Aug 29, 2013 · He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the strictest observation, in a garden wing of the banker’s house. It was agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices, and to receive letters and newspapers.
He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the strictest observation, in a garden wing of the banker's house. It was agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices, and to receive letters and newspapers.
Apr 25, 2013 · He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the strictest observation, in a garden wing of the banker’s house. It was agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices, and to receive letters and newspapers.
Jul 12, 2016 · Tobacco ruins the air of his little room. In the second year, the prisoner stops playing the piano, and he exchanges the light reading of his first year for the classics. Then, in …
At the end of Anton Chekhov's "The Bet", the lawyer survives the 15 years in prison but refuses to take the money.
The Bet addresses whether life in prison is better than capital punishment (death sentence). Fifteen years in isolation have what effect on the Lawyer? The Lawyer becomes a spiritual man who rejects material comforts.
What is one way the lawyer has changed from the beginning of the story to the end? He has lost his wealth. He has learned how to do complex math equations. He does not change in the story.
He had to stay there exactly fifteen years, beginning from 12 o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at 12 o'clock of November, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part to break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end, released the banker from the obligation to pay him two millions.
The terms of the wager state that if the lawyer can live in solitary confinement for 15 years, he will be given 2 million rubles. The lawyer spends his time in confinement reading books. In the meantime, the banker's fortune declines and he realizes that he will be unable to pay off the bet.
The lawyer told with the arrogance of youth that he can live for 15 years in solitary confinement. The lawyer was allowed to have anything in his confinement except The Human Companionship. He was given books and piano. He was allowed to write letters.Nov 23, 2018
How does the lawyer decide to conclude the bet, and why? At the end of the fifteen years, five hours before he would have gotten the 2 million rubles, the lawyer chooses to run away and revoke his right to the money, leaving a letter explaining himself. He has come to hate people and rejects the money on principle.Dec 16, 2021
Having versed himself in different languages of the world and having read philosophy and history of the world, he now reads “nothing but the Gospel.” And then his focus shifted to theology and histories of religion.
1 Expert Answer The lawyer states that the life sentence would be preferable, but the banker calls his bluff, saying that he couldn't stand five years in prison. The decision by the lawyer to raise the stakes is meant to prove his point that a life sentence would be preferable to a death sentence.Sep 12, 2019
Answer : The banker was full of disgust for himself. He wanted to kill the lawyer for the fear that he would have to pay him two million roubles. It meant that he would go bankrupt.
Succumbing to the power of greed, the banker resolves to kill the lawyer to avoid losing his fortune, but changes his mind after finding a letter written by the lawyer where he renounces “the stuff of the earth” and declares he will break the terms of the bet.
In Chekhov's short story "The Bet," the terms of the bet are that the lawyer will stay in prison for fifteen years and the banker will "wager two million" (92). While the lawyer is in prison, he can have no human contact, but he can have "anything necessary--books, music, wine--" and anything else he requests (92).
As has often been recognized, Chekhov’s work provides a panoramic study of the Russia of his day, and one so accurate that it could even be used as a sociological source. In some of his stories of the Melikhovo period, Chekhov attacked by implication the teachings of Leo Tolstoy, the well-known novelist and thinker, ...
After helping, both as doctor and as medical administrator, to relieve the disastrous famine of 1891–92 in Russia, Chekhov bought a country estate in the village of Melikhovo, about 50 miles (80 km) south of Moscow. That was his main residence for about six years, providing a home for his aging parents, as also for his sister Mariya, who acted as his housekeeper and remained unmarried in order to look after her brother. The Melikhovo period was the most creatively effective of Chekhov’s life so far as short stories were concerned, for it was during those six years that he wrote “The Butterfly,” “Neighbours” (1892), “An Anonymous Story” (1893), “The Black Monk” (1894), “Murder,” and “Ariadne” (1895), among many other masterpieces. Village life now became a leading theme in his work, most notably in “ Peasants” (1897). Undistinguished by plot, the short sequence of brilliant sketches created more stir in Russia than any other single work of Chekhov’s, partly owing to his rejection of the convention whereby writers commonly presented the Russian peasantry in sentimentalized and debrutalized form.
Chayka ( The Seagull) is Chekhov’s only dramatic work dating with certainty from the Melikhovo period. First performed in St. Petersburg on October 17, 1896 (Old Style), the four-act drama, misnamed a comedy, was badly received; indeed, it was almost hissed off the stage. Chekhov was greatly distressed and left the auditorium during the second act, ...
His first work in a leading literary review, “Steppe” (1888), depicted a journey in the Ukraine as seen through a child’s eyes. This work, along with the play Ivanov (1887–89), brought Chekhov acclaim.
After briefly attending a local school for Greek boys, Chekhov entered the town gimnaziya (high school), where he remained for 10 years. There he received the best standard education then available—thorough but unimaginative and based on the Greek and Latin classics.
Chekhov’s father was a struggling grocer and pious martinet who had been born a serf. He compelled his son to serve in his shop, also conscripting him into a church choir, which he himself conducted. Despite the kindness of his mother, childhood remained a painful memory to Chekhov, although it later proved to be a vivid and absorbing experience that he often invoked in his works.
Chekhov’s elusive, superficially guileless style of writing —in which what is left unsaid seems much more important than what is said—has defied effective analysis by literary critics and effective imitation by other creative writers.
In March 1897 Chekhov suffered a lung hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis, symptoms of which had appeared considerably earlier. The effects of tuberculosis caused his health to decline over several years, and, some six months after The Cherry Orchard was first performed in Moscow (January 17, 1904), Chekhov died of the disease.
Anton Chekhov was born into a family of modest means and peasant ancestry, but he received a good education, studied medicine at Moscow University, and graduated as a physician in 1884. He helped support his family by grinding out hack short stories for newspaper publication. After he began writing more serious and more artistic stories, he gained the attention of the public and the critics. Today, he is recognized as one of the world’s most important writers of plays and short stories. The first edition of his complete works was published between 1900 and 1903. Click here for a study guide on Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya.
Skvortsov the lawyer helps Lushkov the beggar only after the latter agrees to chop wood for the lawyer, who believes honest labor will reform Lushkov. Olga, on the other hand, helps Lushkov without making demands on him. True, she roundly scolds him with a sharp tongue, but she ends up chopping the wood for him. Whose approach to helping the needy is better, Skvortsov’s or Olga’s? That is an important question Chekhov poses in this story as an articulation of his theme. The author does not answer it; nor does he preach in favor of one approach or the the other. Proponents of no-strings-attached government assistance may fairly argue that Olga’s approach is the more humane and more effective. Proponents of bootstrap private-enterprise may fairly argue that Skvortsov’s approach is the more humane and effective because it forces Lushkov to begin taking charge of his destiny.
As in other short stories he wrote, Chekhov assumes the role of a third-person narrator who reports the details of a simple plot as if he is a witness observing the scenes and listening to the characters. He does not enter the minds of Lushkov, Skvortsov, or Olga to report their thoughts. Rather, he allows the characters’ actions and conversations to reveal their personalities and feelings. Chekhov also presents the setting and the events as quite ordinary and mundane even though what is taking place appears extraordinary in some way. The writing is to the point, avoiding excesses in descriptions and striving always to present a realistic and truthful portrayal of life in Czarist Russia.
The second section of the story focuses completely on the lawyer's imprisonment. The first year of imprisonment describes how anyone might pass an extended period of idleness or boredom. He wastes his time with books "of a light character," but he is able to resist the temptation of the sins of alcohol and tobacco. By the second year, though, the lawyer's activities depart from common or frivolous pastimes to study: he reads the classics. However, as the years pass, the stress of the situation takes its toll, and the lawyer experiences the emotional extremes of happiness and depression, resorting at one point to the alcohol he previously rejected.
Although the story is titled "The Bet," and the lawyer goes through the most extravagant changes, it is the banker whose point of view frames the story and gives it its ultimate meaning.
While the setting of the letter encompasses years , it is not composed over time. Instead, as the first line indicates, it was written that same day: "To-morrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom." Because the lawyer has in the past written items during one day and torn them up the next, the content of the letter may be suspect. Are these thoughts he may reject tomorrow?
After the banker reads the line in the letter that surrenders the bet to him, he stops reading and puts the letter on the table. The narrator does not say whether there is more in the letter or not. Chekhov leaves open the possibility that the letter continues beyond what readers become privy to. At the same time, the fact that the banker stops reading the letter before finishing it says everything about him and his character. He cares nothing about wisdom or the ill-advised path of the human race. He cares only about one thing: he gets to keep his money. In the end, the banker represents flawed humanity. He is a man subject to his own interests and passions who is not able to transcend them to achieve any kind of spiritual change.
A written agreement spells out all of these conditions, including ongoing observation. The written agreement specifies the dates of his confinement from November 14, 1870, to November 14, 1885. If the lawyer breaks any of these rules, even by leaving two minutes early, the banker will not owe him anything.
The letter explains the prisoner's perspective regarding his imprisonment and what he has learned through his experiences and studies. The prisoner says that today, the day before he regains his freedom, he despises everything most people consider good, including health, freedom, and life. In his 15 years of confinement, he has studied everything about life. In the books he has read, he has seen great beauties and traveled to distant places. He has seen everything in the natural world, but also in the supernatural, as his studies have provided him with angelic encounters and divine experiences.