Individuality In Chekhov’s “The Bet” What was the most lost on a wager? Money, time, or a favorite item? Anton Chekhov wrote a story about a bet and the what was gained or lost from it. Chekhov was a Russian writer and doctor and lived from 1860 - 1904. He married in 1901 to actress Olga Knipper who acted at the Moscow Art Theater. In his short story “The Bet”, Chekhov uses internal and external conflict to emphasize the importance of individuality. A banker and a guest at his party undergo a bet that later shows how an individual can change, improve or stay the same. Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860 in Taganrog, Russia. After finding out he was a descendant of a family of slaves, he wanted to live life to the fullest and freely as he could. He was also diagnosed with tuberculosis at an early age. Determined for a good life, he did all he that he could in his lifetime. Some say that if he would have lived just a little bit longer, he may have seen the whole world. Chekhov’s life was also full of abuse. His father, Pavel Chekhov, “...believed it was his duty to beat goodness into his children” (Bloom 9). Pavel Chekhov beat his children …show more content…
The argument was about whether or not the death penalty or life imprisonment was more inhumane. Next, the bet stated that for fifteen years the banker will have the guest as a prisoner who can not have any sort of human contact and in return he will be given two million rubles. Within the first year, the guest began to wrestle with himself. As stated in “The Bet”, Chekhov says how “For the first year of his confinement, as far one can judge from his brief notes, the prisoner suffered from loneliness and depression” (Chekhov 2). He couldn not handle the first year, and then he overcomes it. This shows how himself as an individual got greedy and now it was being used against