“The Bet” proves that if a person achieved the highest wisdom he wouldn’t care about money or material things at all. He would be like Buddha or Jesus, both of whom owned nothing and wanted nothing. This moral seems to be enhanced by the fact that the banker, whose whole life is devoted to handling money and accumulating wealth, is not happy or enviable but has deteriorated morally over the years.

When it comes time for him to pay the two million roubles, he is so attached to his dwindling capital that he is actually contemplating murdering the prisoner to get out of paying him for enduring fifteen years of solitary confinement. The story is told from the banker's point of view, so he may not realize how low he has sunk in that period of time, even though he was rich and had complete freedom.

Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair. "Why didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy life, will gamble on the Exchange; while I shall look at him with envy like a beggar, and hear from him every day the same sentence: 'I am indebted to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you!' No, it is too much! The one means of being saved from bankruptcy and disgrace is the death of that man!"

Not only is the banker seriously thinking of killing his prisoner, but he is actually considering having the watchman implicated in the crime and possibly executed for it or sent to Siberia.

"If I had the pluck to carry out my intention," thought the old man, "suspicion would fall first upon the watchman."

Fortunately for the banker, he finds a note describing what his prisoner has learned in studying books in solitary confinement, as well as what conclusions he has arrived at through his own meditations. Part of the note contains this indictment:

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty."

The most important part of the note, as far as the banker is concerned, comes at the end:

"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 I now 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 ..."

A complementary moral to the principal moral regarding the vanity of materialism is that life imprisonment is a more humane form of punishment than the death sentence. It was the young lawyer who argued in favor of life imprisonment fifteen years earlier and the banker who said:

"I don't agree with you. . . . I have not tried either the death penalry or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life."

The lawyer has not only proved that he could endure fifteen years of solitary confinement, but he has proved that life imprisonment is indeed more humane because it permits study and meditation, thereby enabling at least some criminals to develop completely new characters.

I suggest that Anton Chekhov's main concern in writing "The Bet" was to make the bet itself seem plausible. It seems fantastic that any man would propose to spend fifteen years in solitary confinement and also fantastic that another man would propose to keep him a virtual prisoner for that length of time. It also seems implausible that the banker would risk two million rubles without the lawyer putting up anything at all in return. The banker has to keep the lawyer in comfort, not like a real prisoner, and certainly not like the typical prisoner in solitary confinement.

He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke. By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have with the outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He might have anything he wanted - books, music, wine, and so on - in any quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive them through the window.

The prisoner has comfortable quarters in a spacious, furnished guest lodge. He is provided with presumably good food, and he can have wine with his meals if he so desires. He has a piano! How many prisoners in solitary confinement get pianos? He becomes a great reader, and the banker has to go to considerable trouble and expense to provide the six hundred books in a number of languages the lawyer devours over a period of four years.

Chekhov takes pains to make this bet seem plausible. One of the ways in which he tries to do this is by having the banker admit to himself several times that the bet was foolish and meaningless. For example, he asks himself:

"What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two million? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless. On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money ..."

Chekhov does not say that the two men were drunk when they made the bet. But this was a bachelor party and there must have been a great deal of wine and vodka being consumed by all the guests. Chekhov doesn't mention liquor in connection with the bet because the reader would assume that such a bet would be automatically invalid. Rather, Chekhov has the banker talk seriously with the lawyer later on in order to establish that this bet is genuine and firm.

"Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two million is a trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you won't stay longer."

Once the bet has been made in front of a number of distinguished witnesses, the banker cannot back out of it; but he would like very much to have the lawyer back out, because already he doesn't like the thought of keeping a prisoner on his own grounds for fifteen years. Who would? It is like subjecting a fellow human being to torture, even though the prisoner never complains and seems to be making very good use of his time. 

Chekhov establishes that the prisoner is a lawyer. This is to assure the reader that the banker will have to honor the bet if the prisoner wins. If the banker refuses to pay the two million rubles, he could presumably be sued for fraud, or breach of contract, or unlawful detainment, or something else. Besides that, the banker would be disgraced if he reneged on paying. The bet was made in front of a whole group of fairly important men.

The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. 

If the banker defaulted, the story would be written up in many newspapers, and his dishonorable conduct would be known all over Russia. When the lawyer sued him for two million rubles, the case would be covered in the newspapers for a long time.

So Chekhov's main problem seems to be with verisimilitude. He has to make the bet plausible, and he has to assure the reader, as well as the prisoner, that the banker must really pay two million rubles on a handshake-bet fifteen years after the bet was made. Chekhov does an excellent job. "The Bet" is his best-known, most frequently anthologized short story.

The banker is trying to prove that capital punishment is more humane than imprisonment for life. The lawyer is trying to prove that even solitary confinement is preferable to capital punishment. Naturally there has to be a large sum of money involved or else the lawyer would not consent to being kept in solitary confinement for fifteen years. The banker is so convinced that he is right that he doesn't expect the lawyer to last in his confinement for more than a few years, so the banker doesn't expect to lose anything except the expense of providing for the prisoner's needs. The argument did not initially involve solitary confinement. The banker only maintained that life in prison was more cruel than execution. But somehow the bet got around to solitary confinement versus execution. This must have been because Chekhov saw that he had no way of dramatizing a situation in which the banker could keep the lawyer locked up with a lot of other men in a maximum-security prison. The banker could afford to provide a sort of prison for one man but he had to be kept in solitary confinement. However, the condition of solitary confinement was ameliorated by the fact that, after all, the lawyer did not have to spend his entire life in a prison but only fifteen years of his life. Furthermore, the banker provided generously for his prisoner. He even offered to give him wine with his meals. The lawyer was probably smart to refuse the wine because he could have become a hopeless alcoholic during his confinement. He might have stayed drunk all the time just to make his imprisonment more endurable. What kind of a prison provides wine for the prisoners? The lawyer was undoubtedly getting gourmet meals too, as well as all the books he wanted to read. So Chekhov added these little nuances to the bet in order to make up for the facts that he could not show the lawyer living out his entire life in a prison with the company of other men. The banker and the lawyer must have been different types of men. The banker must have been an extrovert because he thought solitary confinement was unendurable. The lawyer, on the other hand, must have been an introvert who had what are usually called "inner resources." The banker loves money because he has no "inner resources." So the bet may only prove that capital punishment is preferable to some men while life imprison is preferable to others.

An earlier Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote memorably about prison life in The House of the Dead. The great American novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote about solitary confinement in prison in The Financier. Jack London wrote an intriguing but little-known short novel about solitary confinement in The Star Rover.

When trying to work out the theme of a story, we need to remember that the theme is the overall meaning of a work of literature that usually expresses a view or comment on life. Writers rarely state their theme directly; the reader must consider the complex interplay of all of the elements of the story in order to piece together the possible meanings of the work as a whole. Discerning themes always requires a tolerance for ambiguity - especially in an open-ended story like "The Bet" that raises more questions than it answers.

Considering this, there appear to be a number of possible themes that we could apply to this intriguing short story. One central idea seems to be concerning the value of earthly possessions and knowledge. Remember how the lawyer chooses to renounce the money he would gain by winning the bet, because he realises that all earthly treasures are ephemeral and will pass away:

"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."

The lawyer describes human learning and culture as being "worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage." In his opinion, these things blind us to the ultimate reality of death that will "wipe [us] of the face of the earth as though [we were] no more than mice burrowing under the floor..." Surely this must lie at the heart of the message of this short story - the lawyer, through his time of reflection and study in solitary confinement, has realised and understood the true insignificance of man and the superiority of death in the face of all of our supposed achievements. This story thus cries out for man to not think too highly of himself and to realise his proper position in the order of things.

One of the morals of the story "The Bet" concerns a lesson on human folly and pride. Folly is when someone makes foolish choices. In this story, the characters of the banker and the lawyer are so prideful and arrogant that, to prove their individual points about solitary confinement, they sacrifice important things in their life. Because the banker felt angry that his views on death being preferable to a life of isolation were being challenged, he risked two million rubles to prove his point. Because the lawyer wanted to prove his point that any life is better then death, he sacrificed fifteen years of his life in isolation.

In the end, the results of their prideful and foolish bet have terrible consequences. The lawyer loses his desire to live on earth and comes to hate the normal pleasures of human existence. He says in a letter to the lawyer:

I despise your books, despise all worldly blessings and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary, and delusive as a mirage.

The lawyer says in his letter to the banker that he will give up the money he would have earned on winning the bet and leave five minutes before the bet would have been completed. This allows the banker to keep his money; however, in the banker loses his own self-respect in the process. He realizes how foolish he was to make such a bet just to bolster his pride. He knows that he has ruined a man's earthly happiness forever, and he despises himself for it. The story says that never before had the banker "felt such contempt for himself as now."

In short, this story warns the reader of the dangers of impulsiveness and pride. The thoughtless choices individuals make in the heat of emotion can often have devastating, life-changing effects.

I would argue that the moral of the story is that the material world and everything in it is ultimately of no importance. Although the lawyer turns his back on all the knowledge he's acquired during fifteen years of solitary confinement, at least he's learned something from the experience. Which is more than you can say of the banker, who still remains trapped in the world of material objects, every bit as confined in it as the lawyer was in the banker's lodge during his lengthy period of self-imposed isolation.

Whatever happens from now on, we can be fairly sure that the lawyer is more spiritually free than the banker, who seems not to have learned any lessons from this unusual wager. Even if the lawyer should die the very next day—and given his fraught mental and physical state, that's more than a distinct possibility—he will do so in the assurance that he's freed himself from the constraints imposed upon him by a world in which material objects count for more than spiritual values.

The story is told entirely from the Banker's point of view, although it is the transformation of the Lawyer that contains the real message or moral. We only know what is happening with the prisoner because of the things he orders from his keeper. The prisoner naturally reads many books. He even learns foreign languages so that he can read other books. Over the long, solitary years his reading becomes more and more serious, judging from the titles and authors he requests. But then:

Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should waste nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension. Theology and histories of religion followed the Gospels.

The prisoner will spend the remaining five years of his confinement studying and meditating on the Christian message contained in the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He has finally, after ten years of solitary confinement, found the answer he has been looking for, and he seems finally content. He is evidently not interested in the teachings and rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church but in the original words of Jesus Christ himself. Apparently Anton Chekhov felt the same way, as did his friend Leo Tolstoy.

The most pertinent verses in the Gospels, as far as this story applies to both the Lawyer and the Banker, are probably to be found in Chapter 6 of Matthew, which are rendered in beautiful English in the King James translation of the Bible.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Thoughts such as these are what inspire the prisoner to relinquish the two-million rubles which the Banker would be forced to pay him next morning if he stayed. Both the Banker and the Lawyer realize the truth of what is expressed in Matthew 6.

Please remember that you are only allowed to ask one question. Your original question contained several separate questions, therefore I have edited it down according to enotes regulations.

This story remains incredibly ambiguous in terms of its purpose and ending, and thus is open to multiple interpretations. For me, one of the themes that clearly comes out is that earthly rewards are of little worth when we consider the spiritual and eternal rewards that are open to us. This is clearly demonstrated in the letter that the lawyer leaves behind after he leaves his shelter, thus breaking the bet a few moments before winning it, showing his contempt for the terms of the bet and the money he was due to win. Note what he says:

"And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, yoru hsitory, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe."

The lawyer is astounded at those, who through pursuing earthly wisdom and possessions, "exchange heaven for earth." Thus one possible theme or message is very clearly the way that we have lost our focus on spiritual and eternal rewards and have instead exchanged those for earthly rewards such as materialism.

Imagine staying in one room and talking to no one for fifteen years. That was “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov. The story hinges on a party that was given by a banker and the ensuing discussion.  Written in the latter part of the nineteen century, the details of the discussion concern topics which have not been settled today.

The story begins with the banker looking back at the last fifteen years.  He was afraid that he would be bankrupted by having to pay off his debt to the man who had stayed confined for fifteen years.  The banker even considers killing the man.

The banker recalls how the bet began with the party. A discussion began about capital punishment.  The banker felt that capital punishment would be better than life imprisonment.  To the banker, it would torturous to stay confined for the rest of a person’s life.  The debate continued. 

Finally, a young lawyer was asked his opinion.  At least, a person would still be alive:

‘The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all.’

The banker foolishly makes a bet with the lawyer, who is only twenty-five.  If the he will stay confined for five years, the banker will give him two million dollars. With less thought than the banker, the lawyer said that he would take the bet and stay confined for fifteen years.

The agreement was made that the lawyer was to stay on the property of the banker.  He would be provided with everything that he needed with the exception of visitors.   

1st year- The man suffered from depression and loneliness.  He played the piano continuously.  He did not drink or smoke.  The books he read were love stories.

2nd year-The piano was silent. He began to read the classics.

5th year-He played the piano again.  He lay around and slept most of the time. He read little or nothing. Often, he could be heard crying.

6th year-The lawyer began studying languages.  He mastered six languages.  He read over six hundred volumes. 

10th year-He sat at the table and read nothing but the Bible. After the Bible, he read theologies of all kinds of religions.

14th/15th-Read indiscriminately. He read science, Byron, Shakespeare, chemistry, medicine, and philosophy. 

The last day came.  The banker had lost most of his money. If he paid the debt, it bankrupt him. The banker says to himself: ‘Why didn’t the man die? He is only forty now.  He will marry, will enjoy life, while I will be a beggar…’

At 3:00 a.m., the banker goes to the window to see the man.  Silently, the banker enters and discovers that the man looks as though he is sixty rather than forty.  The old man notices a page that has been written and addressed to him.

"Tomorrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom..."  In the note, the lawyer renounces the money, and everything that he thinks that the banker represents.  He has gained wisdom from his reading and studying. He is much wiser than the banker.  At the end of the note, he states that he will leave five hours before the bet ends.  He does not want the money. 

The banker is elated and kisses the sleeping man on the head.  Later, he discovers that the workmen saw the “prisoner” leave. He took the paper which the man had written to him and placed it in his safe. 

The moral has to do with the nature of imprisonment. While the terms of the bet assume that being imprisoned in a cell is a kind of terrible punishment, the story suggests that, in fact, everyone is a prisoner of society and their own desires and that being locked up is the only way to be truly free.

The story begins with the party the banker throws, at which a fierce debate ensues about which sentence is more humane: life imprisonment or execution. One young man, a lawyer, declares that life is always better than death. The banker counters that the young man probably could not endure five years of solitary confinement. The young man responds by proposing a wager: if he can endure confinement for fifteen years, the banker will pay him two million.

The bet does not turn out as expected. For fifteen years, the young man studies everything he can get his hands on, in effect living entire lives vicariously through his reading. The banker, on the other hand, continues his profligate lifestyle. For fifteen years, he continues to speculate on the stock market and sees his debts begin to mount. As the lawyer's sentence is about to expire, the banker realizes that he would be ruined should he lose the bet and have to pay out the two million.

In an act of desperation, the banker visits the man in his cell. While the prisoner is asleep, the banker finds a note that explains that, far from being uplifted by his intense study, the lawyer has concluded that human knowledge is pointless and that he will renounce the two million he is owed. Later, the lawyer, who was always free to end his captivity whenever he chose, disappears just before the fifteen years are up. The banker, on the other hand, relieved to be free of the bet, takes the note and locks it up in a safe.

The banker is the true captive in this situation. The prisoner's note only has meaning in that it releases him from the bet. The "imprisonment" of the note in the safe at the end of the story is an ironic moment that underscores how the banker is a prisoner of his own fears and desires.