Student Question

Why was the banker pacing in his study in "The Bet"?

Quick answer:

The banker is pacing in his study because he is anxious about his impending financial ruin. Fifteen years earlier, he bet two million rubles with a lawyer that the lawyer could not endure fifteen years of solitary confinement. Now, on the last night of the bet, the banker is worried about paying the money, unaware that the lawyer has become disillusioned and no longer desires the prize.

Expert Answers

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In Chekhov's short story "The Bet" the old banker is pacing up and down his study, worrying about the immanence of his financial ruin. Fifteen years ago, he made a bet with a young lawyer after an argument about the respective merits of execution and incarceration as punishments. The lawyer declared that he would prefer imprisonment, and the two men made a bet for two million rubles that he could not survive fifteen years of solitary confinement on the banker's property.

This is the last night of the lawyer's fifteen-year imprisonment. He is due to win the bet and claim the money which the banker can ill afford. This is why the banker is pacing his study, brooding on the matter and trying to think of a way out. He does not, of course, know at this stage in the story that the lawyer has become such a misanthrope in his years of confinement that he no longer wants the money or anything it could buy him.

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