Sunday, April 8, 2012

What examples of irony are there in "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov?

Clearly one central piece of situational irony is the fact
that the lawyer decides to lose the bet and forsake his wealth, even though he is
literally moments away from winning and he has lived almost the entire time in solitude,
according to the bet. This is the premise that this short story is based around - the
lawyer through his time of solitude has obviously learned far more about the world and
life than the other characters in the novel. Consider what he writes in his
letter:



"You
may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as
though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your
history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly
globe...


To prove to you in action how I despise all that
you live by, I renounce the two million of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which
now I despise."



The lawyer
has learnt the truth of the illusions that we try to project to protect ourselves from
the reality of our own fragility, and above all he has learnt the false promise of
wealth and paradise that money gives.


How ironic therefore
that the banker has obviously not learned this lesson. Note how he responds to reading
the letter:


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At no other time, even when he had lost heavily
on the Stock Exchange, had he felt so great a contempt for himself. When he got home, he
lay on his bed, but his tears and emotion kept him for hours from
sleeping.



Clearly the words
of the lawyer and his resolution to forsake the bet impact the banker deeply at an
emotional and fundamental level. Yet note how in the last paragraph, we are told that
the banker took the letter which recorded the renunciation of the bet and stored it
safely away, in case the lawyer should change his mind. The author ironically shows us
that, whilst the lawyer has definitely developed and moved on in his humanity, the
banker is just as greedy and doubtful as he ever was, showing, ironically, that whilst
the lawyer has overtly lost the bet, it is the banker who is the real loser, because he
has not been able to learn from the lawyer and develop in his
character.

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