Coolie

Because Coolie is a work of social realism, Munoo is not conceived as a character. He is not rendered as an individual with particular motivation and a defining psychology. He is a type, a lesson intended to draw awareness to the plight of India’s impoverished and exploited working class. Like all of India’s coolies, Munoo does not dream but merely survives; Munoo does not act but reacts. Anand offers no physical description of Munoo, nor does he even give Munoo a last name. Rather, Munoo represents India’s poor, the millions locked by the country’s centuries-old caste system into short and unhappy lives without expectations, without access to meaningful employment or rudimentary education, and given no reason to hope for deliverance. As a type, then, Munoo follows a predictable pattern. He stumbles almost by accident into brief periods of happiness and contentment—as when he frolics amid the water buffalo and the wild birds of Kangra or jumps on the train out of Daulatpur, or when he first meets Ratan, or when he first inspects Mrs. Mainwaring’s spacious home—only to drop suddenly, through no fault of his own, into the dead spiral of misfortune.