The short story revolves around a young lawyer who truly believes that life in imprisonment is better than a death sentence because for him to live anyhow is better than not at all, and the banker who throw a bet for the young lawyer that if ever he could survive in prison for five years, which became 15 years, then the young lawyer would receive a two million. The barker believes that the death penalty is much better than a life in imprisonment because, for him, capital punishment kills a the man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly.
Anton Chekhov uses foreshadowing as
the literary device of the story in the presence of the old banker. The story
started when the old banker remembers how he gives a party one autumn evening,
and talked about capital punishment and imprisonment with many journalists and
intellectual men then throw a bet. However, it was stated in the story that he
was carried by excitement. Therefore, the decision about the bet was not wisely
planned, rather just the product of emotional arousal. In the page of N., Pam
M.S., Psychomotor excitement, it states there that the excited patient is
constantly on the move but totally unproductive because he constantly shifts
from activity to activity and does not finish one task before starting another.
In this “flight of ideas” there is often little more than a superficial
connection between one thought or one word and the next. Therefore, His flow of
talk is a continuous series of digressions and interruptions. The patient’s
emotions are equally volatile, and he may reach a manic state in which he
becomes excited, effervescent, and irrepressible. He talks glibly, has a ready
solution for every problem, and suggests the wildest schemes with complete
confidence and assurance. The same way happened to the old barker when he
suddenly throws a bet in the middle of the discussion.
The author expresses the importance
of music in dealing with loneliness and depression. It was shown by the
presence of the young lawyer during the first year of his confinement. He was
lonely and depressed, so he played piano day and night from his lodge. This
scene represents music as a therapy for most people who suffer from mental
health. Dr. Gjin Ndrepepa said that the common thing in most music therapies
and researches is that a therapist uses music to heal the social, physical,
emotional pain of a person. Within a therapeutic context, the music empowers a
person to express inner feelings in a non-verbal way.
He (the young lawyer) was never
tempted to take wine and tobacco because he knows how it will affect his
well-being as a prisoner. Wine and tobacco are indeed proven that had a bad
effect on health when overconsumed, and now there are cases that the
overconsumption of the two leads to death and/or unnecessary behavior. Moving
on, the young lawyer read literary works instead. The author shows how rich and
interested people are in literature- for it provides the world with incredible,
fantastic novels for two centuries now — and continues to do so.
However, the young lawyer slowly
stopped his routine in the second to fifth year. He takes wine, and play silent
to audible music. He wrote more than reading. Then, study languages and other
academics and later on put his interests in the Gospel.
After the flashbacks, the story
focused on the banker, the day before the young lawyer will regain his freedom.
He thinks that what happened was a curse bet. However, because of his greed and
afraid of being broke, he thought of killing the young lawyer since he can’t
let himself be ruined by giving his two million. The idea of freedom here was
suffering, which means that if one gains his freedom, the other will
suffer. This shows that someone can kill
somebody, just for the sake of money. Ph.D. Leon F Seltzer said that- of all
the things one might be addicted to, nothing tops the greed-laden pursuit of
wealth in its audacity, manipulativeness, and gross insensitivity to the needs
and feelings of others. Not to mention its extreme, short-sighted,
irresponsible covetousness. The banker was about to break the deal and commit
an irresponsible crime against the young lawyer. However, he had read first the
letter of the young lawyer saying that he despises all the earthy things such
as the wisdom he tried to achieve for fifteen years, the imaginative experience
he had been through, and the million he once dreamed of. So, he planned that
five hours before he will gain his freedom, he will escape with nothing but his
new beliefs and perception about life and heaven. This part of the story is
close to the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, in which he spent life in
imprisonment and received a call from God. Then, later on, he returned the
money to his father. The same way happened to the young lawyer, which made the
theme of the story as “the words of God can change a man.”
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