Reginald Rose's landmark American drama was a critically acclaimed teleplay, and went on to become a cinematic masterpiece in 1957 starring Henry Fonda, for which Rose wrote the adaptation. A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic belief in the U.S. legal system. The story's focal point, known only as Juror Eight, is at first the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not affected by their personal biases. Rose deliberately and carefully peels away the layers of artifice from the men and allows a fuller picture of America, at its best and worst, to form.
Reginald Rose
Twelve angry men
ePub r1.1
17ramsor 10.07.13
Título original: Twelve angry men
Reginald Rose, 1954
Diseño de portada: 17ramsor
Editor digital: 17ramsor (r1.1)
ePub base r1.0
Introduction
Our greatest American Philosopher, to my mind, was Eric Hoffer.
He was an immigrant kid. He never spent a day in school. He roamed the country during the Depression as a hobo and migrant worker. He wrote that some fellow from the Works Progress Administration rode into his hobo camp sometime in the thick of the Depression and said: “Who wants to work?” The volunteers were put on a flatbed truck and hauled some miles up into the mountains in California.
The WPA boss gave one man a compass and a map and said: “Build a road. Your road is to start here, and in three months I will meet you over there. Here are the specs. Take the tools off the truck and get to work.”
Hoffer wrote that that is just what they did. There was enough talent and know-how on the truck, he wrote, to’ve built not only that road, but to have built America. For that, he said, was quite exactly how America was built—a group of reasonably intelligent workers took a simple plan, formed an ad-hoc group, and used their common sense and group spirit to execute it well.
There are, I think, two Americas. There is that which we decry on reading the newspapers. “Those fools,” we say, of the group not of our political bent, “how in the world can they believe the nonsense they are spouting? How can intelligent people act that way?” This is the America of “them.”
And then there is the America we participate in—that fairly friendly and reasonable group of diverse interests and talents, happy to pitch in, the America of “us.” We see and participate in this group at the Little League, the Rotary, the Shul or Church, the block party, the sports bar—we speak its language in the conversation we strike up with the stranger in the airline departure lounge, in the chat with the other parents on the way to school, in the office jokes we share. This nonabstract, this real America, is a rather pleasant place. When we are not being actively divided—by religion or politics—we rest here in the default position of unity. Over time, we see, the reasonable often find a way to unite the seemingly irreconcilable claims of passion.
This process is the essence of our system of jurisprudence. The jury trial enshrines our belief in and our experience that the multitude of the wise is the treasure of the land. Most people, I believe, initially shun jury duty. The summons always seems to come at the least opportune time, and one might go kicking and screaming.
Once empanelled on the jury, however, one is subsumed by what one realizes is the essential component of American Democracy. On election day we vote, inwardly or openly maligning the other half of our society, those idiots who will not see the light. In the jury room we are humbled by the realization that there is no one home but us.
Here there are no hucksters, spending hundreds of millions on advertising, no stick figures throwing their jackets over their shoulder and grinning at the camera just like normal folks, no ginned-up controversies to enflame us against our neighbors.
In the courtroom we see a poor man or woman—perhaps a criminal, perhaps a victim—caught in the awesome engine of the State, and we are told that, for the period of our service, we are the State.
The lawyers can and will lie, elaborate, attempt to distract, embellish, and confuse; and nothing stands between the person in the box and the horror of an unchecked government except twelve diverse, reasonably intelligent people.
The jurors have been wrenched from their daily lives, and made to swear a terrible oath. This oath is of such strength that it makes that taken in the marriage ceremony seem—as indeed it may, sadly, generally prove—conditional.
The Bible abounds with adjurations against perjury. A vast amount of the Book of Proverbs deals with the Lord’s horror of false witness. “Partiality in judging is not good. He who says to the wicked ‘you are innocent’ will be cursed and abhorred.” “Witness not against your neighbor without cause,” “A false witness will not go unpunished,” “Do not favor the rich in judgment neither give preference to the poor.”
Sitting in the jury box we console ourselves for the loss of time and income, thinking, “Before God, that could be me on trial. If that were so, God forbid, I would want those in the jury to be as responsible as I pledge to be and as terrified of error as I am.”
The jury is that same group of individuals who can, through divisive words, be congealed into a mob; who can, through persuasion or art, form itself into an audience. The audience suspends its disbelief in order to receive entertainment. As, curiously, does the mob—which is merely an audience enflamed, and moved by its righteous wrath, to crime. But the jury sets aside its prejudices, to aspire to the highest state of humanity: the capacity to use reason to overcome animal passion.
They are instructed to apply the standard of “reasonable doubt.” Each member will, of course, interpret this finally indefinable notion in his or her own way; and this is the genius of the jury trial, that these idiosyncratic understandings and applications of this abstract notion must each be defended to the group. The untutored, diverse group must then apply its own communal understanding of an abstract concept to a set of debatable facts and conflicting presentations, and arrive at a unanimous conclusion.
Here the mega-state, outrageous in its multiplicity, absurd in the distance between manufacturer and end-user, between politician and voter, between entertainer and audience, is reduced to the size of a primitive clan.
The drama this clan acts out is immemorial. The clan asks: “What shall we do with X?” And the elders reply: “Hold him here, while we retire and deliberate.”
The protagonist of a drama is caught in circumstances not of his own making.
The hero of a tragedy discovers, at the play’s dénouement, that the affective circumstances he thought external to himself were actually brought into being by flaws in his own character.
Tragedy is the more difficult form to write, as it is a closed system. The tragedy must resolve (both for the hero and for the viewer) in revelation that the answer was before them all the time. This revelation, then, must be both surprising and inevitable. Any attempt by the author to mitigate the inevitable closed progression toward knowledge will weaken the tragedy. (The writer of the tragedy can not bring in conflicts and resolutions not brought into being by the hero’s character defects. He cannot advance the plot by whim.)
The writer of the drama, on the other hand, has a wide license. He or she may introduce, at will, external circumstances to beat the band: the hero may be assigned a physical illness, a rotten set of parents, the antagonist of an evil government or employer, or a socially precarious status. As these states are not of the hero’s own device (they are merely assigned), the tools to be used in their vanquishment may be more or less arbitrary.
Similarly, the very setting of the drama may be used for convenient effect. (Set Hamlet in a castle, a pawnshop, or a submarine, it’s the same play. The setting has no dramatic weight.)
Writers of the drama, on the other hand, may, to provide a catalyst, moor or abandon their protagonists in that space the very egress from which provides dramatic fodder. (The proverbial example being the group of snowbound travelers stuck in the inn or its equivalent, e.g., Bus Stop, The Petrified Forest, Dead End, Truckline Café, The Waters of the Moon, and, to stretch a point, The Cherry Orchard.)
These plays are all, generically, “gang dramas.”
That is, formally, they do not differ from their (generally coeval) counterparts on the comedy side, the films of the Marx Brothers. In the gang drama the protagonist or hero is split into many parts, each part (or character) standing for a different aspect of the hero’s consciousness.
These warring factions (as the opposed factions of the consciousness in the individual) must work from their initial irreconcilable positions, to find unity where none could have been suspected. (They may be aided in the struggle if “snowbound at an inn,” as they have conveniently been provided with “no way out.”) At the end of the gang drama, the individuals (the play and, thus, the audience) have seen unity established and, so, are made more whole.
In the bad version of this gang drama the audience is given the gift of a predictable ending: “Black people are people, too,” “Gay people are people, too,” “HIV-positive people are people, too.” This foreseeable, universally accepted message is a sop to the self-esteem of the audience, which has been deprived of the experience of revelation. Self-congratulation sends the audience out into the night in a state of euphoria that will not last past the end of the block. But the good drama (e.g., Twelve Angry Men) leaves the issue in doubt. It enmeshes the audience in the problems of the protagonists so that they may consider the arguments, now one, now the other, until, when hope is gone, persistence (of the author and of his or her creations) brings revelation, and the audience may leave the play surprised by the discovery of the possibility of peace.
Characters
1ST JUROR (FOREMAN)
2ND JUROR
3RD JUROR
4TH JUROR
5TH JUROR
6TH JUROR
7TH JUROR
8TH JUROR
9TH JUROR
10TH JUROR
11TH JUROR
12TH JUROR
GUARD
JUDGE’S VOICE
Setting —The jury room of a New York Court of Law Time— 1957
ACT I
The jury room of a New York Court of Law, 1957. A very hot summer afternoon.
It is a large, drab, bare room in need of painting, with three windows in the back wall through which can be seen the New York skyline. Off the jury room is a washroom with Washbasin, soap, and towels (visible on stage) and a lavatory beyond. A large, scarred table is center with twelve chairs around it. A bench stands against the wall and there are several extra chairs and a small table in the room, plus a watercooler, with paper cups and a wastebasket and an electric fan over the bench and a clock above the cooler and row of hooks for coats, with a shelf over it. There are pencils, pads, and ashtrays on the table. At night the room is lit by fluorescent lighting with the switch next to the door.
When the CURTAIN rises, the room is empty. The voice of the JUDGE is heard.
JUDGE’S VOICE ... and that concludes the court’s explanation of the legal aspects of this case. And now, gentlemen of the jury, I come to my final instruction to you. Murder in the first degree—premeditated homicide—is the most serious charge tried in our criminal courts. You’ve listened to the testimony and you’ve had the law read to you and interpreted as it applies to this case. It now becomes your duty to try and separate the facts from the fancy. One man is dead. The life of another is at stake. I urge you to deliberate honestly and thoughtfully. If there is a reasonable doubt—then you must bring me a verdict of “not guilty.” If, however, there is no reasonable doubt—then you must, in good conscience, find the accused guilty. However you decide, your verdict must be unanimous. In the event you find the accused guilty, the bench will not entertain a recommendation for mercy. The death sentence is mandatory in this case.
The door opens and the GUARD enters. He carries a clipboard with a list of the jurors.
I don’t envy you your job. You are faced with a grave responsibility. Thank you, gentlemen.
There is a brief pause. Sound of JURORS walking, talking.
GUARD: All right, let’s move along, gentlemen.
The JURORS enter.
The GUARD checks his list.
The 9TH JUROR, an old man, crosses, goes into the washroom, and exits to the lavatory.
The 4TH JUROR begins to read a newspaper. Several JURORS open the windows. Others move awkwardly about the room. There is no conversation for a few moments. The 3RD JUROR takes out some notes and studies them. The 2ND JUROR crosses to the watercooler, and gets a cup of water. The FOREMAN tears a sheet from a notepad and tears up little slips of paper for ballots. The GUARD crosses to the 12TH JUROR and checks his name. The 7TH JUROR crosses to the 4TH JUROR and offers him a stick of gum. The 4TH JUROR shakes his head.
7TH JUROR [turning to the 8TH JUROR]: Do you want some gum?
8TH JUROR [smiling]: No, thanks.
The 7TH JUROR vigorously chews a piece of gum himself and crosses to the 6TH JUROR.
7TH JUROR [mopping his brow]: Y’know something? I phoned up for the weather. This is the hottest day of the year.
The 6TH JUROR nods and gazes out of the window.
You’d think they’d at least air-condition the place. I almost dropped dead in court.
GUARD: OK, gentlemen. Everybody’s here. If there’s anything you want, I’m right outside. Just knock.
The Guard exits and in the silence the sound is heard of the door being locked.
5TH JUROR: I never knew they locked the door.
10TH JUROR: Sure they lock the door. What’d you think?
5TH JUROR: I don’t know. It just never occurred to me.
The 10TH JUROR crosses and pauses beside the FOREMAN and indicates the slips of paper.
10TH JUROR: Hey, what’s that for?
FOREMAN: Well, I figured we might want to vote by ballots.
10TH JUROR: Great idea! Maybe we can get him elected senator. [He laughs until he begins to cough.]
The FOREMAN looks at his watch and compares it with the clock. The 3RD JUROR takes a cup of water from the watercooler, moves to the 2ND JUROR, and looks around the room as he sips the water.
3RD JUROR [to the 2ND JUROR]: How’d you like it?
2ND JUROR [mildly]: I don’t know, it was pretty interesting.
3RD JUROR: Yeah? I was falling asleep.
2ND JUROR: I mean, I’ve never been on a jury before.
3RD JUROR: Really? I’ve sat on juries, and it always amazes me the way these lawyers can talk, and talk and talk, even when the case is as obvious as this one. I mean, did you ever hear so much talk about nothing?
2ND JUROR: Well, I guess they’re entitled.
3RD JUROR: Sure they are. Everybody deserves a fair trial. That’s the system. Listen, I’m the last one to say anything against it, but I’m telling you sometimes I think we’d be better off if we took these tough kids and slapped ’em down before they make trouble, you know? Save us a lot of time and money.
The 2ND JUROR looks nervously at the 3RD JUROR, nods, rises, moves to the watercooler, refills his cup and stands alone, sipping.
7TH JUROR [to the FOREMAN]: Hey, how about getting started here?
3RD JUROR: Yeah, let’s get this over with. We’ve probably all got things to do.
FOREMAN: Well, I was figuring we’d take a five-minute break. I mean, the old man’s in the bathroom…
5TH JUROR [to the FOREMAN, hesitantly]: Are we going to sit in order?
FOREMAN: I don’t know.
; The 8TH JUROR is looking out the window.
12TH JUROR [to the 8TH JUROR]: Not a bad view.
The 8TH JUROR nods.
What d’you think of the case?
The 8TH JUROR doesn’t answer.
It had a lot of interest for me. No dead spots—know what I mean? I’ll tell you we were lucky to get a murder case. I figured us for a burglary or an assault or something. Those can be the dullest. [He looks out of the window.] Say, isn’t that the Woolworth building?
8TH JUROR: That’s right.
12TH JUROR: Funny, I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never been in it.
The 8TH JUROR gazes out of the window. The 12TH JUROR looks at him for a moment then moves away.
7TH JUROR [to the 10TH JUROR]: Goddamn waste of time. [He laughs.]
10TH JUROR: Yeah, can you imagine, sitting there for three days just for this?
7TH JUROR: And what about that business with the knife? I mean, asking grown-up people to believe that kind of bullshit.
10TH JUROR: Well, look, you’ve gotta expect that. You know what you’re dealing with.
7TH JUROR: Yeah, I suppose so.
The 10TH JUROR blows his nose vigorously.
What’s the matter, you got a cold?
10TH JUROR: And how. These hot weather colds can kill you. I can hardly touch my nose. Know what I mean? [He blows his nose loudly.]
7TH JUROR: Well, your horn’s all right. Now try your lights. [He climbs on to the bench and tries the fan.] Oh, that’s beautiful, the fan doesn’t work. [He steps down.] Somebody take a letter to the mayor. “Dear Stingy…”
FOREMAN [about the fan]: Let me take a look at it.
The 3RD JUROR moves above the 4TH JUROR, leans over and scans the 4TH JUROR’s newspaper. The FOREMAN climbs on the bench and examines the fan.
It doesn’t work. [He climbs down.]
3RD JUROR [to the 4TH JUROR]: I didn’t get a chance to look at the newspapers today. Anything new going on?
Twelve Angry Men Page 1