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Twelve Angry Men is a very interesting play about an unfortunate young man, who was convicted of killing his dad. The worst part was, the young man was only nineteen, and his life was just starting. The jurors listened to all the evidence, then came the hard part, making the decision: guilty, or innocent. Eleven jurors said guilty and only one said innocent. There was a lot of peer pressure involved. I decided to write about different peer pressures three of the jurors used.
The three jurors I picked are juror # 10, juror # 7, and juror # 8. The first juror I want to write about is # 10. Juror # 10 was using a lot of sarcasm, whenever he was trying to prove his point, or prove someone else wrong. I think that this method of peer pressure is one of the most powerful ones.
I believes so, because when you are embarrassed in front of 11 other people (in this case jurors) you do not know, really lowers your self-esteem. It may lower it to the point where you will say guilty, eve though deep down inside, you will feel that the person is innocent. This is a quote I picked to illustrate sarcasm skillfully used by # 10: "You " re a pretty smart fellow, aren't you?" I think this one sentence could really put anyone down, and make anyone feel embarrassed, and maybe stupid. Another juror I decided to write about is # 7. He was muscle flexing most of the time. Muscle flexing means, he was raising his voice, even screaming at everyone, as if he was the boss.
Whenever # 8 was trying to present reasonable arguments to the rest of the jurors, # 7 would start screaming, even jumping out of his chair, calling seven crazy. Although a lot of evidence was really convincing, he tried to prove it unconvincing and use sarcasm to convince other jurors otherwise. One example of # 7 using sarcasm would be this quote: "Why don't we have them run the trial over... " I think this quote clearly shows that juror # 7 is trying to convince other jurors, that court's evidence proves the young man is guilty without reasonable doubt. Also to break # 8 's spirit he used name calling, another kind of peer pressure. I believe this is a very good example: "The boy is guilty pal, like the nose on your face. " The third and last juror I picked was # 8, he was not using sarcasm, nor was he muscle flexing, he was using reasonable argument, which helped him convince all the jurors that the young man was innocent.
He did not try to convince anybody by screaming at him, on the contrary he tried to go over all the evidence, and he was using intelligent thinking, like trying to calculate exact times, and figure out the correct position of the switch-blade in the chest of the father. He was also trying to recreate a situation to see if indeed one of the witnesses on the stand was lying. Quotes like this one convinced me that # 8 was very wise and intelligent person: "If he heard anything at all, he still couldn't have identified to voice with the el roaring by... " (The el is a train) I believe Twelve Angry Men situation could happen in the real life, and I am almost certain it has already happened, however I do not know if the jury in the real life had someone as smart and intelligent as # 8. I am more than sure, that if it was not for # 8, the young man on the trial would be found guilty, and probably sentenced foe a first-degree murder. In my opinion peer pressure causes many jurors to change their decisions, and I think you have to be a very tough and determined individual to stay afloat when everybody else says: "guilty, guilty, guilty... "
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Research essay sample on Twelve Angry Men Guilty Guilty
