Moral Injury in Literature

This essay seeks to introduce moral injury to the field of literary trauma studies. Moral injury, a term coined by Jonathan Shay and elaborated upon by Brett Litz, is best understood as the psychic pain that sometimes follows a perceived moral breach. It is related to but distinct from trauma, and it manifests with a unique set of symptoms. The essay goes on to identify salient examples of moral injury in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), Albert Camus's The Fall (1957), and Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds (2012), and to trace some of the ways manifestations of moral injury might affect the form and style of literary texts.