12 Angry Men Going Beyond Perception to Reach the Truth

12 Angry Men is a film made during the McCarthyism era (a time when anyone perceived to be a communist would be subject to punishment without proper trials), which shows, through the words and actions of the 12 different Jurors, that the continuous process of trying to reach the truth requires the use of many pathways to knowledge and going beyond perception. The film shows us that while there are uses of perception as a way of knowing, there are also many limitations of perceptions as such and that getting beyond perception, and using alternative ways to try to reach the truth, can sometimes help us get closer to the knowledge we are looking for. Perception played a huge role as a way of knowing in the movie. In fact, since the jurors were actually not there during the incident of the murder, their judgement on whether the boy is guilty or not is based enormously on their perception of the evidence, witnesses and the suspect. Example of the jurors using perception as a way of knowing includes when Juror #9 (the old man) perceives that the man who claimed to hear the boy say Ill kill you at the trial was wearing an old torn jacket, had a limp, seemed ashamed of himself and was a quiet man, and from that perception, juror #9 gained the knowledge that this was an average old man in desperate need of acknowledgement. The old juror uses perception again as a way of knowing when he perceives that the witness at the trial had marks made by glasses on either side of her nose and therefore did not have 20/20 vision. Henry Fonda also made use of his perception skills as he noticed that the defence lawyer did not challenge the little things or cross check the evidence presented.

However, throughout the movie we realize how misleading perception can often be and the shortcomings of perceptions. One of the complications of trying to find the truth using perception is that perception is not only what we see and hear, but also what we want to see and hear. For example the old man who testified that he heard the boy yell Ill kill you wanted to hear those words (as hearing those words would gain him the acknowledgement he craved for). Another shortcoming of perception is that it is easily influenced by our pre-conceived expectations and experiences. We see this in the movie through the words of Juror #8, who perceives the boy as guilty because of his preconceived-expectation that they [people dwelling in slums] are all liars and truth cant be expected from them. Another example is the one of Juror #3, whose bad experience with his own child affects his perception of the accused boy. Another deficiency of using perception to gain knowledge is that everyone perceives things differently and since gaining knowledge cohesively was important in the movie (as the vote had to be 12-0), perception as a way of knowing did not seem adequate. An alternative approach of gaining knowledge used by the Jurors in the movie was logic. While perception is very often different for everyone, logic is more universal. Examples of using of logic as a way of knowing in the movie includes the scene when Fonda realises the womans testimony was questionable. Fonda makes good use of logic when he realizes that the woman usually wore glassespeople usually dont put on glasses at night ... so the woman wasnt wearing glasses and so couldnt possibly have seen perfectly 60 feet out her window. Logic was also used when Fonda merged the two testimonies provided by the defence and used one to refute the other. From the womans testimony, Fonda found out the train was making a lot of noise when the old man heard the boy say Ill kill you and usually when the train goes by people can hardly hear themselves think, and so Fonda concluded that old mans testimony

was very debatable. Logic is used by Fonda not only to refute the defence councils evidence and testimonies but also bring into attention new arguments in favour of the accused. For example, Fonda noted that the victims scar was made by a switch blade hitting downwards, and Juror #5 commented that anyone familiar with the weapon (such as the accused) would use it with a upward force and through the use of logic, Fonda gained the knowledge that it would have been highly unlikely that the accused boy used the switch blade and more likely that it was someone with no experience with such a weapon. This film is a great example of how getting closer to the truth is a continuous process, and is only made possible by looking for the truth through many different ways of knowing and not just one. The film shows us how different perceptions can be (as there is never an instance in which all of the men agree on any single perception throughout the film), and that often, the truth can be very different from what we perceive it to be (for example, in the beginning everyone perceived the boy to be the killer, but by the end, everyone had at least a reasonable doubt), and so getting beyond perception is a better way of gaining the truth than perception itself as shown in the movie. Word Count: 898