True, Genuine Forgiveness While many people let the wrongdoings of others swell a deep hatred within them, I believe that, regardless of whether the culprit offers an apology, true forgiveness begins in the heart of the victim, before any words are uttered, when they actively make the choice to let the events of the past go. Through the article, “Does the Justice System Neglect Forgiveness?”, the authors display the stories of the Tutsi survivors and the Hutu people as they began their reconciliation process following the horrific genocide in Rwanda during the spring of 1994. While summarizing their claim, the authors continue with, “Many Tutsi survivors have shown an impressive ability to forgive and thus have become reconciled with their Hutu perpetrators” (FeldmanHall and Sokol-Hessner 2). Although, in this example, the two …show more content…
Comparatively, with the seriousness of the crime the Hutu committed, anything of a lesser degree should not require someone to be quite as magnanimous as the Tutsi people proved to be. On the other hand, some individuals seem to believe that an apology remains essential to the process of forgiveness, as William Blake displays throughout his poem, “A Poison Tree”. After describing a similar situation the narrator encountered with a friend, the poem continues, “I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow” (Blake 3-4). In this instance, one might claim that narrator’s toxic resentment may have subsided had the foe offered a sincere apology, however, as shown in the previous circumstance with the friend, the narrator obviously showed a natural displacement to forgiving this wrong, as they simply resolved the predicament with the friend, but let their anger persist against their foe. As shown by the ending of the story, the protagonist’s innate tendency towards revenge on the enemy demonstrates his unwillingness to forgive. I believe that the most pure and genuine form of forgiveness should not require