Analyzing Comic Features with an Approach to the Nature of humor in Anton Chekhov's Works and a Look at Cherry Orchard

Chekhov’s humor is characterized by the role of his characters and their worldviews in his dramas. Characters inChekhov’s dramas while being funny in some moments create a feeling of pity in the audience. This is the case with the most of characters created by Chekhov. On the other hand, he does not distinguish between the main and secondary characters as there is no inclination to heroism in his works. Characters are displayed in Chekhov’s dramatic works in an uncertain state when they are involved in creating unintentional incidents and events. Such uncertainty as a feature results in the funny and satiric situations. An awareness of this feature is of high importance for analyzing and performing Chekhov’s plays. This is a contradictory situation as the analyst or the performer is likely to be dragged into comedy or involved in tragedy on one hand or in comedy and humor in the other extreme. Having a serious look at the characters’ worldviews, this article explores Chekhov’s humor in his dramatic works and its findings can be used to avoid one of serious pathologies in analyzing and even reproducing his dramas and plays and eliminate misconceptions about the nature of humor in his works. For instance, exaggerating in creating comedies without a regard for the comic aspect of Chekhov’s dramas can affect negatively the analysis or the performance of such works and event create a false impression of the Chekhov’s humor and downgrade it to a kind of lampoon. As such, the present study by providing an analysis of comic features and especially humor in Chekhov’s drama with an emphasis on how characters are created, attempts to offer some implications and shed light into the nature of humor in his works. Accordingly, an exploratory-interpretive analysis is employed to assess the comic features in Chekhov’s dramatic works. The research model is “Cherry Orchard”, one of the eminent Chekhov’s plays, which probably can serve as the best source of data for exploring satiric features in the writer’s works. To this end, a library and a priori research method is used to assess the opinions based on the research model and provide the conclusions.