Introduction
Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy were from extreme opposites of the economic spectrum in Russia during the dying days of the nineteenth century. Chekhov was a grandson of a serf, while Tolstoy was an aristocrat. In spite of this, however, both writers saw and deeply felt the ironies of life as reflected in their own lives. This is especially brought out in the way that their short stories, Chekhov’s “The Bet” and Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”, employ character, irony and plot to explore the same theme; that is, the corruption involved in the acquisition of wealth in Russia.
Analysis
The central character in both stories have ‘too much’ ambition- if I may say. They are willing to take extreme risks with their lives even just so they can have the things they desire. In “The Bet”, the main character is a young lawyer, twenty five years old, who bets fifteen years of his life in solitary confinement in exchange for two million dollars.
Tolstoy’s Pahom is an ambitious peasant, who has an insatiable hunger for land. He alienates his family and friends for his ambitions as he goes on acquiring one land after another, each one bigger than the last. Pahom does not stop to ponder. Every time he hears of another land, he goes on to acquire it.
As the plots of both stories intensify, so does the inevitability of these character’s eventual fates. The lawyer plays piano and reads insatiably as a way of catching up with the things that he has forfeited as a result of his greed.
The ending of both stories exposes the irony that lies beneath their superficial telling, as well as the ironies of the authors’ views and perspective on the actions of the main characters. The irony is especially compounded in “The Bet” as it explains the fates of both the banker and the lawyer as the wager ends. The lawyer denounces the money as not important just a night before he is released. He refers to it as fleeting, worthless, deceptive and illusory like a mirage.
The other irony has to do with banker. While fifteen years back, when he set the wager, he was a wealthy man, as the lawyer’s term is running out, the banker’s wealth has dwindled. In fact, he is near bankruptcy. He knows paying the bet will surely finish him. When he sneaks into the lawyer’s cell to kill him so he wouldn’t reclaim his bet, the banker discovers the lawyer’s letter denouncing the money. The banker hides the letter so no one would know about the lawyer’s denunciation. The irony here is that the lawyer has saved the banker financially.
Ultimately, though, both men’s greed has tainted the purity of the bet, and in the end, there’s no clear-cut winner. The banker who boasted of high morals has toyed with murder. The lawyer has discovered he was foolish for thinking that any kind of living is better than not living at all. The irony of Pahom’s story is that he dies while trying to walk around the tract of land that he has acquired. The characters do not get to enjoy the very things they desired.
Conclusion
Historically, both stories reflect the concerns of the authors on a reform period during the post-czarist era. They attack the corruption, sociological and psychological, of pursuing wealth. The fates of these characters sort-of laughs at such unchecked efforts.
