Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews June 6, 2023 May 30, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
In the early 1920's, around 1922 or so, Sinclair Lewis met a man named Paul De Kruif who had worked for the Rockefeller Institute and who had published a series of articles in Century magazine attacking the practices of modern American medicine. Lewis, in his novel Arrowsmith takes the torch carried by De Kruif who had to leave the Rockefeller Institute because of his critique.
It was the early twenties, and America was living through an economic boom from the war, where everything was becoming more commercial—American businesses were booming. And, further, even practices like medicine were becoming "businesses." The consequences of medicine becoming a business is what Lewis criticizes, specifically the commercialism and competition that exist within the profession and which seem to contradict its nature. Instead of being a practice of altruism, discovery, and healing, medicine had become something institutions needed to sell. Lewis uses the Rouncefield Institute, the Public Health Department of Nautilus, and the McGurk institute as vehicles of satire in order to criticize the real institutions that existed in America at this time. In many ways the novel was educating the American public about the maladies of medicine in the early twentieth century.
Martin Arrowsmith is a laboratory man, not a physician. The juxtaposition of the laboratory man and the physician are present throughout and are epitomized in the characters of Gottlieb and Dean Silva, respectively. The physician is a public figure and, depending on where he practices, is often trusted and a minor celebrity. The doctor because he heals is therefore generally admired (when he is a good doctor). The scientist, however, is a solitary person, a lonely person. The scientist must work alone in the laboratory, and when he makes discoveries usually only a small sector of the world is aware of it. Sometimes the scientist goes unrecognized for years, as Gottlieb had gone. Further still, if we are to surmise that Gottlieb is to represent "the scientist," then we come to the conclusion that the scientist has a solitary, exhausted, and unhappy end. The plight of the scientist is therefore a difficult one.
And yet, Martin seems, to be able to accept the "failures" that exist in his profession, where he will always be an outsider and never a "success." In fact, he seems almost able to embrace the likelihood of "failure," and it is in the acceptance of the romanticized "plight of the scientist" that the book ends in an ironically optimistic fashion.
Throughout the novel Martin finds his peace, his happiness, and his adventurous thrills while he is alone in the laboratory. Solitude and retreat become his true companions, aside from Leora whom Martin knows so well that he can be alone even while with her. As soon as Martin becomes a social being, as soon as he accepts luxury and the idea of "success," he begins to stray from his path and eventually becomes unhappy without the solitude of his laboratory work.
Many of the characters we come to like, moreover, are lonely figures: Martin, Terry, and Gottlieb, for instance. Many of the characters we are meant to dislike are very social beings: Tubbs and Holabird, for instance. Moreover, this solitude and retreat is romanticized and even elevated in a Thoreau-like fashion by the time we reach the end. In the end, Martin moves to the woods with Terry Wickett, where they will create a laboratory all their own. There is a "salvation" in this "retreat," for Martin has finally accepted the power of independence. This retreat is what makes the novel optimistic; Martin is finally able to flee form the social and commercial department heads that hinder his true work.
Please wait while we process your payment