"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.” This is a powerful quote, stated by the young lawyer, a character in Chekhov’s story, “The Bet”. Anton Chekhov was an intellectual writer that addresses the political air of his time. Often addressing themes of the old social order in Russia, the irony in the now supposedly free-moving class system, contradiction in the situations of those around them that have no opportunity to improve their standing or are criticized for attempting to do so, characters that address the potential difference between social change and social progress and characters that demonstrate the different degrees of freedom that result from the liberation. In order to appreciate and analyze the works of Chekhov, I had to research his other literary works, take a look at his life and the political air of his country. “The Bet” is in my opinion a mirror that reflects the struggles of the Russian people and their government. It represents how liberation comes in different forms and in Russian history with a high price. What shone through is the eternal struggle of all men, in all societies and the human soul.
Chekhov was a play a writer and this is apparent in the story “The Bet”. This piece is written and translates as if it was a theatrical play. He sets the scene visually by using the opening line, “It was a dark autumn night.” Each section of his story is another scene in the play. Chekhov uses great imagery in this dramatic tale of morality and self-discovery. While reading this story I felt as if I was an observer watching a play in a theater and joining the characters on a passage. The narrative is written through the eyes of the banker, the lawyer, and guides our observations of the characters. Chekhov uses conversations between the characters involved as well as the internal conversations taking place as revelations occur in the thoughts of the characters. I found it interesting that what one person says aloud is generally not what is said in the private places of a person’s soul. I f people would take the mask off and share in their journey of transformation we all could benefit. Analyzing the plot I feel that the lawyer is the protagonists and that the bet propelled him into a journey, through a stage of life that moves him from one significant character state to another. At first he is into the two million dollars. He enters the bet because of his ego and what he believes to be right but in the end what he believed to be moral in the beginning of the story changes as his introspective view changes through experience. The Banker and the Lawyer in Chekhov’s tale of morality does not end in the manner in which I though it would. The lawyer who takes a bet for two million dollars in the end decides that he does not want the two million dollars. He, in the end turns his back on society. I see that the lawyer is sacrificing for one purpose in the beginning of the bet (ego) only to be motivated in the end by a higher purpose or concept, which I believe is for the sake of humanity. The hypocritical banker in the beginning of the story is discussing capital punishment and appropriate punishment but in the end he is ready to kill for money. The lesson I got from this yarn, was that money was not the end all for the lawyer and there are lessons to be learned internally. As for the banker money was the end all and he was ready to kill for it leaving all his self righteous ideals behind
Anton Chekhov was born in the old Black Sea port of Taganrog on January 17, 1860. His grandfather had been a serf ; his father married a merchant's daughter and settled in Taganrog, where, during Anton's boyhood, he carried on a small and unsuccessful trade in provisions. The young Chekhov had to work hard as a child because of his poverty-stricken family, and he spoke regretfully in after years of his hard-worked childhood. He was obedient and good-natured, and worked cheerfully in his father's shop, His intrigue with story telling began when he closely observed the idlers that assembled there, and gathering the drollest stories, which he would afterward whisper in class to his laughing schoolfellows
His grandfather had now become manager of an estate near Taganrog, and here the he spent his summers, fishing in the river, and roving about the countryside, nurturing a love for nature, which he retained all his life. His evenings he liked best to spend in the kitchen of the master's house among the work people and peasants who gathered there, taking part in their games, and setting them all laughing by his witty and telling observations. When Chekhov was about fourteen, his father moved the family to Moscow, leaving Anton in Taganrog, and now, relieved of work in the shop, his progress at school became remarkable. At seventeen he wrote a long tragedy, which was afterward destroyed, and he already showed flashes of the wit that was soon to blaze into genius. He graduated from the high school at Taganrog with every honor, entered the University of Moscow as a student of medicine, and threw himself headlong into a double life of student and author, in the attempt to help his struggling family.
His first story appeared in a Moscow paper in 1880, and after some difficulty he secured a position connected with several of the smaller periodicals, for which, during his student years, he poured forth a succession of short stories and sketches of Russian life with incredible rapidity. He wrote, he tells us, during every spare minute, in crowded rooms where there was "no light and less air," and never spent more than a day on any one story.
His audience demanded laughter above all things, and, with his deep sense of the ridiculous, Chekhov asked nothing better. His stories, though often based on themes profoundly tragic, are penetrated by the light and subtle satire that has won him his reputation as a great humorist. In 1884 he took his degree as doctor of medicine, and decided to practice, although his writing had by now taken on a professional character. He always gave his calling a high place and the doctors in his works are drawn with affection and understanding. Chekhov fully realized later the influence which his profession had exercised on his literary work, and sometimes regretted the too vivid insight it gave him, but, on the other hand, he was able to write: "Only a doctor can know what value my knowledge of science has been to me," and "It seems to me that as a doctor I have described the sicknesses of the soul correctly."
The young doctor-writer is described at this time as modest and grave, with flashes of brilliant gaiety. A son of the people, there was in his face an expression that recalled the simple-hearted village lad; his eyes were blue, his glance full of intelligence and kindness, and his manners unaffected and simple. He was an untiring worker, and between his patients and his desk he led a life of ceaseless activity. His restless mind was dominated by a passion of energy and he thought continually and vividly. Often, while jesting and talking, he would seem suddenly to plunge into himself, and his look would grow fixed and deep, as if he were contemplating something important and strange. Then he would ask some unexpected question, which showed how far his mind had roamed.
Success was now rapidly overtaking the young author; his first collection of stories appeared in 1887, another one in the same year had immediate success, and both went through many editions; but, at the same time, the shadows that darkened his later works began to creep over his light-hearted humor.
Weary and with an obstinate cough, he went south in 1888, took a little cottage on the banks of a little river His health, however, and did not improve. In 1889 he began to have attacks of heart trouble, and the sensitive artist's nature appears in a remark, which he made after one of them. "I walked quickly across the terrace on which the guests were assembled," he said, "with one idea in my mind, how awkward it would be to fall down and die in the presence of strangers."
Chekhov considered his mature plays to be a kind of comic satire, pointing out the unhappy nature of existence in turn-of-the-century Russia. Perhaps the poet himself described Chekhov’s style best when he wrote:
"All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: 'Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!'"
During Chekhov's final years, he was forced to live in exile from the intellectuals of Moscow. In March of 1897, he had suffered a lung hemorrhage, and although he still made occasional trips to Moscow to participate in the productions of his plays, he was forced to spend most of his time in the Crimea where he had gone for his health. He died of tuberculosis on July 14, 1904, at the age of forty-four, in a German health resort and was buried in Moscow. Since his death, Chekhov's plays have become famous worldwide and he has come to be considered the greatest Russian storyteller and dramatist of modern times.
Chekhov probes the depths of human life with so sure a touch, and lights them with an insight so piercing, that the play made a deep impression when it appeared. This was also partly owing to the masterly way in which it was acted at the Artists' Theatre in Moscow. Chekhov, with an art peculiar to himself, in scattered scenes, in haphazard glimpses into the lives of his characters, in seemingly trivial conversations, has succeeded in so concentrating the atmosphere of the Russia of his day that we feel it in every line we read, oppressive as the mists that hang over a lake at dawn, and, like those mists, made visible to us by the light of an approaching day.
Since Chekhov uses his character’s to symbolize his native country Russia, I had to look up and research the political air of this time in order to fully appreciate his works in doing so, I discovered that “The Bet” becomes a historical account of the Liberation of Russia. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were times of crisis for Russia. Not only did technology and industry continue to develop more rapidly in the West, but also new, dynamic, competitive great powers appeared on the world scene: Otto von Bismarck united Germany in the 1860s, the post-Civil War United States grew in size and strength, and a modernized Japan emerged from the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Although Russia was an expanding regional giant in Central Asia, bordering the Ottoman, Persian, British Indian, and Chinese empires, it could not generate enough capital to support rapid industrial development or to compete with advanced countries on a commercial basis. Russia's fundamental dilemma was that accelerated domestic development risked upheaval at home, but slower progress risked full economic dependency on the faster-advancing countries to the east and west. In fact, political ferment, particularly among the intelligentsia, accompanied the transformation of Russia's economic and social structure, but so did impressive developments in literature, music, the fine arts, and the natural sciences.
The vast majority of the people lived in rural communities and engaged in relatively primitive agriculture. Industry, in general, had greater state involvement than in Western Europe, but in selected sectors it was developing with private initiative, some of it foreign. Between 1850 and 1900, Russia's population doubled, but it remained chiefly rural well into the twentieth century. Russia's population growth rate from 1850 to 1910 was the fastest of all the major powers except for the United States. Agriculture, which was technologically underdeveloped, remained in the hands of former serfs and former state peasants.
Tsar Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a conservative who saw no alternative but to implement change. Alexander initiated substantial reforms in education, the government, the judiciary, and the military. In 1861 he proclaimed the emancipation of about 20 million privately held serfs. Local commissions, which were dominated by landlords, effected emancipation by giving land and limited freedom to the serfs. The former serfs usually remained in the village commune, but they were required to make redemption payments to the government over a period of almost fifty years. The government compensated former owners of serfs by issuing them bonds.
The regime had envisioned that the 50,000 landlords who possessed estates of more than 110 hectares would thrive without serfs and would continue to provide loyal political and administrative leadership in the countryside. The government also had expected that peasants would produce sufficient crops for their own consumption and for export sales, thereby helping to finance most of the government's expenses, imports, and foreign debt. Neither of the government's expectations was realistic, however, and emancipation left both former serfs and their former owners dissatisfied. The new peasants soon fell behind in their payments to the government because the land they had received was poor and because Russian agricultural methods were inadequate. The former owners often had to sell their lands to remain solvent because most of them could neither farm nor manage estates without their former serfs. In addition, the value of their government bonds fell as the peasants failed to make their redemption payments.
Reforms of local government closely followed emancipation. In 1864 most local government in the European part of Russia was organized into provincial and district zemstva (sing., zemstvo), which were made up of representatives of all classes and were responsible for local schools, public health, roads, prisons, food supply, and other concerns. In 1870 elected city councils, or dumy (sing., duma ), were formed. Dominated by property owners and constrained by provincial governors and the police, the zemstva and dumy raised taxes and levied labor to support their activities.
In 1864 the regime implemented judicial reforms. In major towns, it established Western-style courts with juries. In general, the judicial system functioned effectively, but the government lacked the finances and cultural influence to extend the court system to the villages, where traditional peasant justice continued to operate with minimal interference from provincial officials. In addition, the regime instructed judges to decide each case on its merits and not to use precedents, which would have enabled them to construct a body of law independent of state authority.
Other major reforms took place in the educational and cultural spheres. The accession of Alexander II brought a social restructuring that required a public discussion of issues and the lifting of some types of censorship. When an attempt was made to assassinate the tsar in 1866, the government reinstated censorship, but not with the severity of pre-1855 control. The government also put restrictions on universities in 1866, five years after they had gained autonomy. The central government attempted to act through the zemstva to establish uniform curricula for elementary schools and to impose conservative policies, but it lacked resources. Because many liberal teachers and school officials were only nominally subject to the reactionary Ministry of Education, however, the regime's educational achievements were mixed after 1866. The levy system introduced in 1874 gave the army a role in teaching many peasants to read and in pioneering medical education for women. But the army remained backward despite these military reforms. Officers often preferred bayonets to bullets, expressing worry that long-range sights on rifles would induce cowardice.
After researching Chekhov‘s life and literature I found that there are recurring themes that directly tie to his life and the Liberation of Russia. The story, starts out with a powerful line that draws you into the tale, “ It was a dark autumn night.” I believe this symbolizes that old beliefs where dying similar to the fall season, whenever thing goes dormant, dies to rejuvenate and there are cold winds and extreme changes in weather. Several characters address the potential difference between social change and social progress when discussing the morality of capital punishment or life imprisonment. The author states this, “The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all." This I believe is represents the serfs being liberated but at the same time provides with land that they could not farm leading to a slow death of poverty and debt. The lawyer in Chekhov’s story is confined to a garden wing; again I believe that represents the Russian serfs.
In the story, ”The Bet”, one man has been able to take advantage of his liberation to make himself independent in terms of liberation as an inward process; which I see as the young lawyer (or in real history the freed serfs) who accepted the bet of solitary confinement for 15 years, the banker (The Russian Government made up of banks), although he is technically free, has not changed his position at all and is subject to the whims of the life style he serves, as he has always been. The difference in their situation demonstrates the observations of many Russians of the time: officially liberating a group of people is not the same as making them free if you do not also equip them with the tools they need to become independent, i.e., resources such as education and land. This brings up the question of what and who is free? This theme is also echoed in The Cherry Orchard, a Chekhov play, which deals with independence in a very concrete way: shortly before the beginning of the play, much of Russia's population was not free. The play's characters demonstrate the different degrees of freedom that result from the Liberation. The lawyer, in the short story, “The Bet”, is a free man because he is indebted to no one and nothing more than his own concept of morality. His observations seem accurate in light of other forms of non-freedom in the story such as the banker’s need and dependence on money weakness and neglect the safety of his money in the same breath indicates that, despite his concerns, he is still blind too much of his problems. The banker has enough assets to be able to control his own destiny, but he is a slave to his passions, spending extravagantly and making poor decisions in matter of money, and therefore cannot follow a higher moral code as the lawyer does. What with the combination of economic circumstances and the bizarre weaknesses of the characters, the yarn therefore suggests that there are two sources which control freedom and the lack thereof: economics, which comes from without represented by the banker, and control over oneself, which comes from within which is demonstrated by the lawyer. Both characters insinuate that the Liberation is not enough to constitute progress; while it was a necessary change; it was not enough to bring mankind to the idealized future. In the end, when the bet is fulfilled and the lawyer will win the two million dollars the banker is broke and does not want to pay and keep his end of the bet just like the Russian government. The banker wants to kill the lawyer to keep the money. The banker states, “Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he was afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling on the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the recklessness of which he could not rid himself even in old age, had gradually brought his business to decay; and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and fall in the market.” This statement represents the gamble the Russian government experience economically after the Liberation. The accession of Alexander II brought a social restructuring that required a public discussion of issues and the lifting of some types of censorship. Chekhov represents this in the story when the banker locks up the letter from the lawyer who forfeits the bet. “To avoid unnecessary rumors he took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked it in his safe.”
Drawing on his own struggle with the times that he was living, Chekhov has the ability to convey important social issues in his stories and plays. The deliberate use of time in the Chekhov’s yarn about a bet made between a lawyer and banker becomes the backdrop for the years of imposed Liberation on the Russian people. For example, Chekhov writes, “During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom.” I believe this represents when the serfs are first liberated they go from communal living to working land with there families. “In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked only for classics.” I believe this corresponds with the education reform that was implemented at that time in Russia. “In the fifth year, music was heard again, and the prisoner asked for wine.” This represented the cultural reform imposed by the government. When Liberation is imposed with out the appropriate resources for true Liberation of the people it is doomed to succeed. Read this book, farm this land with a gun to your head is not Liberation in my eyes. One cannot really fully appreciate literary work like “The Bet” without taking the time to do the necessary research of Russian history. What seems like a benign story becomes a lesson in history, government, liberation and the soul.
In the end the lawyer leaves a note. It reads, “…. And I despise your books; despise all worldly blessings and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage. Though you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe. He leaves the banker’s home forfeiting the bet. I believe that this is Chekhov’s view of his beloved Russia. After reading this story, I felt a commonality with my own existence, with the cost of an education, the lack of jobs, being brought up on promises and very little places to excel in an infertile country, one that is manufactured on the exploitation of its people in the name of capitalism. The banker lives on in companies like Eron and others. This made me wonder what happened to the lawyer after he left? Where did he go? Where does he fit in? I believe like me he made his way by learning from the past to hopefully make the rest of his existence the best it can be.




"All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: 'Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!'"