If you were to explain the core essence of *Arrowsmith* to someone based *only* on the dedication, the extensive chapter list, and the opening paragraph of Chapter I, what would you hypothesize to be the central conflict or driving force of the narrative?

From the book

← Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis Chapter I Chapter II → New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, pages 1–6 3544278 Arrowsmith — Chapter I ​ Chapter I I The driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen. Her mother they had buried near the Monongahela—the girl herself had heaped with torn sods the grave beside the river of the beautiful name. Her father lay shrinking with fever on the floor of the wagon-box, and about him played her brothers and sisters, dirty brats, tattered brats, hilarious brats. She halted at the fork in the grassy…

← Arrowsmith ( 1925 ) by Sinclair Lewis Chapter I → related portals : Pulitzers , American literature Winner of the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel 3617447 Arrowsmith 1925 Sinclair Lewis Layout 2 ​ ARROWSMITH By SINCLAIR LEWIS Author of Main Street, Babbitt, etc. NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 130 ​ COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. Copyright, 1924, 1925, by The Designer Publishing Company, Inc. The first edition of Arrowsmith consists of 500 copies on handmade paper, numbered and signed by the author. Second printing [first trade edition], January, 1925 PRINTED IN…

on's office, a boy was reading "Gray's Anatomy." His name was Martin Arrowsmith, of Elk Mills, in the state of Winnemac. There was a suspicion in Elk Mills—now, in 1897 , a dowdy red-brick village, smelling of apples—that this brown-leather adjustable seat which Doc Vickerson used for minor operations, for the infrequent pulling of teeth and for highly frequent naps, had begun life as a barber's chair. There was also a belief that its proprietor must once have been called Doctor Vickerson, but for years he had been only The Doc, and he was scurfier and much less adjustable than the chair. ​…

come. Inchcape Jones offered to Martin the position of Government bacteriologist, but he refused lest he be sidetracked. The Special Board met in Parliament House, all of them trying to look not like their simple and domestic selves but like judges. With them appeared such doctors of the island as could find the time. While Leora listened from the back of the room, Martin addressed them, not unaware of the spectacle of little Mart Arrowsmith of Elk Mills taken seriously by the rulers of a tropic isle headed by a Sir Somebody. Beside him stood Max Gottlieb, and in Gottlieb's power he…

ain that he had seen aright. He fretfully prepared a slide from the flask contents and examined it under the microscope. He discovered nothing but shadows of what had been bacteria: thin outlines, the form still there but the cell substance gone; minute skeletons on an infinitesimal battlefield. He raised his head from the microscope, rubbed his tired eyes, reflectively rubbed his neck—his blouse was off, his collar on the floor, his shirt open at the throat. He considered: "Something funny here. This culture was growing all right, and now it's committed suicide. Never heard of bugs doing…