Book Review ~~ The Lottery Ticket ~~

Today I read “The Lottery Ticket,” by Anton Chekhov. I thought that it really revealed humans’ true nature. Ivan Dmitritch is, originally, “very well satisfied with his lot”. However, when his wife, Masha, has a lottery ticket with series 9,499 — the winning series — he begins to dream about what he could do with the money. He knows that his wife won’t want him to use her money, though, and he begins to resent and hate her. Meanwhile, his wife realizes that he will want to use her money, and similar thoughts of anger and resentment enter her thoughts about him. Ivan’s anger prompts him to look at the number of the winning ticket, when before he was lost in his daydreams, and when he sees the number 46, not 26. His hopes and his hatred — his true nature — leave him, and he becomes discontent with what he has, when he was once perfectly satisfied, planning to hang himself. I found his sudden hatred of his wife, her relations, and even his own relations rather extreme, but it illustrated human nature very nicely. Once there was the possibility of having so much money, he started daydreaming and hating those who might deprive him of it, but when it was taken away, he simply felt depressed. I would recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting story and rate it 9.4/10.

Book Review ~~ The Bet ~~

Recently, I read the short story “The Bet,” by Anton Chekhov. I found it a very interesting story about a bet between a lawyer and a banker who are arguing about life imprisonment and the death sentence. The lawyer, who would prefer life imprisonment to the death sentence, because at least the imprisoned does not die, agrees to spend fifteen years trapped in a small cabin located in the banker’s garden. The banker, a reckless young millionaire, agrees to pay him two million dollars if he can do so successfully, since he believes that life imprisonment is merely a slow form of death. When the lawyer comes out greatly changed, the author shows that life imprisonment is, truly, worse than death — the lawyer no longer cares for the two million dollars he staked fifteen years of his life on, and a large majority of his opinions about the world were completely changed during his fifteen years of study. I found the storyline, as well as the message behind the story, engaging because of the large stakes in the story. I would rate it 9.8/10 and recommend it to anyone interested in the debate between the death sentence and life imprisonment or simply looking for an interesting book to read.