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In Chekhov’s “The Bet," two confident and comfortable men, a banker and a lawyer, risk their money and freedom to prove their worldview in a fifteen-year bet. Like many of Chekhov’s stories, the drama of “The Bet” lies not in an elaborate plot but in an exploration of how this bet changes the men who make it. The lawyer, convinced that any life at all is worth living, finds his stance tested as he gives up his freedom. The banker, on the other hand, has his liberty, but creates a prison of his own making through debt. Their reactions to the highly artificial situation they’ve created for themselves explore the meaning of a life worth living, coming to no easy conclusion. The banker’s proposal of the bet to the lawyer incites the action of the story, forcing the unusual arrangement of the lawyer’s captivity to begin.
In the ensuing years, we can observe the changes the lawyer undergoes from his activities and the books he requests. He first attempts to find escapism through music and reading novels. He eschews wine because he prefers to drink with company, and drinking alone would only emphasize his loneliness. He next gives into melancholy, sleeping and drinking to self-medicate. The following years involve connecting with humanity by learning languages and reading about history and philosophy, which broadly help one understand humankind. However, reading about people only allows him to abstractly connect with the idea of society, as opposed to experiencing real human connection. Therefore, his studies become internal and existential. He studies Christianity, other religions, science, and philosophy to try and bring meaning to himself as an individual cut off from society. Although he begins the bet convinced that he could build a life for himself away from others, books, learning, and even philosophy leave him bereft. The letter he writes has an almost existentialist tone to it, decrying life and all joy as meaningless distractions from the reality of death. Although he leaves his prison a free man, he is now cut off from society, misanthropic and alone.
Ironically, left to live in complete freedom, the banker, too, finds himself a prisoner of the bet. As the end of the bet approaches, he realizes he cannot pay the lawyer because he’s been unwise with his money. His precarious finances have also damaged his connection to other people. For example, the banker feels shame just imagining taking charity from the lawyer, whom he imagines will be generous with the two million rubles. He sees the lawyer as a tormentor, an opponent. Implicit here is that the banker imagines a life dependent on the charity of the lawyer is not worth living. When he was wealthy, his discussion of capital punishment was purely hypothetical, but now the banker is willing to kill another man, risking imprisonment himself, to avoid giving up his last two million rubles. Indeed, he now lacks so much care and empathy that he’s content with the possibility of his watchman being arrested for the crime. Although free, his poor financial decisions have isolated him, making him violent and bitter.
The banker’s attempted murder results in a surprising anti-climax: the lawyer has decided to forfeit the bet because he now despises material wealth. However, the fallout from this decision doesn’t appear to result in true freedom or relief for either man. Although free from the bet and the burden of paying the two million rubles, the banker is left with guilt that he nearly killed a man over two million rubles. Worse still, the lawyer has judged those two million rubles the banker was willing to kill over as functionally worthless. But the story doesn’t paint the lawyer as truly enlightened either. The lawyer ends the bet not only physically withered, but emotionally bereft. His letter expresses no joy in the prospect of his freedom and no desire to reconnect with the humanity he so desperately missed in his earlier years of captivity. If the banker suffers for not putting enough consideration into the meaning of his life beyond money, the lawyer appears to have overthought it and will now never be able to find comfort and connection. Like many Chekhov stories, the conclusion is meant not to provide easy answers but to explore human nature. Neither the lawyer nor the banker have truly found meaning through this bet, but instead have driven themselves into despair.
