Twelve Angry Men Standing Alone Essay

Standing up alone for what you believe is right is a hard thing for anyone to do, adults in a jury or teenagers in high school. Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose details the deliberation of a jury over the fate of a sixteen year old boy accused of killing his father. When the jury first attempts to take a vote on whether the verdict should be innocent guilty, the vote is eleven to one in favor of guilty with Juror Eight standing alone on the side of innocence. He then proceeds to prove to the other jurors why the boy is innocent using the evidence presented during the trial as well as his own arguments. Twelve Angry Men should be read in schools because it demonstrates the need to make decisions based on your personal morals, make non-prejudiced …show more content…
A large part of the conversations in this novel were circular, anger driven, arguments that brought no progress as far as coming to a verdict that was unanimous as shown by the Foreman saying “All right, let’s stop all this arguing. We’re wasting time here.”(18). As a teenager, these arguments happen more often than not and are acceptable at a high school level. However, when entering college and the adult world, people want to have meaningful conversations that don’t waste time because everyone has something better they could be doing. In this book, this idea is shown by the aggravation that becomes noticeable when progress isn’t being made. At one point the Foreman notes that the conversation is getting out of hand and says “Ok, let’s stop the yelling. who’s got something constructive to say?”(27). This is immediately acted upon by all the Jurors because no one really wants to be there longer than they have to. The most important difference to note here is that nobody wants to spend an excessive amount of time there, but they are also not willing to sacrifice their personal beliefs to leave sooner which is an important distinction to