The Bet

In the second part of the story, the banker decides to kill the lawyer to avoid fulfilling his end of the agreement and going bankrupt. The expected course of the plot from that point is that the banker will go to the cottage, and something related to the execution will take place. However, by the end of the lawyer’s letter, the plot takes a turn. The lawyer expresses his wish to renounce the two million and escape his confinement before the end of his term. This plot twist corresponds with a moment of anagnorisis, a literary device in which a character understands his situation in a new way. The banker becomes aware that, contrary to his speculations a few moments ago, the lawyer is not seeing “millions in his dreams” (341). The lawyer is not going to take his last bit of money and “enjoy life” (340). Another plot twist follows when the banker, whose materialism and unreflective nature dictate his actions throughout the story, unexpectedly kisses the lawyer and weeps.

“The Bet” makes ample use of irony as a literary device, signaling several instances in which what should happen doesn’t match what happens. From the banker’s point of view, we learn that there were “many intelligent people [who] had interesting conversations” at the party he hosted 15 years earlier (336). Yet, the banker and the lawyer enter an absurd bet that makes the banker exclaim, as he recalls that night, that it was all “[s]tuff and nonsense” (337). The usual expectation when the stakes of a bet are set is that the two parties will negotiate the terms that are most favorable to each of them. Yet, the lawyer raises the stakes to his detriment, from five to 15 years of confinement. Another example of irony appears in the moment of anagnorisis when the banker uses the word “pathetic” to describe the lawyer, only to immediately feel scorn for himself. As in other works by Chekhov, the entire plot is an exercise in irony in which the behavior of the characters defies expectations, revealing a different reality.

Given that Chekhov was also a prolific playwright, it’s unsurprising to find a moment of dramatic irony in this story. Dramatic irony is different from regular irony in that it occurs when the audience (in this case, the reader) is aware of something of which the characters are not unaware. In this case, the dramatic irony takes place at the expense of the lawyer, who writes his renunciation letter not knowing that the two million he’s giving up would have led to the financial ruin of his adversary.

When Chekhov wrote this story, film was in its nascent form. Yet, the account of the lawyer’s 15 years of confinement resembles the technique of montage, used in cinema to show images mounted in rapid sequence to tell a long story quickly. The sequence of images showing the evolution of the lawyer’s behavior and his choice of books comes together in a series of “quick cuts,” filling in a significant amount of information and marking the passing of time without devoting too much space to any particular moment.