The banker and lawyer make the bet for the same reason that most people make a bet. They each believe that their opinion is right and best, and they are willing to risk something to prove it. The story starts with the narrator telling the reader that the banker had a friendly little social gathering.
The banker and lawyer disagree on the form of punishments, capital and life imprisonment. The banker says capital punishment is more humane than life imprisonment, the lawyer disagrees. Their argument takes a turn when the banker bets two million that the lawyer cannot go through with imprisonment. The lawyer agrees to the bet.
...the banker bemoans his decision to make this bet, because nothing has been gained: the lawyer has lost fifteen years of his life, it looks like the banker will lose two... (full context) Fifteen years previously, the lawyer is put under strict observation in a garden wing of the banker’s house.
Young, wealthy, and fairly reckless at the beginning of the story, the banker insists that death is preferable to life imprisonment and is the one who initially makes the titular bet with the lawyer. In his later years, his luck has faltered and his wealth dwindled, transforming him into a desperate man. Like the everyday people that the lawyer grows to despise, the banker is ruled by his need …
Mar 13, 2009 · “The Bet” proves that if a person achieved the highest human wisdom he wouldn’t care about money or material things at all. He would be like Buddha or Jesus or Gandhi or Socrates, all of whom owned...
Terms in this set (10) The banker wants to prove his point that the death penalty is more humane than life imprisonment. What is the banker's motivation for suggesting the bet? The lawyer wants to prove that life imprisonment is more human than the death penalty and collect $2,000,000.
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
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
The terms of the bet are that the lawyer must live in isolation for fifteen years. At the end of that time, if he fulfills his bet of having no human contact for this period, the banker will pay him two million rubles. The bet arises out of an argument on which is crueler, the death penalty or life imprisonment.
To prove in action how he despises all that others live by, he renounces the 2 millions of which he once dreamed as of paradise and which now he despises. To deprive himself of the right to the money, he shall go put from the lodge five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact.
The banker, by this time, has gone broke due to his own recklessness and gambling. He begins to worry that the lawyer's bet with him will ruin him financially. In it, the lawyer proclaims his intention to renounce earthly goods in favor of the spiritual blessings.
How does the lawyer appear to the banker when the banker enters the lodge in the middle of the night? He appears aged beyond his years. You just studied 25 terms!
The banker, on the other hand, has misused his money; and now 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.
What did the banker realize about the lawyer at the end of the story? The banker was never lonely throughout his long prison sentence.
The central message of "The Bet" is that giving in to greed and impulse can negatively impact one's life.
When the banker opens the door into the cell, he discovers the lawyer now looking like a skeleton. He discovers a letter and reads it, but soon realizes the lawyer plans to lose. Five hours before the lawyer's time is complete, he runs away and terminates his eligibility to win the bet.
The banker notes that the lawyer is so emaciated by the end of his sentence that he is hard to look at, prematurely aged, and appears ill. This outward appearance contrasts with the lawyer's own belief that he has bettered himself.
The lawyer believes that any life is better than none, and that life cannot be taken away by the government, since life cannot be given back if the government realizes that it made a mistake. The banker and the lawyer decide to enter into a bet, with the banker wagering that the lawyer could not withstand 5 years of imprisonment.
Fifteen years ago, a party was thrown at a banker's home, where many intellectuals such a journalists and lawyers attended. During that party, the group in attendance had many lively discussions, ultimately turning to the topic of capital punishment.
The The Bet quotes below are all either spoken by The Banker or refer to The Banker. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ).
The timeline below shows where the character The Banker appears in The Bet. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The banker enters the prisoner's lodge with the intent to murder the lawyer. Just in time, he discovers a letter in which the lawyer announces his decision to renounce the world of material wealth and forfeit the bet that has ultimately driven the banker nearly to the point of homicide.
Chekhov engages parallelism more for thematic purpose than for sentence construction: the dramatic change in the banker's fortune parallels the dramatic change in the lawyer's attitudes towards the material world.
The story is written in the third person point-of-view, with limited omniscience into the mind of the banker. It is through the limited engagement inside the banker's head that we are given subjective entry into the mental state of the lawyer.