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Nicole Bratu

Bowler

English 10 Honors

24 September 2018

The Price of Progress

Whether someone is trying to find a cure for a disease or trying to be the best at

something, everyone has a goal in life and to be able to make progress they will have to make

sacrifices. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr.

Henry Jekyll is a scientist that makes a great scientific discovery, in which he can transform into

another person, Mr. Edward Hyde. Mr. utterson is a dear friend and lawyer of Dr. Jekyll starts to

catch on to the fact that Dr. Jekyll can transform into another person and eventually finds out Dr.

Jekyll’s secret. Orbiting Jupiter by Gary Schmidt is about a fifteen year old boy named Joseph

Brook who had a rough childhood ever since he had a child and his baby got taken away from

him. Joseph is fostered by Jackson’s family and eventually learns to trust them but he still yearns

to see is baby daughter. Both of these story have progress in them, in The Strange Case of Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is the progress of an experiment and in Orbiting Jupiter, it is how Joseph

learns to trust again. The Price of Progress is one major theme connecting The Strange Case of

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Orbiting Jupiter.

As Dr. Jekyll and Joseph get further in their development, they both start to have health

problems. According to John Bodley, “... development increases the disease rate of affected

peoples in at least three ways...Among these are diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and a variety of

circulatory problems.”(Bodley, 2) Bodley is explaining that as society progresses there are

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consequences that take place because of the progress made in society. As Dr. Jekyll’s

experiments continue and he discovers his alternate personality, his health starts to deteriorate

because the experiment had side effects. When Mr. Utterson goes to see Dr. Jekyll he finds him,

“...looking deathly sick. He did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold

hand…”(Stevenson, 29) Dr. Jekyll’s progress may have been a scientific breakthrough but it

doesn’t justify the toll it took on Dr. Jekyll’s health. This price of progress can not only be found

in books but also in the real world as explained by John Bodley. Any kind of progress or

breakthrough will also have its consequences, but there is another branch of the price of progress

which has to do with money.

Money was sometimes a problem for Dr. Jekyll and his experiment and for Joseph

because he comes from a middle class family. In J.D. Kleinke’s words, “As a society, we value

good news associated with our medical progress, and we are clearly willing to pay for

it.”(Kleinke) If someone was sick they would probably be willing to pay for their treatment if

they had the possibility to pay. Most people are willing to pay for their medical expenses if it

means their health could improve. Joseph comes from a middle class family and he didn’t have a

mother so his father brought the income. This means that sometimes Joseph would help his

father. When Joseph went to help his father, “...the plumber came to change the showerheads and

faucets...he brought his son to carry the tools...two days later, Joseph knocked on Madeleine's

door…”(Schmidt, 70) As Joseph went to help his father, he met Madeline which is how the

whole story began. Joseph was trying to help his father with money, to progress ahead and he

ends up meeting the girl he loved which was Madeline. Money was a factor in the story but also

in the real world because to receive more money people will do a lot of things. This leads to the

next topic which is trust.

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Dr. Jekyll and Joseph both let trust be vulnerability. As said by Anish Koka M.D., when

describing how the author’s daughter had to have a liver transplant when the child was only 13

months old, “...my little girl got worse, a transplant became her only hope. 10 months later she

was in the hands of transplant surgeons in Pittsburgh in an operating room…”(Koka) This author

tells about her own experience and how she had to blindly trust a procedure so it would save her

daughter’s life. This must have been a very hard this to do because at the time when this was

written liver transplants were not very popular and fairly new. In Orbiting Jupiter, Joseph has a

hard time trusting anyone because he had been hurt so many times before. Joseph would always

flinch when someone he didn’t trust touched him but towards the end of the novel, “When my

father put his hand on Joseph’s back, Josseph didn’t even flinch.”(Schmidt, 115) Joseph

eventually learns to trust Jackson and his family, but right after he starts to trust them a

catastrophe happens. Joseph’s father holds the family at gunpoint and takes Joseph away. While

they are driving away, they get in a car accident and Joseph dies. This shows the price of

progress because Joseph made progress to trust another but then it ends badly with him dying.

This showed that the price of Joseph’s progress was that his dad took him away and then Joseph

died.

The Price of Progress and how it relates to the books The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and

Mr. Hyde and Orbiting Jupiter is through the cost of health, money, and trust. Buts this theme

also relates to everyone. The Price of Progress is a theme that relates to everyone when it comes

to their goals. Trying to be the best at a sport might mean you have to give up some foods to

become better or trying to find a cure for a disease might mean giving up your social life to work

harder and research more.If you are trying to become the best at something, you might have to

give up something you love to be able to achieve your goal.

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Works Cited

Bodley, John. “The Price of Progress.”

meissinger.com/uploads/3/4/9/1/34919185/bodley_1990_the_price_of_progress.pdf.

Accessed 16 September, 2018

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Kleinke, J.D.. “The Price of Progress: Prescription Drugs in the Healthcare Market.” Health

Affairs, www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.20.5.43. Accessed 16 September

2018.

Koka, Anish. “The Price of Progress.” The Health Care Blog,

thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2018/01/04/the-price-of-progress/. Accessed 16 September

2018.

Schmidt, Gary. Orbiting Jupiter. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing., 2015.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories.

Introduction and Notes by Jenny Davidson, Barnes and Noble Books, 2003.