Law where one man, Juror #8, confronts the rest of the jury to look at a homicide case without prejudice, and ultimately convinces Juror #2, a very soft-spoken man who at first had little say in the deliberation. Throughout the play, several jurors give convincing arguments that make one think about whether the boy is “guilty” or “not guilty.” Ultimately, one is convinced by ethos, logos, and pathos. We can see ethos, logos, and pathos having an effect on Juror #2 as he begins as a humble man and changes into someone brave at the end. Although all three modes play a part in convincing Juror #2, pathos is the most influential because …show more content…
Juror #2 is a bank clerk. A bank clerk usually has a lot of responsibilities like “recording and organizing loan information, preparing the monthly balance sheets of checking customers, and working on international accounts”(“Bank Clerk Job Description”). They also tend to work alone. It is Juror #2’s first time doing jury duty and he begins to face the opinions of many men, including the very forceful Juror #3. He is the first person to talk to Juror #2 about the case. He asks, “How’d you like it?” in which Juror #2 responds mildly, “I don’t know, it was pretty interesting”(Rose 7). Juror #3 then says that he was “falling asleep” and that he has done jury duty many times before and that it amazes him that lawyers can talk so much about nothing. Contradicting his opinion troubles Juror #2 and causes him to respond meekly. He also does not have a lot of power in the room, which contributes to his guilty vote. When the foreman said, “All those voting “guilty” raise your hands,” Juror #2 immediately looks around the room and saw some hands raise and then raises his own hand (11). Because of his unassertive personality, he is vulnerable to the other juror’s opinions. Although he is extremely timid, he starts to gain his voice because he is starting to get tired of being pushed aside by Juror #3 and begins to participate …show more content…
Some of the arguments and issues with the case that he seems to care most about are the knife Juror #8 bought that is similar to the murder weapon and how fast it took the elderly man to get to the door. In Act 1, Juror #4 begins to explain that the knife used is very unusual. That even the store-keeper that sold the knife had never seen a weapon like that before. Juror #8 then argues that someone could have possibly gotten a knife similar to the one the boy had and then “reaches into his pocket and swiftly withdraws a knife...they are exactly alike”(23). Juror #2 finds it “interesting that he’d find a knife exactly like the one the boy bought”(24). Afterwards, the 8th Juror suggests that the elderly man, one of the witnesses, lied because of the point Juror #3 tried to make. Juror #3 says, that the elderly man “[ran] to his door and [saw] the kid tearing down the stairs fifteen seconds after the killing”(42). Juror #8 then suggests that the elderly man could not have done that because of his stroke. He then decides to recreate what the elderly man said he did on the night of the murder. Juror #2 seems really interested in this argument and even volunteers to help with the timing of the experiment. In the beginning of Act 2, the jury decides to vote once more. At the time, Juror #2’s vote was “not guilty.” Even though Juror #2 changes his vote to “not guilty,”