Bu çalışmada, Eşek adlı öyküsü ele alınan M. Şevket Esendal, Türk edebiyatında 'durum öyküsü' olarak adlandırılan türün ilk temsilcisidir. Rus yazar A. Chekhov'a dayanan durum öyküsü bir olayı değil, günlük yaşamın herhangi bir kesitini ele alan; serim, düğüm, çözüm düzenine uyulmayan, merak ve heyecandan çok duygu ve hayallere yer veren öykülerdir. Esendal'ın eserleri günlük yaşamın, küçük insanların mücadelelerinin yansımalarıdır. Karakterleri düz, sıradan, küçük sorunları için endişelenen hayatın içinden insanlardır. İçinde yaşadığı hayatı gerçekçi bir şekilde gözlemesi, yazarın durum öykülerini oluşturmasındaki temel bakış açısı ve hareket noktasıdır. Bir başka deyişle yazar, dış dünyayı kendi gerçekliği içinde, 'mimesis'e bağlı oluşturma biçiminin sunduğu olanak ve sınırlara bağlı kalarak öykülerine yansıtır. Genelde metne, özelde yazınsal metne ve bu metinlerin ortaya koyduğu anlam çerçevelerine çeşitli çözümleme yöntemleriyle ulaşılabileceği bir gerçektir. Metin çözümlemesi, kuramsal bir temele dayanan uygulamalı bir etkinliktir. Temel kuramsal yaklaşımlardan biri olan metindilbilim, metinlerin dilbilgisel ve içeriksel olarak nasıl kurgulandıklarını belirler, bildirişimsel işlevlerini tespit eder ve bunları uygulamalı örneklerle gösterir. Bu araştırmada, Mustafa'nın eşeğini kaybetmesi ve tekrar bulmasının konu edildiği Eşek adlı öykü, metinsellik ölçütlerinden 'bağlaşıklık' ve 'bağdaşıklık' görünümleri açısından incelenmiş, metinin kurgulanış biçimi, dil kullanımları, motif ve izlek üzerinde durularak bir takım genellemelerde bulunulmuştur. Bağlaşıklık, metnin yüzey yapısıyla ilgili bir kavram olarak değerlendirilirken bağdaşıklık, metnin derin yapısının irdelendiği bir kavram olarak ele alınmıştır

In this study, M. Şevket Esendal, who is dealt with his short story titled Eşek, is the first representative of the genre called ‘case story’ in Turkish literature. Case stories going back to the Russian author A. Chekhov are stories, which are set on not a single case following exposition, climax and resolution order but any section of daily life featuring feelings and imaginations rather than curiosity and enthusiasm. Esendal’s works are the reflections of daily life and struggles of simple people. Their characters are people who are plain, ordinary and those who are worried about simple problems within life. Observing the life in which he lives in a realistic way is the fundamental point of view and starting point for the author to make up case stories. In other words, the author reflects the outer world on his stories, sticking to the opportunities and limitations offered by the generation style of ‘mimesis’. It is a fact that several analysis methods can be used to achieve a text in general, or a literary text in particular, and meaning frame revealed by these texts. Text analysis is an applied activity based on a theoretical framework. Text linguistics, which is one of the fundamental theoretical approaches, determines how texts are generated linguistically and contextually, identifies their communicational functions and presents them in applied illustrations. In this study, the short story titled Eşek narrating a boy, named Mustafa, who loses his donkey and finds it again was analysed in terms of cohesion and ‘coherence appearances and some conclusions were made by emphasizing the formation, language uses motif and theme of the text. While cohesion was regarded as a concept related with surface structure of a text, coherence was taken as a concept in which deep structure of a text is analysed. In this story, the topic is Mustafa’s losing the donkey and his finding it again. Mustafa has a break at the station on the way to salt. While eating the bread at the same time he thinks of the trains and suddenly he notices that his donkey is not near him. His whole world comes crashing around him he begins to look for his donkey; he cannot find it anywhere. He keeps the path to the village, moves a bit but he sees a shadow on the path and it is his donkey; he gets excited, rides his donkey and begins to sing, continues on his way. Although it is evaluated as a case story it is possible to determine its content scheme: It is observed that in the introduction Mustafa’s taking break and the disappearance of his donkey, in the body his searching and not finding the donkey and his setting out to go to his village, in the conclusion his finding the donkey and continuing happily down the road are narrated. Mustafa and the donkey form the characters of the story. It is not narrated anything about Mustafa other then his being Topal Durmuş’s son. Other characters in the story are qualified through some uncertainty structures such as ‘someone, another one and a man’; their names or identities are not told. The donkey is the most important figure in the story. The story is based on this figure and this figure defines the title. Though the story character, Mustafa’s thoughts are sometimes given in quotation as an interior monologue, the writer narrates the story as a person who knows everything. In this instance third person omniscient point of view can be thought. The time of the story is Mustafa’s break time and its setting is the station. Esendal uses a very plain, direct and clear language in his works. His narration is completely plain and direct. He is faithful to the vulgar tongue instead of stretching, abstracting and leaning language to evocations. He expresses those he wants to tell through word or dialogue. Thereby he leans his stories to the language and its power. Though he uses local expressions, the language of the text is plain, uncovered and comprehensible. Esendal adopts the peasants’ speech style in his writing as a style. His interest in the peasants is originated from his desire of reflection ordinary, simple peoples in the street to his works. In the text, subject and object elliptical clauses consisting of a single predicate attract attention as a stylistic characteristic of the writer. On the other hand the dialogues are transferred directly, the short clauses are given place and the clauses consisting of a single predicate are used. In general the simple past tense is used in the text and the simple present tense and present continuous tense are also used in the descriptions and interior monologues. In the text, the words selected from the same lexical field such as ‘railroad, train, wagon, machinist, machine and locomotive’ are collocated to reflect the station where the action passes, ‘donkey, felt, felt cloaks’ are collocated to reflect the major figure ‘donkey’ and the verbs such as ‘to take, to hide, to grab, to lose, to demand money, to pocket, to announce’ are collocated to reflect Mustafa’s opinion for his donkey. Author expresses the basic theme of the text by the maxim “If God wants to make happy the peasant he loses his donkey and later he helps him find it again”; the reader is not permitted to interpret. The author is inclined to deal with a small event in its section where it is realised instead of narrating an event whose beginning, end and knitting style are explicit. The classical ends don’t make a sense in his stories. In his some stories, the end loses completely its importance. Therefore the story ends unexpectedly. The final clause of the text ‘he went’ is equivalent to ‘it is ended’, which indicates that the text come to an end: He went = It is ended.