The Library Annex

‘Are you going on for the rest of your life, stumbling into respectability and having to be dug out again? Will you never learn you’re a barbarian?’

A question of service. Of industry. Of responsibility. Of intergrity. In many ways, of art. Sinclair Lewis illustrates Martin Arrowsmith as a man constantly at odds with the world of his passion and the passion itself. Like any artist, he struggles bewteen the integrity of his work, its purpose, and the practical, industrial and economic gain of it. Lewis had choices to make about his protagnoist, much like the choices his protagonist has to make. ‘Should he be admirable and flawless? I hero of sacrifice for his art? Am I making a statement or shining a light?’

Within the characters around him, Arrowsmith faces both his potential selves and the self he desires. And moreso than simply asking the question of their merits, he dips his toes into those selves and, I think, wrestles with constant disappointment in the subsequent realization that they do not calm his idealistic yearning. Even when he achieves his idealism, I wonder if he truly finds perfect peace or satisfaction.

As the reader, we do not admire him for his staunch integrity, as it falters at the different stages of his journey. We do not find a model of a moral or philosophical stance. Whether in small town practice, political arenas, big city health institues or social elitism, he immerses himself only to have circumstances constatnly irritate his balance. He finally finds peace only in removing one side of that balancing act completely.

I find Max Gottlieb and Leora, his closest relationships, the most interesting. They represent everything he wants; a mentor who exemplifies his deepest ideals and a wife who endures his flailing skills as a husband (though without the oblivious, shallow characterization we see in other novels). And these relationships sour the most, showing the depths of not only Arrowsmith’s desired purity but his inability to practice the integrity he preaches. He will stare down his adversaries – the moral argument of practical contributions to society, economic and social ambition – argue against them, and then find himself immersed in their control. He lacks the strength to withstand the pressures of early 20th-century American life, but not the attitude and mouth to denounce them. Perhaps Max Gottlieb exemplifies Arrowsmith’s future if he does not make his final decision and Leora exemplifies Arrowsmith’s life if he only accepts his fate.

Arrowsmith, colored in Lewis’ patented satire of American industry and social ambitions, lacks admirability but oozes relatability. He begs the reader to question if our idealistic goals, when truly and fully realized, bring happiness or only a lack of conflict. Are all artists and idealists destined for freedom through a form of isolated asceticism? Or the imprisonment of social and economic success partnered with self-loathing? Is there no other choice?