Drawing on the theories of philosophers of ethics including Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, Damaged Lives: Southern and Caribbean Narrative from Faulkner to Naipaul studies how moral skepticism harms ordinary human beings. In response to an indecisive and uncommitted culture, many writers from the American South and the Caribbean have sought unambiguous sources of order and belief. Damaged Lives shows how a yearning for conviction pervades the writing of William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Agee, Flannery O’Connor, Mary Hood, and V. S. Naipaul. This book will be useful in courses on modern American and Caribbean literature as well as in courses on ethics, American studies, and cultural studies.