Our Connection with Those Around Us Make Us Who We Are

There are many significant views and values that Reginald Rose demonstrates in ‘Twelve Angry Men’ the most important one being that prejudice constantly affects the truth and people’s judgment. It shows prejudicial opinions lead certain jurors to believe in the guilt of the defendant and others have strong racist beliefs affecting their opinions; in addition several jurors are reluctant to utilize their power to complete their task of finding the truth.
  First of all, prejudiced opinion can obscure the truth. Juror 3 has prejudiced opinions about the defendant as he sees him as a projection of his own ‘disappointing’ son. Juror three take the role of a ‘self-appointed public avenger’. He tries to convince other jurors to send the boy to the ‘electric chair’. Even when, everybody votes ‘not guilty’, he still insists that he believes the boy is guilty. He says “That Goddamn rotten kid. I know him. I know what they are like and how they kill you every day.” In these words, it shows juror three’s firm belief that he has got to ‘slap them down before they make trouble’. Therefore, he doesn’t give the defendant fair trail and obscure the truth and he thinks the boy same like his son who has broken his heart, so this affect his judgment.
  Secondly, obscure the truth also presence of the jurors is strongly racist. Juror ten is the character who brings in the strong racial prejudice to the jury room as he has formed his decision from the moment he saw the young boy and sees no reason for him to waste any time debating on whether the defendant is guilty. His prejudice comes from the fact he used to live in the “slums”, consider people like the defendant to be “trash” and he is sent to the reform school at fifteen years old. This is established when he states “these people are born to lie…..They don’t know what the truth is. They are different.” Juror ten never really considers the facts of the case only using them as a pretext to vote guilty and to leave early....