In "The Bet," was the bet worth the results?

This
is a difficult question with a complicated answer. On the surface, the bet was not worth the
results for the banker because over the fifteen years his foolish choices had dwindled his
massive fortune down to just about two million exactly so that if the young man claimed his
winnings, the banker would be bankrupt and, worse yet, humiliated.

On the
surface, the bet was not worth the result for the young man either because he is described in
the most cadavarish terms when the banker approaches him to take his life. He is ill, weak,
broken, and barely a man any more. Yet, when his letter is read, it seems that the young man
gained more from his imprisonment than he could ever have to gained from a free and carefree
life of happiness.

Unless the thoughts in his letter are the Freudian
rationalizations of a distracted and fremzied mind, the young man may say that, in deed, the
fifteen years of imprisoned seclusion have given him gifts more rare than all life, love and
freedom could have ever done. As a corollary, the banker seems to have had an epiphany of sorts
about his pampered extravagance and vain selfishness because of what the young man wrote of
himself and his determination to break the bet so as to renounce the two million.

If the banker's epiphany is genuine and he will have an Ebenzer Scrooge type
transformation, then the banker may say his side of the bet--which was relatively effortless,
except for the heavy weight of immorality on his conscience--was worth the results.

The fact that the banker's last act in the story is to safeguard the letter of
renunciation in a fireproof safe doesn't bode well for the banker's spiritual awakening going
any deeper than relief at not going bankrupt and at not committing murder. Chekhov leaves just
enough doubt for us to question the young man's sanity and the banker's sincerity, and therefore
doubt the happy outcome of fifteen years of voluntarily imposed imprisonment. Despite the letter
and the tears of cleansing, it still looks to the reader that the bet was not worth the
results.