“Moral Injury in Literature” Joshua Pederson

In this article literary and trauma theorist Joshua Pederson introduces the category of moral injury (MI) as a model of analysing the psychological torment experienced by perpetrators in the aftermath of committing atrocious acts, to the field of literary studies. The article provides a discussion of MI’s diagnostic definition, followed by an analysis of its manifestations in three literary works – Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), Camus’s The Fall (1957), and Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds (2012). 

Considering the social tendency to conceive of trauma in relation to victimhood, Pederson addresses the ethical unease stirring from drawing on the same category to refer to the pain resulting from committing acts of perpetration and the suffering of the victims. Although the phenomenon of perpetrator trauma has been clinically recognized since 1980, the acknowledgment of perpetrators’ psychic suffering remains a source of ethical unease in the popular consciousness, being associated with the betrayal of the real victims’ memory (Bond and Craps, 120). Pederson draws on the recently redefined diagnostic category of moral injury as an alternative model of interpreting the psychological torment resulting in the aftermath of “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” (Litz et al. qtd. in Pederson, 46). Although close to PTSD and trauma’s symptomatology, moral injury has been recognized as a separate psychological condition. Pederson argues for the benefits of examining its manifestation in literature as distinct from trauma, allowing literary critics to “accurately attend to fictional depictions of real psychic pain of perpetration” while preserving trauma’s link with victimhood (Pederson, 47).

Moral Injury was introduced as a category in 1995 by Jonathan Shay in his volume Achilles in Vietnam, where he draws on both real-world examples from Vietnam veterans’ personal accounts and Homer’s Iliad to characterise the psychological effects of witnessing an authority figure’s moral breach. For instance, MI can be experienced by Vietnam veterans who have witnessed a commanding officer repeatedly sending a low-ranking soldier he doesn’t like out on the most dangerous patrols (45). More recent research has suggested a broader definition of the term which covers not only the witnessing of the violent act, but also one’s complicity or failure to prevent it. Pederson outlines the symptoms of moral injury, grouping them into four clusters for ease of identification in the subsequent literary examples: (a) anger; (b) social isolation; (C) poor treatment of the self and (d) demoralization. 

Pederson’s analysis of the way MI shapes literary narratives is informed by contemporary debates in trauma theory and literary studies scholarship. Close reading Dostoevsky, Camus and Powers’s novels through the lens of MI’s symptomatology, he provides a compelling new perspective to interpreting the characters’ psychological conditions in relation to their positions as perpetrators or bystanders. The article focuses on the opportunities opened by the MI category for expanding our understanding of the psychic aftermath of perpetration, as well as of the literary strategies for representing distinct realities of psychic pain, exemplifying the link between the moral breach and its affective and psychological aftermath, often unrealized by the character himself. According to Pederson, the ways in which literature utilises rhetorical techniques, imagery and diction, could help us “develop a more precise vocabulary for talking about the pain of perpetration” (48). His work demonstrates literary language’s potential for representing affective and psychological experiences elusive of ordinary speech and direct representation, similarly to Cathy Caruth’s argument for literature’s ability to mediate traumatic experiences. 

The discourse on moral injury’s representations, the problematics of its witnessing, the ethical responses to its manifestation and literature’s potential to “heal” it is carried on in his subsequent book “Sin Sick: Moral Injury in War and Literature” (2021). Pederson’s work forms a contribution to the field of perpetrator and literary studies, providing an access point to recognizing the divergences of perpetrator pain from the category of trauma in both its representational and experiential aspects. In complicating our understanding of the moral dimensions of the perpetrator figure’s internal world, his work opens opportunities for unlocking new layers of interpretative insight of literary works, manifesting literature’s capacity to represent the psychological and affective complexities of witnessing or perpetrating violent acts. 

Author of this entry: Bilyana Manolova

​​Pederson, Joshua. “Moral Injury in Literature.” Narrative, vol. 28, no. 1, 2020, pp. 43-61. 

Bond, Lucy and Stef Craps. Trauma, New Critical Idiom. Routledge, 2020.