Analysis of Social Conflicts in Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men.

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha

ABSTRACT

Dalam tugas akhir ini saya menganalisis konflik sosial di dalam drama Twelve Angry Men karya Reginald Rose. Drama ini menceritakan tentang perdebatan para juri saat mengambil keputusan tentang bersalah atau tidaknya seorang terdakwa. Perdebatan menjadi sengit saat salah satu juri dari keseluruhan dua belas juri memutuskan bahwa terdakwa tidak bersalah sehingga keputusan bulat tidak dapat tercapai. Hal ini menyebabkan juri lain menuntut penjelasan mengenai putusan tersebut, namun semua penjelasan dan perdebatan justru memperkuat bahwa sebenarnya di kasus ini terdapat keraguan yang logis sehingga terdakwa harus diputus tidak bersalah.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Reginald Rose is the most well-known writer in the Golden Age of Television (Buchanan). The Golden Age of American television in the 1950s generally refers to the production of original and classic dramas created for live television during America's post-war years (Everett).Reginald Rose composed his first teleplay Bus to Nowhere for CBS's Studio One in 1951 and it was three years later that he became the head writer for that series and produced the work that turned out to be his masterpiece, Twelve Angry Men. (Buchanan)

I have chosen Reginald Rose’s play Twelve Angry Men, to be analyzed in my thesis. It is one of Rose’s best works. The story is based on Rose’s own experience in the New York City courtroom. He once commented on how he was inspired to write Twelve Angry Men,

“It was such an impressive, solemn setting in a great big, wood-panelled

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha overwhelmed. I was on a jury for a manslaughter case, and we got into this terrific, furious, eight-hour argument in the jury room. I was writing one-hour dramas for Studio One then, and I thought, wow, what a setting for a drama.” (Lee)

Twelve Angry Men is set in the jury room and the case is about a boy who is accused of killing his father. He is charged with the first degree premeditated homicide and faced with a death sentence. United States criminal court use jury trial that means the twelve jurors are responsible for deciding whether or not a defendant is

guilty of violating the law in a specific case. This is the standard type of jury used in

criminal cases in the United States. Their decision is known as a verdict and decides

whether a person is guilty or not guilty. (“Type of Juries”) The verdict must be

unanimous, which means that all the members of the jury should give the same verdict;

otherwise the trial will be repeated with a new jury panel. Whereas, in the Indonesian

legal system which is use bench trial the verdict is taken by the judge with the help of two

judge members. The jury gives a guilty verdict if there is no reasonable doubt and a not

guilty verdict if there is a reasonable doubt. According to the United States court system,

Reasonable doubt is a standard of proof used in criminal trials. When a criminal defendant is prosecuted, the prosecutor must prove the

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha beyond a reasonable doubt and the defendant should be pronounced guilty.

(“Reasonable Doubt”)

The strength of this play is the conflict. “In literature, a conflict is a literary element that involves a struggle between two opposing forces usually a protagonist and an antagonist” (“Conflict”). There are two types of conflict. The

first one is inner conflict, “In this case, the struggle actually occurs inside a

character, usually the protagonist, or main character. With internal conflicts, the character could be struggling with a decision he must make or with his own

weaknesses in his personality” (Janovsky). The second one is social conflict or

external conflict,

. . . struggles between the protagonist and some other force outside his body. The main type of external conflict occurs when the protagonist struggles against the antagonist, which is a character who mainly opposes the protagonist. However, other types of external conflicts can also arise due to other characters, acts of nature, or society itself in which the character lives. (Janovsky)

The conflicts in Twelve Angry Men are social conflicts, juror number eight as the protagonist tries to convince the other jurors who have a different view that there is a reasonable doubt in this case.

Statement of the Problem

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha 2. What is the cause of the conflict?

3. What is the resolution to the conflict?

Purpose of the Study

Based on the above problems, the purposes of the study are : 1. To show what kind of conflict happens in the drama.

2. To show the cause of the conflict.

3. To show whether the conflict is solved or unsolved.

Method of Research

The method I use in writing this thesis is library research. First of all, I read Twelve Angry Men play script by Reginald Rose as the primary text. After that, I obtain some data from the Internet to support my analysis of conflicts in Twelve Angry Men. In the end, I draw a conclusion from the whole discussion.

Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER THREE

CONCLUSION

After analysing the social conflict in Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men,

I would like to present the conclusion. In my opinion, the eight social conflicts show how the author represent the United States judicial system, he shows that on the one hand

maybe the system has a flaw because the jurors sometimes get swayed by their emotions

and prejudice in taking the verdict but on the other hand when juror number eight

successfully presents the reasonable doubt it reassure the audience that they can rely on

the system. The progress of how the reasonable doubt is developed can be seen in each of

the conflict.

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha In the second conflict juror number eight is able to present the exact kind of knife that is used to kill the victim. This knife is believed to be the only one of its kind by the group who votes not guilty. This conflict is the first reasonable doubt that juror number eight presents and it successfully convinces juror number nine to change his vote to not guilty. The third conflict gives the idea that one of the witnesses, the old man, might have lied. After juror number five hears the argument from juror number eight and nine, he starts to believe that there is a reasonable doubt in this case and changes his vote to not guilty.

The fourth conflict is a proof of strong reasonable doubt, because after this conflict three of the jurors change their vote to not guilty. In this conflict juror

number eight shows that the old man’s testimony cannot be trusted. In the court

the old man testifies that he is sure he can reach the door in his room in fifteen seconds despite his physical condition. But this testimony is broken when juror number eight reconstructs the event. After this conflict the vote is six to six. After the third vote, now there are five jurors change their vote to not guilty. It is a proof that juror number eight’s reasonable doubt is not just a feeling but it is based on the fact and it can be discussed.

In the fifth conflict juror number four tries to convince the other jurors that the boy is guilty. He thinks the old man might be wrong on some facts but he really sees the boy run downstairs. After this conflict juror number two changes his vote again to guilty. But for the group who votes not guilty this conflict is a

proof of doubt, because there is a 50:50 chance to the old man’s testimony.

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha successfully convinces three more jurors to change their vote to not guilty. The defendant is an experienced knife fighter and juror number eight proves that the stab wound in the victim is not from an experienced knife fighter. This makes the

fact about victim’s stab wound debatable and this is a room for reasonable doubt.

After the sixth conflict three more jurors change their vote to not guilty, and the vote now is nine to three in favour of not guilty. In the last conflict there are jurors number three, four, and ten who still vote guilty. Juror number four still holds one fact that makes him believe that the boy is guilty, while juror number three and

ten are just following juror number four’s argument. Later in the seventh conflict

the one fact that juror number four holds is also debatable. This makes juror number four and ten change their vote to not guilty. In the eighth conflict the last juror who still believes that the boy is guilty changes his vote to not guilty because he fails to give an argument.

After reading and analysing Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men, I found

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha the defendant guilty and send him off to death if one of the jurors has a reasonable doubt.

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ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL CONFLICTS

IN R

EGINALD ROSE’S

TWELVE ANGRY MEN

a thesis

submitted to the English Department of the Faculty of Letters

in partial fulfilment of the requirements

for the ‘Sarjana’ degree

NICO DEWANTARA 1141013

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LETTERS

MARANATHA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY BANDUNG

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text

Rose, Reginald. Twelve Angry Men. umass.edu. ₂₀₀₇. _Web. _{28 Apr. 2014.}

References

Buchanan, Jason. “Reginald Rose Full Biography.” nytimes.com. 2010. Web. 28

Apr. 2014.

“Conflict” literarydevices.net. 2014. Web. 24 May 2014.

Everett, Anna. “"GOLDEN AGE" OF TELEVISION DRAMA” museum.tv. 2016.

Web. 7 Sep. 2016

Janovsky, Angela. “What Is Conflict?” study.com. 2016. Web. 14 Sep. 2016. Lee, Barbara Stinson. “About the Playwright: Reginald Rose.” Bard.org. 2013.

Web. 28 Apr. 2014.

“Reasonable Doubt” legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com. 2016. Web. 3 Sep.

2016.

“Type of Juries” uscourts.gov. 2016. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.