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Meursault’s victim, a man only referred to as “the Arab,” is the brother of Raymond’s mistress. Along with some other Algerian men, the Arab goes to attack Raymond in retaliation for beating up his sister. By the time Meursault shoots him, he is lounging peacefully on the beach and only brandishes a knife when he notices Meursault approaching with a gun. The way the novel refers to this character and all other Algerians as simply “the Arabs” portrays them as a force or an inscrutable threat, devoid of individuality or motivation. However, it is the Arab whose behavior we can understand, given the context of Raymond’s abuse, whereas it is Meursault, a French man, who engages in senseless violence. The supposed civilized colonial order the French impose upon Algeria is thus revealed to be yet another false way of assigning meaning to the world.
Notably, throughout Meursault’s entire trial, we learn nothing about the Arab: not his name, his family, nor anything else to humanize him as a victim. Instead, the prosecutor focuses on Meursault’s apparent lack of grief over his mother’s death. Conspicuous absence of mentions of the Arab throughout the trial highlights the arbitrary way that value is placed on human life. For all the times the court insists that a loss of human life is something meaningfully terrible, it places little value on the Arab’s life. In the eyes of the court, it seems a French woman dying in a nursing home is tragic, but an Algerian man’s murder is an afterthought. The absurdity of the entire situation highlights the hypocrisy inherent in how society ascribes meaning to some lives and not others, playing into the theme of absurdism.
