Question

Read the excerpt below from the short story “The Bet” by Anton P. Chekhov and answer the question that follows.

During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the sound of the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. “Wine,” he wrote, “excites desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner; besides, nothing is more boring than to drink good wine alone,” and tobacco spoils the air in his room.
Which type of conflict occurs in the excerpt above?
A. ironic
B. external
C. rowdy
D. internal

Answer 1

D - internal; is the correct answer

Answer 2

I would say the lawyer has an internal conflict in prison about how to pass the time and whether to drink wine smoke (though I am surprised that there would be wine offered in a prison) and though they would help him pass the time it would probably awaken desires to be unfulfilled and smoke up his atmosphere so he struggles with these ideas about what to do.