Comparative Essay - To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men

[tomatosauce]

Any ideas/thoughts? My feedback from english essays often suggests I need to see deeper into topics - therefore ANYONE out there who knows both Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and the 1957 Twelve Angry Men film... I'd love your views!

Our topic: Both ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘12 Angry Men’ explore the idea that prejudices held by individuals and societies can get in the way of the truth and have catastrophic consequences. Discuss.

[fun_jirachi]

Any ideas/thoughts? My feedback from english essays often suggests I need to see deeper into topics - therefore ANYONE out there who knows both Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and the 1957 Twelve Angry Men film... I'd love your views!

Our topic: Both ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘12 Angry Men’ explore the idea that prejudices held by individuals and societies can get in the way of the truth and have catastrophic consequences. Discuss.

I may not be the best person to reply to this seeing as English is a total lottery for me, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

So I'm going to go ahead and assume you've read TKAM and watched the film of TKAM (the one with gregory peck) and 12 Angry Men.
With TKAM, I'd be looking at Tom Robinson and Boo Radley, and their images (stereotypical black man --> rapist, felon) and (mysterious white guy who remains sheltered, rumours emerge about his reason for hiding, reasons get twisted --> murderer etc.). Prejudice shown by the Ewell's especially and in the case of Radley the general public really screw them both over; tom robinson is innocent, and the truth never gets out because all the white jury reckons he actually raped Mayella, literally just cos he's black, getting wrongly sent to prison and then ofc dying. Radley is a sort of different story, he like doesn't come out, and I guess to an extent the rumours about him with the newspaper and all that jazz force him further into reclusion, and nobody thought he was capable of defending jem and scout like he did at the end. despite that, he is forced to continue to shelter himself. so in both cases, the prejudice and judgement, stereotypes already in existence, screwed them both hard, but tbh tom harder, and mayella and bob never get convicted, and the truth never gets accepted even though everyone knows what happened

With 12 Angry Men, the kid is from a slum and there are all sorts of stereotypes associated with that. The jury are a bunch of idiots as well, one guy just wants to get out of there, people voting guilty based on his background (the guy i think he's number 10? 11? but probably 10), others just hop on the hype train but yeah you get my drift. i think the last guy to vote not guilty was also a bit held back by his prejudice for kids cos of personal experience, and that can also get in the way of his perception of the truth in conjunction with other prejudice on the boy like racial prejudice etc etc. because of this, their judgement is clouded and they just vote guilty for the sake of it, resulting in an initial miscarriage of justice, even if the end result wasnt catastrophic.

I hope I helped, sorry if I didn't! Everyone please feel free to expand!!