Question

‘The Bet’ by Anton Chekov

Answer 1

Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Bet’ is a deep philosophical look at what life is worth, how much money is worth, and how being alone can change you. A wealthy banker and a young lawyer are having a heated argument at a party about whether the death penalty is more humane than life in prison. The banker bets two million rubles that the lawyer can’t survive fifteen years of being locked up alone. He does this out of pride and to prove his point. The lawyer agrees to the bet and gives up his freedom voluntarily to show how strong his mind and morals are.

The lawyer’s time in jail changes from a desperate attempt to pass the time to a deep, intellectual journey as the years go by. In his early years, he read and listened to simpler books and music. As time goes on, he moves on to more difficult languages, philosophy, and religious texts. The banker’s life, on the other hand, goes in the opposite direction. He starts to lose his initial wealth, and the thought that he will lose it all if the lawyer lives for fifteen years drives him crazy. After becoming greedy, the banker decides to kill the lawyer on the last night of the bet to avoid going bankrupt and being embarrassed by losing to a man he thinks is less important than himself.

The banker sneaks into the lawyer’s lodge on the last night and finds a broken man writing a farewell letter. The lawyer says in the letter that living alone for so long has made him hate the material world and the ‘vanity and falsehood’ of human life. He has learned so much that the banker’s millions no longer seem worth anything, so he decides to lose the money by breaking out of jail five minutes early. The banker feels deeply ashamed that the lawyer is more spiritual than he is, and he locks the letter away in a safe. He will always be haunted by the fact that he lost the bet and saw how greedy he was.