The Meaning of Life Theme Analysis

Anton Chekhov’s “The Bet” sets up a seemingly simple bet about the nature and value of life. The banker, who believes that the death penalty is more humane and moral than life imprisonment, argues that experiences, pleasures, and relationships are what make life worth living. A life spent imprisoned, according to him, is thus essentially not a life at all: it is instead a slow, constant death. In contrast, the young lawyer argues that “to live anyhow is better than not at all”—that being alive, in and of itself, is better than to die. Implied in the young lawyer’s argument is the belief that if one is physically alive, one can make life worth living regardless of its conditions. When the two men agree that if the lawyer can endure imprisonment for fifteen years then the banker will give him a large sum of money, it is these stakes that they believe the bet is about. Though the banker technically wins the bet, Chekhov ultimately leaves the answer to his initial question—that is, whether life has inherent value—ambiguous.

As the terms of the bet play out, the lawyer initially appears to be “winning.” He reads literature, philosophy, history, theology, and the Gospels. Certainly the young lawyer struggles—at times he is described as lying all day on his bed or talking angrily to himself—but there are also moments of genuine elation, such as when he describes his “unearthly happiness” at having learned numerous languages and therefore getting even more access to the accumulated thought of “the geniuses of all ages and of all lands.” What’s more, day by day, the lawyer lives out his fifteen years of imprisonment without ever trying to escape.

Meanwhile, the banker, who all this time has been free, is miserable. He spends recklessly on earthly pleasures and plays the stock market poorly, and the luck of his early life has fizzled by the time the fifteen-year mark approaches. His millions having dwindled, the money he’ll owe if he loses the bet might ruin him. As such, he takes steps to murder the lawyer in order to invalidate the bet. Though the banker had initially appeared to value life over rubles—telling the lawyer not to give up his best years for the promise of a later fortune—he changes his mind in the face of financial ruin.

Despite his complete isolation, the lawyer comes to understand the fleeting nature of pleasure that the banker has experienced first-hand in the outside world. In the letter that he writes on the final night of his imprisonment, the lawyer reveals all of the experiences and wisdom that he has gained through his reading during the prior fifteen years—and then declares all of it to be “worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage” in the face of death. He claims that everything that humankind lives for on Earth—pleasure, love, knowledge, wisdom, everything—is worthless, and that only heaven holds value. To show this belief, the lawyer renounces the two million dollars he is owed and sneaks away hours before he is to be released.

What, then, to make of this ending? It seems that neither character—nor their original ideas about the meaning of life—have been entirely borne out. The banker’s belief in worldly pleasures and experience has led him to misery (and likely would have led him to murder, had he not discovered the lawyer’s plan to renounce the money). The lawyer, meanwhile, abandons his belief in one’s ability to make life worthwhile through engagement with the knowledge, art, and wisdom of humanity, and instead proclaims that only heaven has any meaning. That “The Bet” ends on such a note leaves a new debate in the hands of the reader to ponder: a debate not about what the meaning of life is, but whether life has meaning at all.