25 pages • 50 minutes read
The Bet
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Character Analysis
The Banker
The story is told in the third person but from the point of view of the two protagonists. The banker’s perspective prevails over the lawyer’s. The unnamed banker is extroverted, impulsive, and overly confident. He hosts a party for “intelligent people” in his community, such as “scholars and journalists” (336). He enjoys dinner parties and controversial conversation topics. He’s quick to give his opinion and excitable when others express theirs. He poses a ridiculous bet in a rushed way, confident that he will win. The narrator describes the banker in his youth as “spoiled and light-minded” (337). Later, he mentions “a hotheadedness he could not get rid of even in old age” (339). His rowdy and argumentative personality compels him to bang his fist on the table and shout when he first challenges the lawyer. Older than the lawyer, he attempts to make him come to his senses, but he does so mockingly and condescendingly.
The high-strung and reckless behavior mellows during the 15 years of the story. Conversely, as his wealth declines, “the fearless, confident, proud rich man [turns] into a middling sort of banker, trembling at every rise or fall of the rates” (339). As an older man, the banker appears to be more contemplative. He analyzes the senselessness of the bet and expresses regret. He recognizes that he acted on a whim and that the bet will not contribute to resolving the argument about capital punishment—a theme that first is central to the story but fades as the plot progresses. When confronted with the possibility of bankruptcy, the banker decides to kill the lawyer, showing that he’s still unscrupulous and selfish. He has not changed after all and is willing to murder to preserve his wealth. If he revisits the absurdity of the bet 15 years ago, it is not because he cares about the lawyer, but because he realizes he is about to lose the wealth he has left.
The Lawyer
The unnamed lawyer is the other main character and is the banker’s antagonist. He is “a man of about twenty-five” (337). Introverted and soft-spoken, he is a guest at the banker’s party. He only gives his opinion on the topic of the death penalty and life in prison when asked. Speaking from a similarly humane point of view as the guest before him, the lawyer suggests that life in prison is better than death because “[to] live somehow is better than not to live at all” (337). Like the banker, the lawyer is proud and disdainful. He is naïve and overconfident in his beliefs, given that he has little life experience and knows nothing about what it means to spend years in solitary confinement. The story doesn’t portray him more favorably than the banker but does reveal him as a victim—of the banker’s scheme but also of his own foolishness.
At the start of the story, the lawyer’s arrogance leads him to increase the length of the term the banker proposes in his bet. Convinced that he can withstand confinement, he’s blindly determined to prove he’s right. Over his years in confinement, he comes to terms with the reality of not having the freedom to connect with other living beings.
Even though the lawyer starts his incarceration in relative contentment, playing the piano and reading literature, as years go by, he’s tortured by the loss of his freedom and lack of human contact. He’s described, through the banker’s eyes, as “a skeleton covered in skin, with long womanish curls and a shaggy beard.” His face is “emaciated,” and his hair is “silvery gray.” The banker calls him a “half-corpse” (341).
Although the lawyer wants to appear enlightened after spending 15 years reading books in isolation, he still holds contempt for the banker and now, by extension, for all humanity. Though it could be thought that the story presents him as morally superior to the banker, he’s turned into a misanthrope. He’s still the proud and self-important man he once was.
The Guest
The only other person presented at the party scene is an unnamed and undescribed guest whose sole purpose is to contextualize the discussion on capital punishment and life imprisonment in 19th-century Russia. In his words, “The state isn’t God. It has no right to take away what it cannot give back if it wants to” (336).
The Watchmen
An unspecified number of watchmen at the banker’s estate are the only other characters in the story. The absence of one of them by the lawyer’s cottage the night before the end of the bet encourages the banker to enter the cottage. Other watchmen appear at the end, described as “pale-faced” (342), to communicate the news that the lawyer climbed out of the window, but there’s no other information about them.
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