Books play a pivotal part in the story. When the young lawyer agrees, as part of his bet with the banker, to enter into a period (fifteen years) of solitary confinement, he does so on the understanding that he will be allowed access to as many books as he likes.

In the sixth year of his confinement, the lawyer begins to "zealously" study "languages, philosophy, and history." He reads voraciously, and over the next four years, "some six hundred volumes (are) procured at his request." The lawyer declares that the result of his reading is an "unearthly happiness."

In the tenth year the lawyer reads "nothing but the Gospel," and in the final two years of his confinement he reads "an immense quantity of books quite indiscriminately."

The night before the lawyer is due to be released, the banker, standing to lose the bet and thus a huge sum of money, sneaks into the lawyer's cell with the intention of committing murder. However, he first reads a note written by the lawyer. In this note, the lawyer declares that all of the "good things of the world" exist in books, and that he now, as such, "despise(s) freedom and life and health."

The lawyer, in the same note, declares that books have "given (him) wisdom," and that in the books he has read he has "drunk fragrant wine...sung songs...hunted stags ... loved women," and much more besides. As a result of the books he has read, he now despises the real world, which is dull and crude by comparison. The lawyer, in accordance with these sentiments, renounces his claim on the banker's money, and thus forfeits the bet.

In summary then, books are significant in the story for two main reasons. Firstly, it is books, more than anything else, that help the lawyer to cope with his solitary confinement. Indeed, they more than help him cope. In fact, they make him extremely happy. Secondly, it is because of the wisdom he acquires from, and the beauty he is exposed to in the books he has read, that the lawyer comes to despise, as "worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive," the real world outside of those books.

What role do the books play in this story?

Imprisoned in the garden house on the banker's estate, the lawyer has access to all the reading material he could possibly want. For the next fifteen years, and with plenty of time on his hands, he reads just about every book in the banker's extensive library. Over time, the lawyer develops remarkable knowledge in an astonishingly eclectic range of subjects—everything from philosophy to history to theology.

Yet the lawyer comes to despise the books that he's read and the knowledge that they contain. His extended period of solitary confinement has broken him mentally, to the extent that he's now thoroughly misanthropic, someone who hates humanity with a passion. And because he hates humanity, he hates the fruits of humanity's greatest achievements, whether those are great works of literature or music.

What this would seem to suggest is that books, and the pleasure and knowledge that they bring, can only be fully enjoyed if one is part of society. For it is only in a social context that they have meaning. As the lawyer has chosen to shut himself away from society as part of a bet, he's therefore unable to derive any enjoyment from his wide familiarity with some of the greatest works of literature ever written.