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.
The Banker Timeline and Summary The banker decides to murder the lawyer. He sneaks into the guesthouse prison and finds the lawyer asleep. Just as he's about to kill him, he finds a note that says that the lawyer rejects the money and will lose the bet on purpose.
The banker wants to prove his point that the death penalty is more humane than life imprisonment.
The banker went at once with the servants to the lodge and made sure of the flight of his prisoner. To avoid arousing unnecessary talk, he took from the table the writing in which the millions were renounced, and when he got home, locked it upon the fireproof safe. What happened in the morning?
The note declares that in his time in confinement the lawyer has learned to despise material goods for the fleeting things they are. Therefore, to demonstrate his contempt, he intends to leave confinement five minutes prior to when the bet would be up, thus losing the bet and unwittingly saving his own life.
The banker wins the bet. The attorney escapes the night before he is to win the bet.
The banker decides to end the BR by killing the lawyer. As he goes to see the lawyer he finds and reads a letter written by him. The banker doesn't kill the lawyer because the lawyer leaves early and ends the bet.
At the end of Anton Chekhov's "The Bet", the lawyer survives the 15 years in prison but refuses to take the money.
How does the lawyer's 15-year imprisonment affect the banker? The banker wishes that he had required the lawyer to stay imprisoned for longer. The banker comes to realize that he was wrong about his stance on life imprisonment. The banker mourns the life and experiences that he has deprived the lawyer of.
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.
The banker felt that death penalty was better than life imprisonment. However, the lawyer said that if he had to choose, he would choose life imprisonment as he felt that it is better to live anyhow than to not live at all. This led to an argument, which transformed into a bet.Nov 16, 2017
The banker puts on the line two million dollars compared to the lawyer's life worth of fifteen years. For the next fifteen years the lawyer was placed in the banker's backyard without the knowledge of the outside world.