The Naked and the Dead offers a panorama of characters, all of whom are caught up in a larger war effort they often struggle to understand. While the men try to follow orders and do their duty, they are frequently frustrated by the sense that they are denied a meaningful choice in what they do. Through the experiences of the ordinary soldiers, the novel examines the erosion of moral agency in war.  

Red’s desire to behave according to his own moral code forms a significant contrast to the other men’s sense of helplessness. Red attempts to assert moral agency on two significant occasions. First, he confronts Croft when Croft deliberately kills the injured bird Roth finds, calling Croft out on his cruelty. Second, he openly voices his suspicions over Hearn’s death and stands up to Croft during the pointless, grueling trek up Mount Anaka by saying the men will refuse to obey. However, on both occasions, the results leave Red feeling conflicted instead of empowered: He is embarrassed by Roth’s emotional show of gratitude and is unsure his intervention was worthwhile, and he backs down on the latter occasion when Croft threatens him with a gun. Red’s experiences suggest that even those who try to maintain moral agency in war are often ultimately thwarted. 

Martinez’s experiences speak to how some of the soldiers regain a degree of moral agency by confronting their conscience. While he dreads combat and fears being hurt, he takes pleasure in doing his job as a scout well. He envisions himself as protecting the other men, and this purpose motivates him to make his best effort. When he is scouting the mountain pass and finds himself embedded in the Japanese encampment, Martinez faces the dilemma of having to kill the Japanese soldier on watch so that he can escape undetected. He justifies his act of violence as survival, but he is nevertheless traumatized by the act and continues to relive the event in his mind. Instead of simply denying his moral agency by appealing to the necessities of war—as Croft and the General habitually do—he instead confesses to some of the others about what happened, easing his conscience by admitting to his conflicted feelings and sense of guilt.

The novel thus suggests that, while most enlisted men experience war as an erosion of their moral agency, acts of resistance can provide a potential antidote. While Red remains unconvinced of the worth of his acts, his courage and agency were important in breaking out of the passive obedience men like Croft exploit, even if he was ultimately unsuccessful. Similarly, Martinez’s guilty conscience suggests that, even if men in war have to kill or be killed, a sense of moral responsibility helps to remind one that there is still a degree of individual agency involved. The Naked and the Dead therefore implies that, while moral agency is often eroded in wartime, it does not have to disappear entirely.