(You can read the whole story here, in about seven minutes.) The tale unfolds from the jailer’s perspective, and through lists of books the prisoner requests.
If any crime deserves capital punishment, it is spoiling Chekhov stories, so I will not reveal much more. He can leave whenever he wishes, but would then forfeit his prize. They make a bet: If the young man spends 15 years in the rich man’s guest cottage, with food and reading material of his choice slipped under the door but no other human contact, at the end of his captivity he will inherit a large portion of the banker’s fortune. (Barr announced that the federal government will resume killing those convicted of capital offenses, a practice it had stopped nearly 20 years ago.) At the banker’s table, a younger man disagrees. The guests debate which is worse-to rot in prison forever, or to be killed swiftly? The attorney general, Bill Barr, weighed in last week on the side of Chekhov’s banker, a rich man who favors capital punishment. The Anton Chekhov short story “The Bet” opens with a morbid dinner conversation.
0 kommentar(er)
