The Bet

The question about capital punishment versus life in prison is based on an abstraction none of the guests have experience with. These young men don’t have much life experience, and they base their opinions on their theoretical knowledge—their understanding of morality, the role of the state, and the speed at which one punishment or the other may kill a person. The banker mentions the term a priori, which means based on theoretical deduction rather than empirical observation. (Its opposite, a posteriori, implies that knowledge is derived from experience and observation). “[If] one may judge a priori,” he says, “capital punishment is more moral and humane than imprisonment” (336). He acknowledges that he lacks the experience to decide but still expresses his opinion based on what he believes to be true. Chekhov doesn’t tell us the banker’s age, but it’s safe to assume that he’s older than the lawyer because he calls him “young man” (337) and, by the end of the story, the narrator describes him as “old” (339). He tries to make the lawyer reconsider his decision to enter the bet by arguing that he risks losing some of the best years of his life. He appeals to the lawyer’s reason (“Come to your senses”) but the lawyer follows his initial impulse (337).

During his confinement, the lawyer gains empirical knowledge of the concept that, for him and the other party guests, had only been an abstraction. Ironically, what becomes theoretical for him now is ordinary life. Deprived of his freedom and all human contact, he comes to learn about the world by reading thousands of books. Following a tendency to let his characters fail, Chekhov builds upon the lawyer’s first mistake (his impulsiveness and belief that theoretical knowledge was enough to predict his experience in confinement), to allow him to make a new mistake. The lawyer claims that, through his reading, he can replace the lived experiences of which his confinement deprives him. He uses active verbs such as “drunk,” “sung,” “chased,” “loved,” “visited” and “climbed” to describe all the things he did in the books the banker sent him (341-42). He claims to have become wise and more intelligent than other men without having lived any of those experiences. Chekhov explores a theme that occupied writers before and after him, from Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century to Jorge Luis Borges in the 20th century: the dichotomy between a life lived through books and one lived through experience.

The banker renounces life as “paltry, fleeting and illusory” without having an empirical knowledge of it (342). Though Chekhov leaves it up to readers to decide whether the lawyer has become wise and embrace his cynical view, Chekhov’s approach to life through his writing celebrates, rather than denies, life and the human condition.