Notes

The message of The Bet
All natural humans have greed in their hearts, and seldom do they want to recognize it, but when they do, often with some help, they always benefit from the knowledge. Anton Chekov, a great writer, leads readers of “The Bet” to recognize their own greed and vanity in their lives when he uses situational irony as the prisoner grows to despise everything earthly. The story starts with a young lawyer agreeing to an imprisonment of five years, which he smugly raises to fifteen, in exchange for a great sum of money. “ ‘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’” (checkov 75). The young man values riches over freedom, and does not mind sacrificing his own liberty to prove this in the deal that challenges both his beliefs. He enters his prison proud and sure, congratulating himself at the two million promised to him in fifteen years. But when the time comes, he deems his fifteen years of learning as fruitless and his knowledge and the money promised to him as meaningless, and gains nothing except for destruction and the realization of his foolishness. Checkov uses a simile to describe the lawyer in this state: “His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another” (77). At last, he recognizes that he holds only a mere fragment of what the universe has to give, and this completely shatters his pride. He knows that he shall leave his prison soon and return to a life that has lost everything he once had, and in his desperateness he reads books from every subject to try in vain to prove his knowledge sufficient in some way. Pride brings destruction, and want brings shame. The lawyer learns his lesson, but many do not, and still cling to what makes them worse, risking their health for money and loosing their opportunities to their boasts.



Obsessions shared
When love rots and mixes with want, it devolves into obsession. Both Hawthorn and Saki describe how what people think they can control actually controls them in the form of an obsession in their short stories “The Birthmark” and “The interlopers”. A man feels it necessary to risk his own wife in seek of perfection. Hawthorn expresses this with a piece of dialogue, “ ‘The concoction of the draught has been perfect,’ said he, in answer to Georgiana's look. ‘Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot fail’”(128). Aylmer has doubts about the removal of the mark, but the pursue of perfection which his whole life revolves around urges him to take the risk, ignoring his more sensible thoughts. Though the couple both think that removing the mark will repair and secure their relationship, they overlook the fact that even if Georgiana survives it, Aylmer will eventually find something else to be dissatisfied about as it would only enhance his belief that he could triumph over nature. Ulrich from “the Interlopers” also has similar problems as he harbors deep hatred for his enemies and high anxiety for the safety of his lands so much that he actively seeks an opportunity to kill the man from the opposing family (Saki 175). Ulrich already has what his forebears fought for, but still the thought that others might try to take what he has from him makes him paranoid. He wants the comfort that what he has would always be his, and would always suffer under the control of these insecurities. Both the books show people obsessed with things that in their obsessions determine what they do, but while both the controllers are objects, they only reflect and make up parts of what the characters really seek, such as perfection and security in feelings. People may find themselves guilty of having similar feelings and seek to discard their bonds with the things that control them, but that would not work unless they actually find out which ideas cause them to form connections like those and deal with the ideas themselves.