The Bet

“Capital punishment and life imprisonment are equally immoral, but if I were offered the choice between execution and life in prison, I would of course choose the second. To live somehow is better than not to live at all.”

The lawyer states his opinion when asked. As in the previous quote, this passage is significant because it foreshadows, in hypothetical form, the lawyer’s acceptance of the bet, introducing the story’s central question about the meaning of life.

“If you’re serious […] I’ll bet I can sit out not five but fifteen.”

The lawyer shows his arrogance and impulsiveness by raising the length of the term in the banker’s bet three times without asking for more money. He’s not driven by greed as the banker believes. As shown in this quote and his final renunciation of the two million, he’s driven by his desire to prove himself morally superior.

“Don’t forget, poor fellow, that voluntary confinement is much harder than compulsory. The thought that you have the right every moment to go out into freedom will poison your whole existence in this cell. I pity you!”

The banker makes an accurate prediction of the type of existence the lawyer will endure. Unlike prisoners confined by the state, the lawyer is confined only by his determination and pride. The knowledge that he is his own jailor robs his confinement of meaning and dignity.

“[The contract] obliged the lawyer to sit out exactly fifteen years, from twelve noon on November 14, 1870, to twelve on November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on the lawyer’s part to break the contract, even two minutes before the term was up, would free the banker of the obligation to pay him the two million.”

The story situates us in time, four years before its publication. The emphasized word (italicized in the source English translation) foreshadows the plot twist in which the lawyer breaks the terms of the agreement by not leaving his prison exactly at the agreed time, but five hours before.

“The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different languages, but the same fire burns in them. Oh, if you knew what unearthly happiness now fills my soul because I am able to understand them!”

Halfway through his confinement, the lawyer writes this in a letter to his jailer, showing signs of spiritual transformation. The “unearthly” joy he feels is not based on things he’s experienced but rather on what he’s studied. He’s come to see humanity as a cohesive whole united by the same passions. He later abandons this humanistic perspective in favor of a more nihilist view of reality.

“Then, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat motionless at a desk and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a man who, in the course of four years, had gone through six hundred sophisticated volumes, could spend nearly a year reading one easily understandable and not very thick book.”

In this sarcastic comment, Chekhov hints at his loss of faith. While the New Testament may contain “easily understandable” passages, people of faith read it over and over because it’s difficult to live by its principles. The banker has no sense of the transformation undergone by the lawyer during his confinement.

“His reading made it seem as if he was swimming in the sea in the midst of broken pieces of a shipwreck and, wishing to save his life, was greedily clutching at one piece of wreckage, then another!”

The lawyer’s voracious reading is compared to the image of a man fighting for his life after a shipwreck as if books helped him stay afloat. Only by reading can he save himself from death. As he had no clear view of life when he began his imprisonment, he uses the time to make sense of life and the choices that led him to his situation.

“‘Accursed bet!’ the old man muttered, clutching his head in despair. ‘Why didn’t he die? He’s only forty. He’ll take my last money, get married, enjoy life, play the stock market, while I, like a beggar, will look on enviously and hear the same phrase from him every day: “I owe you the happiness of my life, allow me to help you!” No, that’s too much! The only salvation from bankruptcy and disgrace is—this man’s death!’”

The banker speculates on the future based on his greed and fear of losing his status. His willingness to commit murder to prevent bankruptcy shows he has not evolved beyond his youthful arrogance and selfishness. While the lawyer spent 15 years on a journey of discovery, the banker ends much as he began. His comment becomes ironic once he reads the lawyer’s letter.

“‘If I have courage enough to carry out my intention,’ the old man thought, ‘the suspicion will fall first on the watchman.’”

The banker shows the extent to which he lacks scruples. His assumption that the watchman would be blamed says something about late-19th-century Russia. It is a society where courts respond to class status rather than justice. The banker is willing not only to commit murder but to see an innocent man punished for it.

“And I scorn your books, I scorn all the world’s blessings and its wisdom. It’s all paltry, fleeting, illusory, and as deceptive as a mirage. You may be proud, wise and beautiful, but death will wipe you from the face of the earth the same as cellar mice, and your descendants, history, the immortality of your geniuses will freeze or burn along with the terrestrial globe. You have lost your minds and are following the wrong path. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for beauty […] I am amazed at you, who have exchanged the sky for the earth. I do not want to understand you.”

After spending 15 years immersed in books and away from human contact, the lawyer concludes that society has lost its compass and has forgotten that death is the great equalizer. The humanism of his earlier years has been supplanted by a fatalistic religious outlook.

“Motionless at the table sat a man who looked nothing like ordinary people. He was a skeleton covered in skin, with long womanish curls and a shaggy beard. The color of his face was yellow with a sallow tinge, his cheeks were sunken, his back long and narrow, and the arm that supported his unshorn head was so thin and bony it was scary to look at. His hair was already silvery gray, and glancing at his aged, emaciated face, no one would have believed he was only forty years old.”

Although the lawyer manages to survive 15 solitary years, he is diminished to a near-death state. This image invites readers to reflect upon the initial debate between capital punishment and life in prison and draw their own conclusions about the cruelty of the punishments.

“With a clear conscience and before God who sees me, I declare to you that I scorn freedom, and life, and health, and all that is known in your books as worldly blessings.”

The lawyer wants the banker to see him as morally superior. He renounces earthly possessions and his conscience is clean before God. The authenticity of his transformation is questionable since he still seems to disparage his adversary to elevate himself. As when he unnecessarily tripled his prison term 15 years ago, the lawyer’s choice to leave just hours before becoming rich underscores the absurdism in the story. Characters act in ways that have no connection to discernable goals.

“Your books gave me wisdom. Everything that tireless human thought has created in the course of centuries is compressed in my skull into a small lump. I know that I am more intelligent than all of you.”

The lawyer uses the image of a lump in his head to diminish the importance of human knowledge. Conversely, by being the owner of that “small lump,” he declares himself superior to everyone else. His departure seems not so much a matter of moral principle as excessive pride.