A SHORT STORY BY ANTON CHEKOV

1. PREPARED BY
DR SHEELU SINGH BHATIA

2.  The Bet is a short story written by Anton
Chekov in the year 1889. This story is about a
lawyer and a banker who make a bet with
each other about whether the death
penalty is better or worse than life in prison.
The story has a twist ending.

3.  Chekhov became the father of the modern short
story because of a key secret weapon. He wasn't
just a writer, but in fact was also a full-time
practicing doctor, the smarty-pants. Why would
being a doctor be the secret ingredient to his
special writing sauce? Because Chekhov brought
the same kind of detached, objective, non-
judgmental flavor to his fiction that he used when
trying to get the bottom of his patients' problems.

4.  By taking out all the authorial heavy-handedness
that was all the rage with his fellow 19th century
realists, Chekhov made the short story a totally
distinct thing from the novel. Instead of being
shown examples of what to do and what not to do,
Chekhov's readers got totally unbiased, straight-up
slices of life instead. No pointing out good guys and
bad guys, no overbearing voice laying out the
meaning of everything. Instead? Just smooth and
laconic narration that would leave more questions
than answers.

5.  And so, in 1889, he wrote "The Bet," a story about
a banker and a lawyer who make a totally loopy
wager—whether one of them could stay in solitary
confinement for fifteen years in exchange for two
million rubles. We won't say any more but… there is
a twist ending. It's a super short, crazy deep little
number that's all about the simple things.

6.  A rich banker is remembering a party he hosted fifteen
years ago where a debate broke out about whether
capital punishment or life imprisonment is the more
moral punishment.
 The banker argued that life in prison is just a very slow
death, so it would be better to get the death penalty
and get it over with.
 A young lawyer argued the opposite—that any life is
better than death, even if it means rotting in prison for
decades.
 Uh oh. It's a stalemate. So the two made a bet—if the
lawyer can stand to be in voluntary solitary
confinement for fifteen years, the banker will pay him
two million smackers. Now that's a lot of dough.

7.  The banker set him up in a guesthouse—the lawyer
could get food, books, music, whatever he wanted
except human communication of any sort.
 At first, the lawyer seemed depressed, but soon began
studying vigorously, because you know, no Netflix in
19th-century Russia.
 First, he tackles languages and a bunch of things
written in them. Then, the Bible. Then, a crazy mix of
science, literature, and other seemingly random things.
Soon, the fifteen years is almost up, because there's no
better way to pass the time than reading a bunch of
obscure books, right, PhDs?

8.  In the present, the banker realizes that if the
lawyer wins, he won't be able to pay up the two
million. He's lost his banking fortune, and if he has
to shell out, he'll be totally bankrupt forever. The
only thing to do? Kill the lawyer before the fifteen
years ends.
 On the last night of the prison term, the banker
sneaks into the guesthouse. The guards aren't
there so he has no trouble slipping in.

9.  The lawyer is sleeping, and just as the banker is about
to finish him off, he sees that there is a note on the
desk.
 The note says that the lawyer has spent his fifteen
years experiencing all that life has to offer through
books.
 His conclusion? The material world is stupid and
worthless because we're all bound to croak in the end
anyways.

10.  To prove how much he rejects it, he puts his money
where his mouth is. By which we mean the
lawyer rejects the money altogether. He promises
to leave the cell five hours early to forfeit any
claim to the coin.
 The banker kisses the lawyer's head and leaves.
Phew, he doesn't have to murder the guy.

11.  The next day, the guesthouse guard reports that
the lawyer sneaked out five hours early.
 The banker takes the note forfeiting the money
and locks it in a safe.

12.  Death or Isolation?
 The setup is pretty much just the argument
at the party—what's better, the death
penalty or life imprisonment? There are
many ways to think about this, of course,
and the guests offer up some the possible
questions. For example, which one's more
moral for a government to do? Or, say, what
would a person be more apt to tolerate? Or,
which is less painful?

13.  The lawyer agrees to be locked up for fifteen
years (even though the banker's initial ante was
only five years), and the banker puts up two
million rubles. Who will win the bet? For a while,
looks like it'll be the banker since the lawyer is
all miserable in his little guest house, asking for
happy books and playing sad music to himself.

14.  The longer the lawyer stays, the more it looks like he'll
be the winner. He turns to really serious study—
languages, religion, and science—and seems pretty okay
in his makeshift prison. It's not like he's ever going to
run out of books.
 Meanwhile, the banker loses his fortune and starts to
freak out about coughing up the two million. Soon
enough he decides to murder the lawyer (hello, bad
idea). But just as he is about to do it, he finds a letter
in which the lawyer says that he rejects the money—
along with the rest of the material world. He's really
not a material girl, you see.
 Now that's a twist.

15.  No Murder Necessary.
 The banker is relieved not to have to kill
anyone. The prison warden later reports that
the lawyer sneaked out of the guest house
five hours before the fifteen years was up to
forfeit the money, which gears us up for the
quiet finale.

16.  The moral?
 Always Get It in Writing
 The banker takes the lawyer's letter, which
proves that he rejected the money, and
stashes it away in his safe. In case anyone
comes asking questions later.

17.  There are two major characters featured in
"The Bet": the lawyer and the banker, neither
of which have official names in Chekhov's
short story.

18.  The lawyer is seen to be persistent, intelligent and
self-motivating. He does not break down in the 15
years of imprisonment as the banker foretold. He is
intelligent by the virtue of reading so many books,
which reflects in his eagerness to associate with other
men, rather than claiming the final prize. The lawyer's
character is very dynamic. He starts as a young,
impatient person, ready to spend 15 best years of his
life for 2 million. His imprisonment changes his life
positively: he reads books, ponders over scriptures,
learns languages and plays the piano. His character is
reflected when he renounces the 2 million and settles
with just having proved his point.

19.  The banker likes to be in a position of authority and
likes to wield power over others, especially those who
happen to disagree with him. The character changes
drastically from the beginning of the story when he
seems to be very free handed as he easily bets to pay
two million and later, his lack of wealth drives him to
dishonesty and plan for murder. This also signifies the
weak character of the banker. He is very attached to
the materialistic luxuries of life and values human life
less than his luxuries as he plans on killing the lawyer.
He plans on killing the lawyer for money and nothing
but money changes his mind.

20.  The final twist in "The Bet" hinges on the idea that the
lawyer took all the knowledge he could get from the
many, many books he read in the prison, and turned it
into wisdom. In other words, he claims that the second-
hand info he gets from reading is pretty much the same
thing as lived experience, so he's been there,
done all of that. But he's not done. He also relies on
this version of experience to decide that… experience
kind of sucks. What hangs in the balance of this weird
transformation is whether the reader buys it—which
means we've just met a modern-day ascetic—or
doesn't—which means that solitary confinement has
robbed this sad man of his humanity.

21.  "The Bet" tests the convictions of a lawyer who claims
that any kind of life is better than no life at all by
subjecting him to fifteen years of subhuman existence,
trapped in a house with nothing but books for company.
Although physically comfortable, the lawyer is deprived
of one of the standard markers of being human—being
part of a community of other humans. As time goes by,
the lawyer is slowly driven to reject the rest of his
human existence as well. When he forfeits victory in
the bet for a life of spirituality or perhaps even suicide,
the story seems to point to the idea that without
interaction with others, our humanity cannot survive.

22.  As soon as one of the party people argues that a
government that can't restore human life shouldn't have
the right to take it away, well, we know that the theme
of sacrifice is going to be important in "The Bet."
Sacrifice turns out to be the most plausible way for the
banker to view the actions of the lawyer—and for the
lawyer himself to describe his own reaction to his
voluntary imprisonment. He agrees to throw a part of
his life away, to sacrifice his connection to the rest of
humanity in order to find some other level of
existence. But the story refuses to answer the obvious
question—does he succeed?

23.  "The Bet" might not actually have anything to say
about the death penalty, but it can certainly be
read as an experiment in solitary confinement.
Sure, most prisoners are fairly deprived, but how
can you figure out the effects of total isolation,
rather than plain old confinement? Here, a prisoner
has all the physical and intellectual comforts that
he could want, but he's cut off from any and all
human contact. What follows is the psychological
transformation of an already slightly unbalanced
man into a being that loses all touch with his own
humanity.

24.  By setting the action up as a bet, this story necessarily
ends up being a contest between the two men
involved. The one-upmanship is the reason for the bet,
the reason for the raised confinement length ante, the
reason for the banker almost committing murder, and
maybe even the reason for the lawyer's final twist of an
escape. In the end, though, "The Bet" refuses to in any
way rule on the wager at its center, leaving the reader
to decide whether anyone won or lost, and whether the
competition between the banker and the lawyer was
the strongest motivator for the actions of each.

25. The Banker's House
vs.
The Lawyer's Guest House Prison Cell

26.  Third Person (Limited Omniscient)
Genre
 Philosophical literature

27.  Matter of Fact,
 Objective,
 Dry,
 Unemotional