Man, this is a lesson about greed. Don't try to attain IT by confining yourself to any man's (banker's) device. In the end you wont enjoy yourself, no matter what you experience or how wise you become, because you'll learn to despise it all -- all that you have sacrificed.
Also, don't hate the banker, they have feelings too. Or something.
Thank you! I have been searching (intermittently) for this for years, but did not remember the author, nor was I sure of the title.
I was first introduced to it in junior high school as a short film, and it left a lasting impression on me.
And being heavily shortened, the film left much to my imagination. I like my version better than Chekov's, but that seems to be the same as liking the book better than the movie (although, technically a reversal, in this case).
Not as many threads/dilemmas. A bet between two people, that one of them will stay secluded in a house with provisions/materials/etc. provided by written request.
The confined person showed stages of mental/social evolution: lackadaisical behavior, then alcohol abuse/raging/abject misery, then (my favorite) a sobering up and re-awakened thirst for knowledge.
When the confined is finally spoken to, he almost dismisses his first human contact in years as intrusive/annoying.
It has a lot to do with Christianity. And by that I mean the real hard core Orthodox Christianity Russians used to believe in back then and not the watered down Calvinist stuff that is more popular nowadays.
IT seems that he gained wisdom by reading all kinds of philosophers and learning languages , and after that he was able to truly understand the bible. And then after studying the bible for a couple of years he truly understood the meaning of it. Then he indiscriminately read a bunch of random literature and scientific books trying to find if there is any earthly thing that is worthwhile at all and found none.
So in the end he discovered that the entire argument of whether to have fifteen years of your life to enjoy your youth or to have 2 million rubles but not your youth is pointless because neither of these things amount to anything in view of the infinite universe and the fact that time always moves on and everyone dies, etc. So he saw all earthly pleasures pointless in comparison to attaining admission to heaven so he gave away the two million to presumably live a simple God fearing life and join Heaven.
And of course, ironically, he would have never gotten the money anyway, if he did not forsake the money he would have been dead.
Wiser than the author? Where do you get that from?
Also, while I agree that the piece is more philosophical than literary, it's more than just an argument for the younger man's perspective. After all, if the argument were irrefutable, the banker, who knows everything that we know, would have adopted the younger man's perspective. Instead, he hides the papers in the safe. Why? And in what other ways do people "put the papers in the safe" so to speak?
Perhaps my reading of the letter was excessively influenced by what I expected to happen, but I thought the story was more literary than philosophical. I expected the piece to end with the young man achieving so much enlightenment from his studies that he no longer needed the money, and by the time I got to the letter I was disappointed by its contents. I suppose it's equally possible to read the letter as showing that the young man is thinks he's become wise but hasn't really.
I think the story would be enhanced if we were never shown what was in the letter. The banker goes to the cell and finds the man missing and the letter in his place, reads the letter and goes and locks it in his safe. I think that would be a better ending, but then again there's probably a reason why Chekhov is considered a great writer and I'm not.
Reminds me of the montage of Jamal's writing in Finding Forrester. I saw it commented on in a few places as an obvious attempt to imply such sublime writing as the writers couldn't actually write.
