fice of the single victim becomes the panacea that prevents the society from self-destruction (225).
Girard also provided an explanation for the community's failure to recognize the violent nature of its action. To the people, the descent into a brief period of frenzied violence against the victim is "too terrifying and too transitory for the community to accept it as issuing from within itself" (134). Therefore, rather than take responsibility for the horrific nature of their actions, the people transform the killing into a holy act that is meant to take place to restore the peace and harmony of the society, as though it were an act of "divine intervention" (134). Therefore, the people in the human community do not acknowledge the fact that the victim who is endowed with holy powers has really been sacrificed to sate the desire for violence of the collective. The surrogate victim must die in order to ensure the rebirth of the new social order (Girard 225).
When conflict and violence erupt again, the community repeats the experience of imposin
...