Discussion Topic
Lawyer's Early Departure and Forfeiture in "The Bet"
Summary:
In Anton Chekhov's "The Bet," the lawyer leaves his solitary confinement five hours early, forfeiting the two million dollars, because his fifteen years of isolation led him to despise wealth and worldly possessions. Through intense study and meditation, he found enlightenment and rejected materialism, much like a mystic. This decision also inadvertently saved his life, as the banker had planned to kill him to avoid paying the bet. The lawyer's character transformed, contrasting with the banker's moral decline.
Why did the lawyer leave early in Anton Chekhov's "The Bet"?
“The Bet” by Anton Chekhov begins with a discussion about the death penalty. A banker gives a party in which this topic creates dissension among the men. A young lawyer takes a bet with the banker that he can stay fifteen years in solitary confinement; and, in the end, he would receive two million dollars. The point of the bet is that any life is better than no life.
The rules are that the lawyer will stay on the property of the banker and will have no human contact for fifteen years. He can have anything that he wants involving music, books, entertainment, or food.
Through the years, the lawyer goes through many emotional stages. Initially, he is depressed; then, he begins to study everything that he can get his hands on from languages to religion. The banker, on the other hand, has misused his money; and now...
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if he pays off the bet, the banker will lose everything.
After much inner turmoil, the banker decides to kill the lawyer before the end of the bet to keep from having to pay the loan. He sneaks into the guest house. Just before killing him, the banker discovers a note that the lawyer has written.
The letter expresses the feelings of the lawyer after all this time alone:
- The man has become bitter.
- He expresses his hatred toward freedom, life, and health and everything that man holds dear.
- The lawyer details the things that he has studied during his internment.
- Further, he asserts that he has gained wisdom from his studies. Now, he states that he hates these books.
- He says that he does not want to interact with the banker because he despises him and all that he represents.
Consequently, the lawyer will leave five hours early because he does not want the money. He determines that he is now wiser than the banker. The lawyer will deprive himself of what he thought he once wanted more than anything in the world.
"To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two million of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact ..."
The banker is saved from ruin when the guard tells him that the man did leave five hours early. Taking the letter, the banker places it in the safe. The bet is over. The harshness and loneliness of the confinement have left the man bitter and with no understanding of the world to which he now goes.
In Anton Chekhov's "The Bet," why did the lawyer forfeit his winnings?
The essential idea in Chekhov's ironic and thought-provoking story "The Bet" is that the fifteen years the lawyer spent in solitude changed his character so drastically that he came to despise money and all worldly things. He had grown so used to solitude and solitary meditation that he no longer needed human companionship, and thus he no longer needed money. He wanted to prove to himself as well as to others that he was sincere in relinquishing all worldly goods, like some of the Hindu holy men and other mystics of the world.
He had spent fifteen years in study and meditation. He started off thinking this would be an ordeal, but he soon discovered that there were great advantages to solitude, as long as the banker was willing to provide him with good food, comfortable shelter, and books. He was in a situation many of us would envy. He was able to concentrate and focus his attention on understanding the meaning of existence free from distractions for twenty-four hours out of every day. It was fortunate for him that he experienced his enlightenment, because if he hadn't decided to forgo the fortune he had won he would have been murdered by the banker and would have lost his life as well as the money.
Anton Chekhov had to be a very good writer in order to make the bizarre bet believable and then to make it seem plausible that the lawyer would spend fifteen years in solitary and voluntarily relinquish the fortune he had won--or at least the fortune he thought he had won. The banker's character had not improved over the fifteen years. He has begun as a reasonably honest man and had turned into a dishonorable man and a potential murderer.