The Bet: A Masterful Bit of Story Telling by a Master Storyteller
By: Ed Newman
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Life Lessons, Writing, Death Penalty

SHORT STORY MONDAY

The Bet: A Masterful Bit of Story Telling by a Master Storyteller

“Don’t tell me the moon was shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass.” ~Anton Chekhov

Painting by Nikolai E. Timkov. Oi on board. Photo by the author.

When I first became serious about writing as a calling I divided my energies between two courses of action: learning how to get published as a freelancer and learning how to write exceptional short fiction. It was Hemingway’s In Our Time that lit the fiction fuse, igniting in me a desire to learn how to write powerful prose.

Sherwood Wirt’s You Can Tell The World begins by urging fledgling writers to read the classics so that we can recognize great writing when we see it. You can’t produce significant work if you can’t tell the difference between excellence and pap. Thus, I set out to read the classics.

I’d long been drawn to European and South American writers, but the author who especially resonated with me at that time was Anton Chekhov, the witty Russian playwright and short story composer.

Photo by the Author

Chekhov produced volumes of short stories, was remarkably prolific considering he also worked full time as a doctor, a profession that put him in touch with people from all walks of life, often when they were their most vulnerable selves. It makes sense that this would be a rich resource for raw material in creating characters and situations.

In addition to being a master wordsmith, he was a keen observer of the daily drama of being human. Hence his stories overflow with insight, pathos and the comic.

And so it was that I went through a “Chekhov period” in which I sought to read as many volumes of his stories as I could find. I remember laughing out loud at times.

For the record, literary critics mark him as one of the most significant writers of the 19th century, and certainly on the “top ten” of any list of short story writers.

This story, The Bet, is one of my all time personal favorites. I’ve often said that if I ever assembled an anthology of short stories, this would be included in that book. What follows is the setup, with a link to the rest of the story below.

The Bet

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life. “I don’t agree with you,” said their host the banker. “I have not tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?”

“Both are equally immoral,” observed one of the guests, “for they both have the same object — to take away life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.”

Illustration by the author.

Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he was asked his opinion, he said: “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.”

A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man: “It’s not true! I’ll bet you two million you wouldn’t stay in solitary confinement for five years.”

“If you mean that in earnest,” said the young man, “I’ll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years.”

“Fifteen? Done!” cried the banker. “Gentlemen, I stake two million!”

“Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!” said the young man.

I urge you to finish the story here. It’s a quick read with a wonderful payoff.