Ironic Examples in "The Bet"

        The second instance of irony in the story is when the young lawyer decides to hand over the two millions. The banker is interpretating the lawyer’s letter the day before the lawyer is going to be released: “To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which I now despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five minutes before the time fixed, and so break the compact . . . ” (Safier 165) The actions shown by the lawyer to deprive himself of the money five minutes before he was about to accept the two million dollars is tremendously ironic. The reader expects the lawyer to withstand for the last hours to make the fifteen years of confinement complete, but what actually happens stuns the reader because after waiting for fifteen years he does not want the money. This is another instance of irony of a situation, because the interpretator/reader does not expect the lawyer to abandon the lodge before his time is up.

        The last occurrence of irony in the story is in the memorandum the prisoner writes to the banker. The banker is reading the prisoner’s message about his plans to break the bet five minutes before his the deadline: “In your books I have flung my self into a bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms. Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man has created in the ages is compressed into a small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of you.” (Safier 165) During the last night, the prisoner is feeling liberated because of all the knowledge and wisdom he has gained, while the banker is feeling confined from his thoughts of what he is going to do about giving the last of his money up. Ironically, the roles are inverted, instead of the lawyer feeling restricted, he feels free, and instead of the banker feeling free, he feels confined. What is also ironic about the situation is that the lawyer was never held captive the whole fifteen years. He had books that took him and his mind to different and extraordinary places where he experienced different things. Although the youthful lawyer was kept captive figuratively, his mind could not be held captive additionally.

        The author uses irony in the story when the banker decides to slay the prisoner rather than pay him. When the prisoner decides to give up the two million, and when the actual note the prisoner writes contains the truthfulness of how he was capable to travel outside of the confinement with the books he read. The opening example of irony in the story is when the lawyer decides to kill the banker, even after the whole reason that the bet took place was to prove to the banker that imprisonment was better than the death penalty. The next example of irony in the story is when the prisoner decides to renounce the two millions after the reader thinks that he will hold out for the last hour to get the two million dollars. The concluding example of irony in the story is when the banker actually experience freedom because of the information and intelligence he has gained by being able to read books and travel places with his mind, and the banker feels trapped because of the two million dollars he has to pay the lawyer. The authors literary meanings are not always straightforward thoughts, but this does not mean they are not intended for the reader to observe.