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    A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Bet"
    A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Bet"
    A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Bet"
    Ebook38 pages25 minutes

    A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Bet"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Bet," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535835336
    A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Bet"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Bet" - Gale

      11

      The Bet

      Anton Chekhov

      1889

      Introduction

      The Bet is a short story written by the prolific Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. He wrote it in just seven days in December of 1888 and promised it to his friend and patron, Aleksei Suvori, a newspaper publisher who printed it for the New Year issue (1889) of Novoe Vremja (New Times). The story was originally titled Skazka, A Tale. Skazka is the Russian word for folk tale or fairy tale. It is "one literary expression of ideological thinking and ‘The Bet’ as skazka is the best illustration of [Chekhov's] differing artistic idea, says Leslie O'Bell in Cexov's Skazka: The Intellectual's Fairy Tale. In the late 1890s Chekhov included The Bet" in a ten-volume collection, Collected Works, published by Marx Publishing. Chekhov did not receive worldwide acclaim during his lifetime, and only later, when his short stories were translated into English by Constance Garnett in the thirteen-volume The Tales of Chekhov, did he gain widespread scrutiny and tremendous critical acclaim. It was published in New York in 1921 by Macmillan.

      The Bet is the story of a wager arranged between a banker and a lawyer who are attending a dinner party. It arises from a conversation arguing the merits of capital punishment versus a sentence of life in prison. The men have opposing views on the subject, and a high-stakes wager is set into motion.

      In true Chekhovian style, there is no moralistic narrator, no true hero, and no true winner of the bet. He leaves those matters for the reader to sort out, and a solution that is satisfactory or generally agreed upon is not easily reached. On initial observation, this may be unsatisfying, but in the true form of the modern short story, it becomes more and more compelling as the actions and intentions of the men are studied. No pat answers spring forth, and interpretations of the irony in the plot and the powerlessness of the characters require deep introspection. The question of capital punishment is not addressed and becomes secondary to the psychological torture endured by both men. The Bet is intriguing and highly compelling not by what is written, but by what is intentionally omitted.

      Author Biography

      Chekhov was born on January 17, 1860, in a small southern Russian provincial

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