Characters can be destroyed precisely by the very narratives meant to defend them

Evidence

The book insists that human beings are more—and more complex—than the simplified stories that are told about them. Even so, she ends up caught between the stereotypes, forced to play out an end that, it feels, might almost have been prescripted by the screenwriters of the movie her life story will surely become. … There is a sense that by embracing her fate, the Doll, with no way out, has finally turned into the murdering madwoman the press have invented. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 357

Categorization

• DEFINE: This isolates Morey’s diagnostic crux: a novel that insists on complexity yet seals its character inside the stereotype it critiques risks reinforcing the very frame — the key tool the reader wants for distinguishing Hamid from Naqvi.
• XREF: None