The Arab of Camus's making is nameless, faceless, and referred to only as the “Arab.” Millions of readers only know Meursault's victim as “the Arab.” His existence is narrowed and compressed into an object—far from a living being—left for dead on the book's pages and the beaches of his colonized homeland. The Arab was flatlined by Camus's pen before Meursault shot him, rendered dead by an objectification that stripped him of a name or face, a past and present, which add flesh to figures and unfold objects into individuals.

DEFINE: Explains how narrative objectification—stripping a character of name and face—functions as a form of dehumanization.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 1172