Martin Arrowsmith

Character Analysis

The Student

Martin Arrowsmith starts this book loud and proud. He is convinced that it's his destiny to become a great doctor. His pride is on full display on his first day of medical school, as the narrator notes: "On his first day in medical school, Martin Arrowsmith was in a high state of superiority" (2.3.1). But despite his pride, Martin is also an insecure young man who doesn't know exactly what kind of doctor he wants to be once he leaves school. Sounds about right, huh? Someone who is super-pompous on the one hand and super-insecure on the other? Everyone knows that guy.

During his time in med school, Martin goes to a lot of fancy parties and realizes that he is "unaccustomed to such elegance. Though he had come in sulky unwillingness, he was impressed by the supper, by the frocks of the young women; he realized that his dancing was rusty, and he envied the senior who could do the new waltz called the 'Boston'" (5.2.4). We're not totally surprised that a dude who holes up in a science lab all day isn't the best dancer, just saying.

Martin wants fame and glory, but he wants this fame and glory to come from something substantial. But he isn't actually that adept at navigating the social realities of getting ahead: like the fact that you need to be freaking pleasant to people in order to network. The truth is that Martin's vision of where he's going doesn't always match up with reality.

Sinclair Lewis delivers a snark-tastic smackdown on Martin when the narrator states:

[In] this biography of a young man who was in no degree a hero, who regarded himself as a seeker after truth yet who stumbled and slid back all his life and bogged himself in every obvious morass. (5.3.1)

Ouch, right? But it's totally true that Martin's progress as a doctor is often a case of one step forward and two steps back—he takes an uncompromising stance when it comes to what he expects from life. What he expects is to be able to do whatever work he wants whenever he wants. Not surprisingly, he gets beaten down a few times before he succeeds.

The Ladies' Man

One place that Martin does not get beaten down in is in his affairs of the heart… emphasis on the "affairs" part. This guy is not so much faithful.

He's not a total dog, but he does like keeping a couple of irons in the fire. He is engaged to one woman when he meets his wife-to-be Leora, and has the nerve to introduce them to each other. He then marries Leora (and is quite happy), but that doesn't keep him from making out with the teenaged daughter of his colleague.

Then, he makes out with a young woman named Joyce while in the Caribbean when his wife Leora is dying of the plague. He marries Joyce when Leora has kicked the bucket, but he doesn't stop being a huge flirt.

Does Martin's love for the ladeez drive the plot in a major way? No, not really… but Martin's flirty ways are evidence of a deep restlessness within him, and a feeling that the grass is always greener. And those impulses do act as plot-drivers, hoo-boy.

The Confused Professional

During his time as a student, Martin comes to worship his lab-crazy mentor, Max Gottlieb. But Gottlieb's constant criticism eventually pushes Martin away. Gottlieb is seriously crotchety, and Martin is initially a lot more optimistic than Gottlieb:

For all his devotion to Max Gottlieb's pessimistic view of the human intellect, Martin had believed that there was such a thing as progress, that events meant something, that people could learn something. (5.7.1)

As the novel goes on, though, Martin slowly comes back toward Gottlieb's position because a) Martin admires Gottlieb's commitment to Truth at all costs and b) the harsh realities of life start wearing down some of Martin's confidence in mankind.

It comes as a huge shocker to Martin that he's not rewarded for being totally committed to scientific Truth. Instead of the Truth-seekers, it's the people who play political games and look out for their self-interest who mainly end up calling the shots in the world of science. Men like Irving Watters and Dr. Pickerbaugh, for example, command way more social respect than Martin because they're willing to play political games and make nice with people.

So of course Max Gottlieb, with his "if you don't like it you can lump it" stance, starts to seem really good to the socially awkward and professionally ambitious Martin Arrowsmith.

But the truth is that deep down, Martin does care about what other people think of him—way more than a guy like Max Gottlieb does. He wants respect, but he doesn't want to do any networking or kiss up to anyone. That's basically the professional equivalent of wanting to be super-fit but not wanting to do any exercise. It's crazy unrealistic.

Martin's tendency to be unrealistic is bad for him, but awesome for the reader of Arrowsmith, because it's Martin's clashing desires for Scientific Truth and for respect that drives a lot of the action in this book.

The Plague Doctor

No, Martin Arrowsmith doesn't dress up in one of the super-cool costumes used by plague doctors during the Renaissance. He just goes to a diseased Caribbean island with his wife and colleague to perform an experiment with plague vaccines.

And this is where the whole "respect vs. Scientific Truth" conflict comes to a head. In order to perform his experiment correctly (Scientific Truth, y'all) he has to vaccinate only half the population of the island, meaning half of these poor islanders die. You can see how letting a bunch of people die in the name of Science would put a damper on your respectability, huh?

When Martin's wife and colleague die of the plague, Martin totally cracks and begins vaccinating everyone. Because of this, he becomes a hero and gains respect. But because he still has this clash of desires running rampant within him, he feels like he's let down the ideals of Scientific Truth by being a hero. Sucks to be Martin, man.

The Dreamer

When Martin is handed respect toward the end of the novel (after the cure-the-whole-island thing he gets an offer to be the head honcho of a scientific thinktank), he totally recoils. Now that he has respect, he doesn't want it. He just wants to pursue Truth.

So he abandons his new wife Joyce and their newborn son, John. In one of his final arguments with Joyce, Martin says,

"I want my freedom to work, and I herewith quit whining about it and grab it. You've been generous to me. I'm grateful. But you've never been mine. Good-bye." (40.1.40)

He appreciates everything his wife has done for him, but now nothing short of total freedom to pursue Truth will satisfy him.

And by the end of the book, Martin Arrowsmith seems to be as happy as a clam. He abandons pretty much everything and lives out his days in a shack in Vermont studying science. It truly seems as though he's realized what the most important thing in his life is. Or maybe he just enjoys the fact that his freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.