What is the theme of "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov?

The
banker is trying to prove that capital punishment is more humane than imprisonment for life. The
lawyer is trying to prove that even solitary confinement is preferable to capital punishment.
Naturally there has to be a large sum of money involved or else the lawyer would not consent to
being kept in solitary confinement for fifteen years. The banker is so convinced that he is
right that he doesn't expect the lawyer to last in his confinement for more than a few years, so
the banker doesn't expect to lose anything except the expense of providing for the prisoner's
needs. The argument did not initially involve solitary confinement. The banker only maintained
that life in prison was more cruel than execution. But somehow the bet got around to solitary
confinement versus execution. This must have been because Chekhov saw that he had no way of
dramatizing a situation in which the banker could keep the lawyer locked up with a lot of other
men in a maximum-security prison. The banker could afford to provide a sort of prison for one
man but he had to be kept in solitary confinement. However, the condition of solitary
confinement was ameliorated by the fact that, after all, the lawyer did not have to spend his
entire life in a prison but only fifteen years of his life. Furthermore, the banker provided
generously for his prisoner. He even offered to give him wine with his meals. The lawyer was
probably smart to refuse the wine because he could have become a hopeless alcoholic during his
confinement. He might have stayed drunk all the time just to make his imprisonment more
endurable. What kind of a prison provides wine for the prisoners? The lawyer was undoubtedly
getting gourmet meals too, as well as all the books he wanted to read. So Chekhov added these
little nuances to the bet in order to make up for the facts that he could not show the lawyer
living out his entire life in a prison with the company of other men. The banker and the lawyer
must have been different types of men. The banker must have been an extrovert because he thought
solitary confinement was unendurable. The lawyer, on the other hand, must have been an introvert
who had what are usually called "inner resources." The banker loves money because he
has no "inner resources." So the bet may only prove that capital punishment is
preferable to some men while life imprison is preferable to others.

An
earlier Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote memorably about prison life in The
House of the Dead. The great American novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote about solitary
confinement in prison in The Financier. Jack London wrote an intriguing but
little-known short novel about solitary confinement in The Star
Rover.