First, the definition of "subject" and "object," in reference to a character, is considered to be closely related to equivalent conventions in grammatical usage. The "subject" is the driver of the action and thus, commits an action aimed at the "object." The "object" of course, receives the action and is in the passive position.
So, it would appear that Harun in The Meursault Investigation is the "subject" in his killing of Joseph Larquais. Kamel Daoud's novel is a re-telling of Albert Camus' novel The Stranger. In The Stranger, a character named Meursault murders an Arab, who remains nameless. In The Meursault Investigation, Kamel Daoud names Camus' unknown Arab, Musa. Daoud's story is told from the viewpoint of Harun, Musa's brother.
In The Meursault Investigation, Harun is bereft of his brother, and their mother is shattered by the senseless murder of her son. Both suffer the added grief of burying Musa symbolically; they cannot claim his body because he has no name, and the funeral is held sans a body, with “an empty grave and a prayer for the departed.” Both Harun and his mother can make no sense of Musa's murder; it's not quite clear why Meursault felt compelled to pump five bullets into Musa.
Harun gets his revenge, however, when he kills a Frenchman, Joseph Larquais, at the instigation of his mother on a summer's evening. To Harun, this irreconcilable act of murder is a catharsis of sorts. Because Harun is the one performing the action, he is the "subject," the one who drives the action. Harun is eventually exonerated for his crime, unlike Meursault in The Stranger, but he later finds himself ambivalent about his acquittal.
In The Innocent, Leonard Marnham is an English engineer who has been sent to work in a joint British and American surveillance project; the purpose of the project is to uncover Russian intelligence secrets. Leonard himself is a socially awkward and sexually inexperienced man. His American superior, Bob Glass, takes him under his wing and tells him to always act like he's visiting a radar station when he's working. In actuality, what Leonard is really working on is an underground surveillance project that will allow the Allied powers to intercept all enemy communications that link to the "high command in Moscow."
Of course, it's not all work and no play for our protagonist, and one evening at a bar, Leonard's American counterparts encourage him to make his move on a woman named Maria Louise Eckdorf. Maria is a typist and translator who works for the British in a vehicle workshop; she and Leonard immediately take to each other (it is Maria who introduces Leonard to the delights of eroticism), but Maria has an uneasy relationship with her alcoholic ex-husband, Otto. When Otto discovers Leonard's presence in his ex-wife's life, he's furious and proceeds to brutally assault Maria.
Things come to a head when Otto eventually turns up at Maria's apartment; he claims his right to live there, since both of them applied for the apartment when they were still married. For her part, Maria is furious that Otto is trying to insinuate himself into her new relationship with Leonard; she shouts insults at Otto and demands that he leave. Incensed, Otto attacks Maria. Leonard steps in to quell the violence, but he soon becomes Otto's target.
Here, we can can say that Leonard is the "object" of Otto's violent action. In the end, to defend himself from certain death, Leonard grabs hold of a cobbler's last (a device shaped like a human foot, used for the manufacture and repair of shoes) and smashes it into Otto's skull. From the text, it appears as if Maria may have put the last within Otto's grasp; at the very least, both participated in Otto's murder. So, Leonard behaves as an "object" when killing Otto because it is a defensive act in response to Otto's violent attack.
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