The article is devoted to one of the most common stylistic devices for creating a comic effect – irony. The material for the study was the last novel by the outstanding writer of the first half of the 20th century M.A. Bulgakov “Master and Margarita”. The purpose of this article is to consider what stylistic devices the author uses to achieve comical and ironic effects in the novel “Master and Margarita”, creating images of characters. The article proves that the narrator of the satirical chapters often takes the pose of a Moscow joker who “feeds on” doubtful information coming from literary circles and ironically referring to it. The range of emotional assessments that the author gives to his comic characters is very wide: from acrid irony towards members of the literary association to humorous images of ordinary Soviet citizens. In addition, the article gives examples of how M.A. Bulgakov with ruthless irony exposes the emptiness and artificiality of official-clerical language standards, verbal cliches that hide the true, natural essence of phenomena. He seeks to reflect genuine reality, not distorted by the “crooked mirror” of official-bureaucratic phrases. Irony often interacts with satire. Satire is often clothed in an ironic form. In its various manifestations – from a murderous mockery to a bitter regret, a bitter grin – irony “participates” in the construction of satirical images. With the help of irony, the predominance of the “pure” author’s voice is artificially neutralized, its subjectively concluding role in the construction and evaluation of someone else’s word. The author’s irony forces the reader to search for subtext, in which the true author’s assessment of reality is contained.