So I will start off this Essay by addressing the film, “12 Angry Men”, and the moral of the story which it brings to us. To begin, we have a Jury not so much contemplating the verdict of a murder trial, rather they are speaking in turn about why it is definitely a guilty verdict. Juror #8 however, speaks out against the group. He is not so sure that the suspect is innocent, but feels that it would be appropriate to talk about everything that happened before passing judgement. By doing this, he sets the entire room against him. The Juror’s bias opinion seemed to be solid, and uniform amongst the group… Still, he spoke out and got his message across. He introduced new ideas to contradict evidence given against the suspect, and still the room said guilty, and they continued to heckle him.

Over the course of the film, members of the jury began to side with the idea of the suspect being innocent. New contradictions of evidence made most of the room doubtful, and with a boy’s life on the line there could not be a reason to doubt the verdict, for they might be sending an innocent boy to his death.

By the end of the film, the one juror that stood out against all the rest became the prominent force in deciding the outcome of the trial. He got the respect of the jurors along with their attention. It became clear that the boy was innocent.

I know what you are thinking, reading this. You are thinking that this is a review of an old movie, no. You see there are aspects of these situations that happen every day in society. There once was a person that addressed this situation. His name was Plato, and the book which he talked about this is called “The Republic”.

In the book, Plato gives us a situation to ponder upon. He tells us a story of prisoners trapped in a cave. They were held there, bound up by the hands and legs, staring at the cave wall. Eventually, a figure came to be shown on the cave wall. Not knowing what this was, the prisoner disregarded as only a figure.

One day, one of these prisoners was cut loose. What happens when he cuts loose? He can not turn his head properly, it is stiff, hasn’t been moved in a very long time. He does eventually get to his feet, and what does he see? He sees light coming from beyond. The man makes his way towards the light source, which is of coarse the sun. Once he reaches it, it can only be imagined what he is feeling. This man has been in that cave, a prisoner, all of his life, without any natural light, but suddenly he sees the sun.

The man adjusts to what he is seeing, and notices nature. For the first time in his life, he experiences life itself. Here in lies the dilemma. A joy overpowers this former prisoner, and he has to do something with it. He has just seen the light. For a moment a thought flickers in the mans head to go back and tell the other prisoners in the cave about the light, to set them free, but hesitates, and the story ends.

You see, the cave allegory is a metaphor of life. The man was cut loose to experience it. His stiff neck, is a sign of his unknowing ignorance of life, and of coarse he is ignorant, he has yet to see the things he was about to, and so he turned his head. He began to walk towards the light, he sees the light, he knows there is something else beyond the cave and he experiences it. The sun being the chief good in this and in all situations, represents a responsibility. This responsibility is a responsibility to teach, about the good in which he has seen. The man must allow others to experience this, and allow them to teach it to others so all may experience.

The problem which I was speaking of before, is a general problem which people tend to have sometime in their lives. This man knows his responsibility to tell the other prisoners about the cave, but the one thing on this guy’s mind in the end, is the reception his news is going to have on the others. What is the reaction going to be?

We see in the film (“12 Angry Men”) the one mane that does stand up for what his beliefs are, and accepts his responsibility, and looks at the reaction he got from the others. This is the same thing, going on inside the cave prisoner’s head at the time when he experiences nature. Will he go back and tell them about everything he witnessed? If he did, would he be heckled like the juror in the film, or maybe even worse? We never do find this out, but we do find out the moral, and that is why I am writing this essay. I do not wish to finish the work of Plato, I only wish to experience his work and to elaborate on it.

As I said earlier on in my writing, situations like this happen just about every day. Some people decide to take the opportunity and follow their responsibility, others do not. You have to ask yourself, what would you do in a situation like this? Maybe this certain situation isn’t enough to get a reaction. What if I told you about a murder I committed? You have a legal obligation to report me. I am sure that you would feel that obligation and react upon it, or would you? Would you scared of me than?

Take another example if you would. You actually witness a murder. This murder takes place in the middle of “Queens” New York. The victim is 28-year old Italian-American girl, just getting home from work. She parks her car, and begins a walk to her apartment, along the way, a man jumps on her back and repeatedly starts to stab her. The girl lets out a scream of help, you hear it, you don’t do anything about because you know that somebody else must have already done something, but no, everybody else is too scared to make a move. This by the way is in the middle of the day, and later that day, the man comes back again to finish what he started, not just stab her again, but he cut off her bra and underwear and sexually assaulted the girl who was bleeding to death. Now, you are one of 38 witnesses that let Kitty Genovese die.

To conclude this essay I just want to ask you some questions. What would you do if you really did see this take place? Would you call the cops? Would you try to take down the murderer with a knife? Would you be scared to do anything in risk of your own life? This is what happened in that cave, and this is what happened in that jury room.