Arrowsmith (1925)

✍ Scribed by Lewis, Sinclair

• Book ID: 109131551
• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Year: 1925
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 305 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Written at the height of his powers in the 1920s, the three novels in this volume continue the vigorous unmasking of American middle-class life begun by Sinclair Lewis in Main Street and Babbitt. In Arrowsmith (1925) Lewis portrays the medical career of Martin Arrowsmith, a physician who finds his commitment to the ideals of his profession tested by the cynicism and opportunism he encounters in private practice, public health work, and scientific research. The novel reaches its climax as its hero faces his greatest challenges amid a deadly outbreak of plague on a Caribbean island. Elmer Gantry (1927) aroused intense controversy with its brutal depiction of a hypocritical preacher in relentless pursuit of worldly pleasure and power. Through his satiric exposé of American religion, Lewis captured the growing cultural and political tension in the 1920s between the forces of secularism and fundamentalism. Dodsworth (1929) follows Sam Dodsworth, a wealthy, retired Midwestern automobile manufacturer, as he travels through Europe with his increasingly restless wife, Fran. The novel intimately explores the unraveling of their marriage, while pitting the proud heritage of European culture against the rude vigor of American commercialism.

Arrowsmith (novel)

Arrowsmith is a novel by American author and playwright Sinclair Lewis that was published in 1925. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Lewis but he refused to accept it. Lewis was greatly assisted in its preparation by science writer Dr. Paul de Kruif, who received 25% of the royalties on sales, but Lewis is listed as sole author. Arrowsmith is arguably the earliest major novel to deal with the culture of science.

Plot

Arrowsmith tells the story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith as he makes his way from a small town in the Midwest to the upper echelons of the scientific community. (He is born in Elk Mills, Winnemac, the same fictional state in which several of Lewis's other novels are set.) Along the way he experiences medical school, private practice as the only doctor in tiny Wheatsylvania, North Dakota, various stints as regional health official, and the lure of high-paying hospital jobs. Finally, Arrowsmith is recognized by his former medical school mentor, Max Gottlieb, for a scientific paper he has written and is invited to take a post with a prestigious research institute in New York. The book's climax deals with Dr. Arrowsmith's discovery of a phage that destroys bacteria and his experiences as he faces an outbreak of bubonic plague on a fictional Caribbean island. Martin's wife, Leora, is the steadying, sensible, self-abnegating anchor of his life. When Leora dies of the plague that Martin is sent to study and exterminate, he seems to lose all sense of himself and of his principles. The novel comes full circle at the end as Arrowsmith deserts his wealthy second wife and the high-powered directorship of a research institute to pursue his dream of an independent scientific career in backwoods Vermont.

Themes

The book contains considerable social comment on the state and prospects of medicine in the United States in the 1920s. Dr. Arrowsmith is a progressive, even something of a rebel, and often challenges the existing state of things when he finds it wanting. This novel has been inspirational for several generations of pre-medical and medical students. There is much agonizing along the way concerning career and life decisions. While detailing Martin's pursuit of the noble ideals of medical research for the benefit of mankind and of selfless devotion to the care of patients, Lewis throws many less noble temptations and self-deceptions in Martin's path. The attractions of financial security, recognition, even wealth and power distract Arrowsmith from his original plan to follow in the footsteps of his first mentor, Max Gottlieb, a brilliant but abrasive bacteriologist. In the course of the novel Lewis describes many aspects of medical training, medical practice, scientific research, scientific fraud, medical ethics, public health, and of personal/professional conflicts that are still relevant today. Professional jealousy, institutional pressures, greed, stupidity, and negligence are all satirically depicted, and Martin himself is exasperatingly self-involved. But there is also tireless dedication, and respect for the scientific method and intellectual honesty.

Martin Arrowsmith shares some biographical elements with Félix d'Herelle, who is identified in the novel as a co-discoverer of the bacteriophage and represented as having beaten Arrowsmith into publication with his results. Arrowsmith has been compared with The Citadel by A. J. Cronin (first published after Arrowsmith in 1937) which also deals with the life experiences of a young idealistic doctor who tries to challenge and improve the existing system of medical practice. De Kruif is known to have drawn inspiration for locations and characters in Arrowsmith from specific sources. The labwork and experimental process of Max Gottlieb was based on the careers of F. G. Novy and Jacques Loeb. Loeb and De Kruif both worked at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York and Novy was de Kruif's longtime mentor.

Pulitzer Prize Arrowsmith was awarded the 1926 Pulitzer Prize, but Lewis declined the award. In a letter to the committee, he wrote: "I wish to acknowledge your choice of my novel Arrowsmith for the Pulitzer Prize. That prize I must refuse, and my refusal would be meaningless unless I explained the reasons. All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards; they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee. And the Pulitzer Prize for Novels is peculiarly objectionable because the terms of it have been constantly and grievously misrepresented. Those terms are that the prize shall be given "for the American novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." This phrase, if it means anything whatsoever, would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novels shall be made not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of Good Form may chance to be popular at the moment."