Over the years, the short story has been used for many reasons. Whether passing culture from generation to generation or simply trying to teach a lesson, the short story rarely fails. Le Pari is no exception. It shows a number of things, the development of a character, development over time, a spiritual lesson and a lesson that could be useful to anyone. There are things that writers take a long time to achieve, but Chekhov manages to do them in just a few short pages. We can first consider the character of the lawyer, who starts out young and impatient, but by the end he has become wise and more patient than a monk. You see it in his progression throughout the story. At first, he is willing to give up the best fifteen years of his life for just two million. During these fifteen years, he managed to keep himself busy by doing various things such as learning the piano, learning languages, going on a spiritual journey with the Old Testament, reading a multitude of books and becoming a very educated person in general. At the end of all these things, he sort of realizes that now that he's gone through the fifteen years, he realizes that he doesn't want the money and is just satisfied that his point has been proven . The lawyer is a very dynamic character and Chekhov does wonders with him. Turning him away from the greedy, worldly, impatient young man, and turning him into what you could almost call a wise old man, where he is now very transcendent, and doesn't want any sort of worldly effects, and just wants to see the world through his new perspective. The development of this character is essentially the entire “lesson” that needs to be learned with this short story. It's... middle of paper... here is the clique according to which to achieve this you have to take a “journey” that is often very isolated. The theme of materialism versus intellectualism is the main reason for this story. This is seen throughout the story and as it progresses the theme with the characters also emerges. And as the story progresses, this theme becomes more and more important as the main theme of the story. Chekhov also develops it very well in the lawyer as the main author of this theme. If the lawyer is intellectualism, the banker is materialism. This shows that materialism is supposedly the "bad" one by allowing the banker to attempt to murder the lawyer for "material" reasons. Overall, The Bet is a very useful and effective short story. It is shown in every aspect that Chekhov put into the story. From start to finish, The Bet shows that the short story can be a viable writing style. .