Log In
|
My Passes
|
Sign Up
Learning Guides
Teacher Resources
Test Prep
College Readiness
Schools & Districts
All of Shmoop
Literature
Bible
Poetry
Shakespeare
Mythology
Bestsellers
Dr. Seuss
Pre-Algebra
Algebra
Algebra II
Geometry
Biology
US History
Flashcards
DMV
Careers
SAT
ACT
AP Exams
En Español
Essay Lab
Videos
Literary Critics
Shmoop Shtuff
Cite This Page
To Go
The Bet
by
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Home
Literature
The Bet
Themes
Intro
Summary
Themes
Quotes
Characters
Analysis
Questions
Quizzes
Flashcards
Best of the Web
Write Essay
Advertisement
The Bet Quotes
Table of Contents
AP English Language
AP English Literature
SAT Test Prep
ACT Exam Prep
ADVERTISEMENT
The Bet Themes
Little Words, Big Ideas
Wisdom and Knowledge
The final twist in "The Bet" hinges on the idea that the lawyer took all the knowledge he could get from the many, many books he read in the prison, and turned it into wisdom. In other words, he cl...
Life, Consciousness, and Existence
"The Bet" tests the convictions of a lawyer who claims that any kind of life is better than no life at all by subjecting him to fifteen years of subhuman existence, trapped in a house with nothing...
Sacrifice
As soon as one of the party people argues that a government that can't restore human life shouldn't have the right to take it away, well, we know that the theme of sacrifice is going to be importan...
Isolation
"The Bet" might not actually have anything to say about the death penalty, but it can certainly be read as an experiment in solitary confinement. Sure, most prisoners are fairly deprived, but how c...
Competition
By setting the action up as a bet, this story necessarily ends up being a contest between the two men involved. The one-upmanship is the reason for the bet, the reason for the raised confinement le...
