Özet:

Chekhov's short stories are replete with various messages that may make the reader laugh and at the same time cry as they convey life's inner secrets hidden in the mind of every individual. Chekhov's short stories bring forth human beings' naked tendencies, desires, fears, happiness, and worries because the author's aim is to portray a human being as he/she is in reality. This study analyses Chekhov's short stories - namely, "The Death of an Official", "Joy", "Kashtanka", "A Chameleon", "Unter Prishibeyev", "Rothschild's Fiddle", "Ionitch", "Gooseberries", and "The Man in a Case" - in terms of the tools and functions of humour. The tools of humour in his prose fiction are irony, caricature, and defamiliarisation. As regards the functions of humour, they are satirising materialism and the demise of genuine communication between people in modern age, questioning the strict adherence to social norms and blind submission to authority, and showing the sharp discrepancy between people's expectations and reality.

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