Though the banker had initially appeared to value life over rubles-telling the lawyer not to give up his best years for the promise of a later fortune-he changes his mind in the face of financial ruin.ĭespite his complete isolation, the lawyer comes to understand the fleeting nature of pleasure that the banker has experienced first-hand in the outside world.

As such, he takes steps to murder the lawyer in order to invalidate the bet. His millions having dwindled, the money he’ll owe if he loses the bet might ruin him. He spends recklessly on earthly pleasures and plays the stock market poorly, and the luck of his early life has fizzled by the time the fifteen-year mark approaches. Meanwhile, the banker, who all this time has been free, is miserable. Certainly the young lawyer struggles-at times he is described as lying all day on his bed or talking angrily to himself-but there are also moments of genuine elation, such as when he describes his “unearthly happiness” at having learned numerous languages and therefore getting even more access to the accumulated thought of “the geniuses of all ages and of all lands.” What’s more, day by day, the lawyer lives out his fifteen years of imprisonment without ever trying to escape. Though the banker technically wins the bet, Chekhov ultimately leaves the answer to his initial question-that is, whether life has inherent value-ambiguous.Īs the terms of the bet play out, the lawyer initially appears to be “winning.” He reads literature, philosophy, history, theology, and the Gospels. When the two men agree that if the lawyer can endure imprisonment for fifteen years then the banker will give him a large sum of money, it is these stakes that they believe the bet is about. Implied in the young lawyer’s argument is the belief that if one is physically alive, one can make life worth living regardless of its conditions. In contrast, the young lawyer argues that “to live anyhow is better than not at all”-that being alive, in and of itself, is better than to die. A life spent imprisoned, according to him, is thus essentially not a life at all: it is instead a slow, constant death.

The banker, who believes that the death penalty is more humane and moral than life imprisonment, argues that experiences, pleasures, and relationships are what make life worth living. Anton Chekhov’s “The Bet” sets up a seemingly simple bet about the nature and value of life.

The bet short story