Arrowsmith

Martin Arrowsmith

Martin drifts from medical school to a Minnesota town where he becomes a Pillar of the Community, complete with a Roentgen ray outfit and a seat on the Tozer bank board. He is a religious man without a religion, seeking a passion to replace his Gottlieb-cult, and he finds it in Sondelius's war on disease. His conversion turns him annoying to his neighbors and sets him on the path toward research, ambition, and the compromises that come with both.

Leora Tozer

Leora marries Martin expecting to follow him out on the road, but settles into a cottage with a nickeled stove and a golden-oak sideboard. She is too lazy to look up a new husband, and she warns him not to expect her to play the organ when he becomes Sunday School superintendent. Her dry humor and steady presence anchor Martin even as his ambitions pull him away from the small, sound life she represents.

Max Gottlieb

Gottlieb is the exacting German-Jewish scientist whose pessimistic view of the human intellect Martin absorbs even as he longs for progress and meaning. The death of the Gottlieb-cult leaves Martin unconsciously seeking a new passion, which he finds in Sondelius's war on disease. Gottlieb's example—rigorous, uncompromising, and ultimately isolating—defines the standard against which Martin measures every later compromise.

Clif Clawson

Clif drags Martin to parties, calls him Martykins, and warns him that Madeline Fox will set him at tonsil-snatching once she gets her hooks in. He is crude, loyal, and allergic to pretension, and his opposition to Madeline stirs Martin to consider marriage with a dramatic conviction. Clif represents the unvarnished, unambitious life Martin keeps half-longing for and half-fleeing.

Gustaf Sondelius

Sondelius is a rich eccentric with clubs in London, Paris, Washington, and New York, known from Batoum to Bechuanaland for his war on disease. He shouts that tuberculosis, cancer, typhoid, and plague are an invading army against which the world must mobilize, and his violence catches Martin like a conversion. His crusade gives Martin a new passion after the death of the Gottlieb-cult, and his example of science as spectacle and combat shapes Martin's ambitions.

Joyce Lanyon

Joyce marries money and expects to shape Martin into a polished man of the world, complete with a chauffeur who touches his hat and a valet who produces shirts automatically. She sees his science as a pity he cannot abandon, and she discovers Science while Martin discovers Women. Their marriage offers Martin luxury, energy saved for the things only he can do, and a new set of compromises that test whether he can remain a scientist or become merely a Rich Woman's husband.