The Death of a Government Clerk
You wouldn't think a story that ends with a man dying would be very funny -- but it is.
Well, it's quite possible Ivan Dmitritch Tcheryakov has been dead for a long time. One who worries so much about asking forgiveness for an accidental sneeze is not exactly beaming with life. Maybe the whole system which ranks people by importance is the culprit -- whatever it is -- it does seem very pathetic.
Except when one thinks about it -- a system like this exists today in many shapes and forms. Take Japan for instance, if you are a salary man in a big company -- you don't go home before your boss does -- even if that means reading a paper until your boss decides it's time to call it a day.
Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers relates the story of the Power Distance Index of different societies and connects it to several major plane accidents.
None of that is of course funny -- however Chekhov in this story reduces the dignity of the government clerk to such an absurd level that we can either cry or laugh.
Laughing is a lot easier.
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