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ClassicNote on The Circle

Table of Contents

Biography of Dave Eggers (1970–) ............................................................................................................ 1

The Circle Study Guide .............................................................................................................................. 3

The Circle Summary ................................................................................................................................... 4

The Circle Characters ................................................................................................................................. 5 Mae Holland ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Annie ................................................................................................................................................. 5 Renata................................................................................................................................................. 5 Kevin .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Ty Gospodinov/Kalden ...................................................................................................................... 5 Eamon Bailey ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Tom Stenton ...................................................................................................................................... 6 Francis Garaventa .............................................................................................................................. 6 Marion ............................................................................................................................................... 6 Mae's Mother and Father.................................................................................................................... 6 Mercer ................................................................................................................................................ 7 Dan ..................................................................................................................................................... 7 Alistair................................................................................................................................................ 7 Jared ................................................................................................................................................... 7 Dr. Villalobos ..................................................................................................................................... 7

The Circle Glossary .................................................................................................................................... 8 Calatrava Fountain ............................................................................................................................. 8 Hardtack ............................................................................................................................................. 8 Calder Mobile..................................................................................................................................... 8 Koyaanisqatsi ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Vertigo ................................................................................................................................................ 8 Black Lightning.................................................................................................................................. 8 Protégée.............................................................................................................................................. 9 Subsidy ............................................................................................................................................... 9 Ochre .................................................................................................................................................. 9 Asperger's ........................................................................................................................................... 9 IPO ..................................................................................................................................................... 9 TruYou................................................................................................................................................ 9

Valhalla...............................................................................................................................................10 FCC Investigation ..............................................................................................................................10 Spruce Goose and Enola Gay.............................................................................................................10 Riesling ..............................................................................................................................................10 Tatum O'Neal and Paper Moon ..........................................................................................................10 Mossad ...............................................................................................................................................11 Zing ....................................................................................................................................................11 Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Revolution .......................................................................................11 Tiananmen Square ..............................................................................................................................11 The Hague ..........................................................................................................................................11 Second Enlightenment ......................................................................................................................11 SeeChange..........................................................................................................................................12 Multiple Sclerosis (MS) .....................................................................................................................12 ChildTrack/TruYouth .........................................................................................................................12 MaeDay ..............................................................................................................................................12 InnerCircle and OuterCircle ...............................................................................................................13 Participation Rank/PartiRank .............................................................................................................13 Lisbon.................................................................................................................................................13 The Y .................................................................................................................................................13 Retinue ...............................................................................................................................................13 pH Level.............................................................................................................................................13 Hep C .................................................................................................................................................14 LEED..................................................................................................................................................14 Transparency ......................................................................................................................................14 Donald Judd Sculpture .......................................................................................................................14 Conversion Rate and Retail Raw .......................................................................................................14 CircleJerk ...........................................................................................................................................15 Julian Assange....................................................................................................................................15 Pentagon Papers .................................................................................................................................15 Gadhafi ...............................................................................................................................................15 Settlers................................................................................................................................................15 Sardonic..............................................................................................................................................15 PastPerfect..........................................................................................................................................16 Completion .........................................................................................................................................16 Manifest Destiny ................................................................................................................................16 Demoxie .............................................................................................................................................16 Constitutional Convention ................................................................................................................16 Klansman............................................................................................................................................17 Digital Brownshirts ............................................................................................................................17 ACLUtopia .........................................................................................................................................17

Infocommunism .................................................................................................................................17

The Circle Themes ......................................................................................................................................18 The Dangers of Modernity ................................................................................................................18 Family ...............................................................................................................................................18 Religion ..............................................................................................................................................19 Sex, Lust, and Love............................................................................................................................19 Identity ..............................................................................................................................................19 Human Rights.....................................................................................................................................20 The Imporance of Names ...................................................................................................................20

The Circle Quotes and Analysis .................................................................................................................21

The Circle Book 1 Part 1 (pp. 1-84) Summary and Analysis .....................................................................25

The Circle Book 1 Part 2 (pp. 84-146) Summary and Analysis .................................................................28

The Circle Book 1 Part 3 (pp. 146-192) Summary and Analysis ...............................................................31

The Circle Book 1 Part 4 (pp. 192-309) Summary and Analysis ...............................................................34

The Circle Book 2 Part 1 (pp. 309-385) Summary and Analysis ...............................................................38

The Circle Book 2 Part 2 (pp. 385-466) Summary and Analysis ...............................................................41

The Circle Book 2 Part 3 and Book 3 (pp. 466-497) Summary and Analysis............................................44

The Circle Symbols, Allegory and Motifs ..................................................................................................46 The Transparent Shark (Symbol) .......................................................................................................46 The Tear (Symbol) .............................................................................................................................46 The Chinese Sculpture "Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind" (Symbol) .......................46 Stewart's Storage Unit (Symbol) ........................................................................................................46 Mae's Screens (Symbol) .....................................................................................................................47

The Circle Metaphors and Similes..............................................................................................................48 "Non-communication in a place like the Circle was so difficult, it felt like violence." (Similie) .....48 "It's plankton-inspection time... little startups hoping the big whale - that's us - will find them tasty enough to eat." (Metaphor) ........................................................................................................48 "She found the buffet, and found it in shambles, a feast raided by animals or Vikings..." (Metaphor)..........................................................................................................................................48

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"Which of them had pushed that frown button, each push of that button the pull of a trigger... she felt full of holes as if every one of them had shot her, from behind, cowards filling her with holes." (Metaphor/Simile) ..................................................................................................................48 "He tilted his head, like a traveler puzzling out some odd local customs." (Similie) ........................49

The Circle Irony ..........................................................................................................................................50 Mae and Kalden's Conversations .......................................................................................................50 The Chinese Sculpture "Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind"........................................50 Sending Smiles...................................................................................................................................50 Secret Bathroom Meetings .................................................................................................................50 Counting the Grains of Sand in the Sahara .......................................................................................51 Mae's Parents' Gift .............................................................................................................................51

The Circle Imagery .....................................................................................................................................52 The Circle's Campus ..........................................................................................................................52 Sex......................................................................................................................................................52 Data ...................................................................................................................................................52 Kayaking ............................................................................................................................................52

The Circle Eggers's Epigraph: East of Eden and The Circle .....................................................................53

The Circle Literary Elements ......................................................................................................................54

The Circle Links .........................................................................................................................................57

The Circle Essay Questions ........................................................................................................................58

The Circle Quizzes......................................................................................................................................61 Quiz 1 Answer Key ............................................................................................................................65

The Circle Quizzes......................................................................................................................................67 Quiz 2 Answer Key ............................................................................................................................71

The Circle Quizzes......................................................................................................................................73 Quiz 3 Answer Key ............................................................................................................................77

The Circle Quizzes......................................................................................................................................79 Quiz 4 Answer Key ............................................................................................................................83

The Circle Bibliography .............................................................................................................................85

Copyright Notice.........................................................................................................................................86

Biography of Dave Eggers (1970–) Dave Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, an affluent town near Chicago. When Eggers was 21, both of his parents died of cancer within a year of one another, leaving Eggers to care for his 8-year-old brother, Toph. Eggers put his journalism studies at the University of Illinois on hold and moved to Berkeley, California where he raised Toph, supporting them by working odd jobs. In the early 1990s, he worked with several friends to found Might, a literary magazine based out of San Francisco. The publication gained notoriety when it ran a hoax article describing the death of Adam Rich, a former child actor. Despite the acclaim, the magazine attracted only a limited readership and folded in 1997. In 1998, Eggers founded publishing house McSweeney's, taking on editorial duties of literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. Today, the wildly successful McSweeney's publishes a variety of online and print content, including Eggers' own novels and nonfiction, poetry, short story collections, and DVD magazines.

In 2000, Eggers published A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a memoir about raising Toph and working for Might. The book garnered a slew of critical plaudits, became a bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and launched Eggers into literary stardom. For the next five years, Eggers split his time between fiction and charitable projects, including 826 Valencia, a nonprofit children's writing center. Since the original chapter was founded in San Francisco in 2002, seven other cities - including New York, Boston, and Seattle - have opened up 826 sister organizations.

Much of Eggers' later writing has taken a socially conscious bent, building upon his journalism background. In 2006, he published What is the What, the "fictional autobiography" of Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng. All proceeds from the book were donated to charity, and in 2007, Eggers did the same with the proceeds from Zeitoun, his nonfictional account of a Syrian American imprisoned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He also co-founded Voice of Witness, a book series that allows people from around the globe to orally transcribe their stories and point of view, which is designed to create a dialogue about human crises in all parts of the world.

Eggers' current interests remain in philanthropy and humanitarian work, with a focus on youth education. In 2002 he co-founded the literacy project 826 Valencia, which provides tutoring and workshops to help children and young adults develop their writing abilities (specially featuring programs that encourage journalistic writing). He also founded ScholarMatch in 2010, a program based in San Francisco but serving the entire US, that matches students needing funds for college tuition with donors along with providing coaching on the college and financial aid process. In 2008 he won the TED Prize and was given "one wish to change the world" - leading to the development of Once Upon a School, a project intended to "gather stories of private citizens engaged in their local schools so that people everywhere could share the details of their efforts in schools and be inspired by the work being done by others."

In addition to his ongoing literary and charitable work, Eggers co-wrote the screenplays for two lukewarmly received films: Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, and, with his wife Vendela Vida, Sam Mendes' Away We Go.

The Circle Study Guide Unlike many other works of dystopian science fiction, The Circle is set in a very near future, fitting neatly into the early 21st-century United States sociopolitical world of Google, Wikileaks, big data, and personalized advertisement.

The novel, a dozen years into Eggers' writing career, has received mixed reviews. Some reviewers applaud the relevance of a discomforting fable about the proliferation and infiltration of technology into society and personal life. Many other reviewers complain that Eggers' message is too blatant, that this future is unrealistic (for example, online anonymity disappears), and that his protagonist Mae is cartoonish and underdeveloped. Ellen Ullman of the New York Times writes, "Eggers tends to overexplain ... the scene .... The words 'author's message' flash above the scene, as they do about too many others." Those who expect an account of women in STEM, or deep characterization, will be disappointed to realize they came with the wrong interest, while those who seek a novel-length fable about privacy and technology in their times will be better rewarded.

The Circle Summary Mae Holland has landed a job at the Circle, “the most influential company in the world,” with help from her college friend Annie. The Circle, created by three "Wise Men," combines all of one's online interactions (social media and other business and personal communication, medical information, everything) into a single online identity called a TruYou, and has been growing to contain virtually all the other information that exists across the world. The company uses technological innovation to create what it claims is a more efficient and accountable society, especially by increasing transparency in government, business, and even personal lives. Cameras are everywhere, biological functions are monitored wirelessly, and the Circle adds more and more to its network. Mae begins work in Customer Experience and initially is concerned about her privacy, but she quickly rises in the ranks, gaining access to more screens of information (some of which she wears) and getting sucked into the arguments for full transparency, while her parents and ex-boyfriend Mercer grow increasingly horrified by the new rejection of private spaces and off-the-grid anonymity. She also becomes romantically involved with two men, an awkward coworker named Francis and a mysterious man who calls himself "Kalden." Kalden warns her of the dangers of "completing" the Circle, that is, making everything known to everyone so superficially and with so little respect for the individual. After Mae is caught illegally kayaking at night, she goes through a session of public shaming in front of the whole company and thus accepts a role as the primary "transparent" face of the Circle. She becomes world-famous, rejects Kalden's concerns, loses her identity, and essentially becomes a cyborg. Meanwhile, government officials and then more and more people are pressured to give up their privacy to go transparent so that the rest of the world can keep tabs on their morals.

The Circle Characters Mae Holland

The protagonist of The Circle. A recent college graduate and native of Longfield, California, Mae is a quick study who rapidly rises in the ranks at the Circle. As she gets sucked into the cult of the Circle, she loses her identity and outside relationships and becomes more and more like a robot. Once she goes transparent, being watched all day by anyone who tunes in, she becomes increasingly superficial, and she puts aside the irresponsible days of youth and becomes a world-renowned model of external virtue.

Annie

Mae's best friend and coworker at the Circle. Annie comes from a wealthy family with a long, but sordid, history in the United States. She is high up in the Circle - in the Gang of 40 - and specializes in international law. Annie works long hours and is incredibly cheerful yet goal-oriented. It is she who secures Mae a job, but she feels threatened after Mae's quick success within the company.

Renata

The Circle employee who first shows Mae around campus.

Kevin

Mae's old boss at 3B-East, the gas and electric utility.

Ty Gospodinov/Kalden

Ty Gospodinov is one of the three Wise Men and the original visionary of the Circle. He created TruYou, which combines all of one's online accounts into one identity for all interactions. He is aloof and mysterious and known for wearing laid-back attire and hoodies. He takes an interest in Mae but will not reveal his true identity to her, going by the name Kalden and wearing different clothes (and revealing his prematurely gray hair) as their relationship becomes sexual. As the story progresses, he attempts to warn Mae of the dangers of the Circle's Completion that she is assisting in bringing about.

Eamon Bailey

One of the three Wise Men and the public face of the Circle. It is Bailey who most firmly believes in all people having access to all information, and he becomes close with Mae after her nighttime kayak, turning it into an opportunity for her to go publicly transparent. He also, perhaps incongruously, loves and collects artifacts in his private Ochre Library.

Tom Stenton

One of the three Wise Men, and the most flashy of the three. He takes a particular interest in the acquisition of a transparent shark from the Marianas Trench, which is publicly fed other sea creatures.

Francis Garaventa

A Circle employee particularly focused on issues of youth abduction and abuse, as he and his siblings lived in foster homes as children and two sisters were abducted, raped, and killed. This leads him to head the creation of TruYouth, a technology in which a chip is embedded in the bones of children so that their parents and the government can track them. He and Mae become romantically involved, though she has issues with his bluntness and his sexual problems of premature ejaculation and asking to be rated on his performance.

Marion

Owner of the kayak rental Mae frequents who gets Mae off without charges when she borrows a kayak at night and is caught by SeeChange cameras.

Mae's Mother and Father

A quiet couple living in Longfield, California. Mae's father has been diagnosed recently with MS (Multiple Sclerosis) and faces problems with his health insurance, until Mae gets them on the Circle's medical plan. They are incredibly proud of Mae when she gets a job with the Circle, but become weary of her technology-focused ways as she becomes more deeply enmeshed, going so far as to cover up the SeeChange cameras in their home.

Mercer

Mae's ex-boyfriend, crafter of chandeliers from antlers, friend to Mae's parents, and staunch opposer of the Circle and its monopolization of information and government action. After Mae attempts to help him by posting pictures of his chandeliers online, he lectures her frequently on the imminent doom of society due to the Circle and people of her ilk. He attempts to remove himself from technological society by fleeing north, but Mae causes his suicide by using the Circle to track him down.

Dan

Mae's direct boss in Customer Experience at the Circle. Dan believes strongly in the social environment of the Circle, and scolds Mae often in her early days for lack of in-person and online social involvement.

Alistair

A Circle employee who becomes very upset with Mae after she does not attend his "Portugal Brunch" and later gives Mae a frown in the first testing of Demoxie.

Jared

Another Circle employee in Customer Experience.

Dr. Villalobos

Mae's doctor at the Circle's clinic who sets her up with the company's health plan and suggests putting her parents on the plan as well.

The Circle Glossary Calatrava Fountain

Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish neofuturistic architect, structural engineer, sculptor, and painter.

Hardtack

A simple type of cracker eaten on sea voyages, on military campaigns, and by gold prospectors migrating to California in the early 1850s.

Calder Mobile

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor known as the originator of the mobile, a type of kinetic sculpture made with delicately balanced or suspended components which move in response to motor power or air currents.

Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi, also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is a 1982 American documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music.

Vertigo

Vertigo is a subtype of dizziness in which a patient inappropriately experiences the perception of motion (usually a spinning motion) due to dysfunction of the vestibular system.

Black Lightning

Black Lightning is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics starting in 1977. The character was one of the first major African American superheroes to appear in DC Comics.

Protégée

A protégé is a person who is guided and supported by an older and more experienced or influential person (protégée is the female form).

Subsidy

A subsidy is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (or institution, business, or individual).

Ochre

Ochre is a natural earth pigment which ranges in color from yellow to deep orange or brown.

Asperger's

Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome, Asperger disorder (AD), or simply Asperger's, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development. The term has recently gone out of use due to Autism's redefinition as a spectrum with individuals defined as higher or lower functioning.

IPO

Initial public offering (IPO) or stock market launch is a type of public offering in which shares of stock in a company usually are sold to institutional investors that in turn sell to the general public, on a securities exchange, for the first time. Through this process, a private company transforms into a public company. The IPO process is colloquially known as going public. The largest ever IPO was The Alibaba Group with $25 billion in 2014; one of the highest ever was Facebook with $16 billion in 2012.

TruYou

TruYou is invented by the Circle's Ty Gospodinov and creates a single online identity for a person - "Ty had devised the initial system, the Unified Operating System, which combined everything online that had heretofore been separate and sloppy - users' social media profiles, their payment systems, their various passwords, their email accounts, usernames, preferences, every last tool and manifestation of their

interests... Your devices knew who you were, and your one identity - the TruYou, unbendable and unmaskable - was the person paying signing up, responding, viewing and reviewing, seeing and being seen" (21).

Valhalla

In Norse mythology, Valhalla (from Old Norse Valhöll "hall of the slain") is a majestic, enormous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin.

FCC Investigation

The FCC, Federal Communications Commission, is an independent US government regulatory agency responsible for overseeing all interstate and international communications. The FCC works in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the media, public safety, and homeland security.

Spruce Goose and Enola Gay

The Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the "Spruce Goose") is a prototype heavy strategic airlift military transport aircraft designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1947.

The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber built in 1945.

Riesling

Riesling is a white wine produced from the Riesling grape variety which originated in the Rhine region of Germany.

Tatum O'Neal and Paper Moon

Tatum O'Neal is an American actress and author. She is the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award. She won in 1974 at the age of 10 for her performance as Addie Loggins in Paper Moon opposite her father, Ryan O'Neal. Paper Moon is a 1973 American comedy-drama shot in black and white and set in Kansas and Missouri during the Great Depression.

Mossad

Mossad is the Israeli force responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counterterrorism; for bringing Jews to Israel from countries where official Aliyah agencies are forbidden; and for protecting Jewish communities.

Zing

A term used in the novel to connote something like a Facebook status - one can send out a zing to their followers or to all Circle employees, and these will show up in others' zing feeds.

Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Revolution

The Egyptian Revolution began on January 25, 2011 and was part of the Arab Spring. It consisted of demonstrations, marches, occupations of plazas, riots, non-violent civil resistance, acts of civil disobedience, and strikes.

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square is a large city square in the centre of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace) located to its North, separating it from the Forbidden City. Outside China, the square is best known in recent memory as the focal point of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, a pro-democracy movement which ended on June 4, 1989 with the declaration of martial law in Beijing by the government and the shooting of several hundred, or possibly thousands, of civilians by soldiers.

The Hague

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. The First Hague Conference was held in 1899 and the Second Hague Conference in 1907. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law.

Second Enlightenment

The Enlightenment is the period in the history of Western thought and culture, stretching roughly from the middle of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, characterized by dramatic

revolutions in science, philosophy, society, and politics. These revolutions swept away the medieval worldview and ushered in our modern Western world. Eamon Bailey tells employees of the Circle that they are at the dawn of the "Second Enlightenment" to insinuate that vast societal and intellectual upheaval is about to occur.

SeeChange

A technology comprised of small cameras that one is able to put up in any location for private viewing or sharing with the public. Eamon Bailey first demonstrates their effectiveness in accessing natural conditions and keeping watch from afar of revolution and police violence. A group called "ChangeSeers" later spread over the planet, installing cameras everywhere, especially in remote areas.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Multiple sclerosis (often abbreviated to MS) is a disease in which the immune system eats away at the protective covering of nerves. The cause of MS is still unknown – scientists believe the disease is triggered by as-yet-unidentified environmental factor(s) in a person who is genetically predisposed to respond. Vision loss, pain, fatigue, and impaired coordination are symptoms, but physical therapy and medications that suppress the immune system can help with symptoms and slow disease progression.

ChildTrack/TruYouth

ChildTrack, later called TruYouth, is the technology Francis is developing which would plant tracking chips in the bones of children so that they can be located by their parents and/or the police.

MaeDay

MaeDay is the username that Renata gives Mae on her first day of work - "'I made up a name for you: MaeDay. Like the war holiday. Isn't that cool?' Mae wasn't so sure about the name, and couldn't remember a holiday by that name."

Mayday has three major uses - Mayday is a distress signal, May Day often refers to a spring festival held on May 1st, and, also on May 1st, May Day can refer to International Workers' Day which celebrates laborers and the working class.

InnerCircle and OuterCircle

In the novel, the InnerCircle and OuterCircle are parts of a Circle employee's zing feed. The InnerCircle is comprised of other Circle employees and the OuterCircle is comprised of all others with TruYou accounts.

Participation Rank/PartiRank

This term is used in the novel as a way to track one's online social involvement at the Circle. Mae is at first chastised for her PartiRank being too low, but soon she has worked her way into the prized T2K or top 2,000 users. As Gina, a Circle employee, explains it to Mae, "It's just an algorithm-generated number that takes into account all your activity in the InnerCircle... it takes into account zings, exterior followers of your intra-company zings, comments on your zings, your comments on others' zings, your comments on other Circler's profiles, your photos posted, attendance at Circle events, comments and photos posted about those events - basically it collects and celebrates all you do here. The most active Circlers are ranked highest of course" (101).

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city of Portugal.

The Y

YMCA or The Young Men's Christian Association is a welfare movement that began in London in 1844 and now has branches all over the world. Many people from the United States use it for its cheap classes in subjects from exercise to cooking.

Retinue

A retinue is a group of advisers, assistants, or others accompanying an important person. Eggers uses it in an unconventional way to more simply mean group.

pH Level

pH level is a measure of acidity or alkalinity of water soluble substances. A pH value is a number from 1 (most acidic) to 14 (most alkaline), with 7 as the middle (neutral) point.

Hep C

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease affecting primarily the liver, caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The infection is often asymptomatic, but chronic infection can lead to scarring of the liver and ultimately to cirrhosis, which is generally apparent after many years. HCV is spread primarily by blood-to-blood contact associated with intravenous drug use, poorly sterilized medical equipment, and transfusions. An estimated 150–200 million people worldwide are infected with hepatitis C.

LEED

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a green building certification program that recognizes best-in-class building strategies and practices.

Transparency

Scientifically, transparency refers to something that allows light to pass through so that objects behind can be distinctly seen, but in business, governmental, and social contexts it has come to mean operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. The Circle takes this to another level by using transparency to mean streaming video and audio of almost all of one's daily life (for government officials this is later called "Clarification").

Donald Judd Sculpture

Donald Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism.

Conversion Rate and Retail Raw

These are two terms Eggers creates to track one's influence on others' consumer behavior. As Gina explains, "How to simulate purchases - that's the conversion rate. You can zing, you could comment on and rate and highlight any produce, but can you translate this all into action? Leveraging your credibility to spur action - this is crucial, okay?... If your purchase or recommendation spurs fifty others to take the same action, then your CR is x50... Below the Conversion Rate is your Retail Raw, the total gross purchase price of recommended products. So let's say you recommend a certain keychain, and 1,000 people take your recommendation; then those 1,000 keychains, priced at $4 each, bring your Retail Raw to $4,000."

CircleJerk

Colloquially, circle jerk refers to "When a bunch of blowhards - usually politicians - get together for a debate but usually end up agreeing with each other's viewpoints to the point of redundancy, stroking each other's egos as if they were extensions of their genitals (ergo, the mastubatory insinuation). Basically, it's what happens when the choir preaches to itself"(urbandictionary.com). Mercer uses the term here to pun on the company's name and their propensity to be insular.

Julian Assange

Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher and journalist. He is known as the editor-in-chief of the website WikiLeaks, which he co-founded in 2006 after an earlier career in hacking and programming. WikiLeaks achieved particular prominence in 2010 when it published U.S. military and diplomatic documents. Assange has been under investigation in the United States since that time.

Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a secret Department of Defense study of US political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.

Gadhafi

Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi was a Libyan revolutionary and politician who governed Libya as its primary leader from 1969 to 2011. Gaddafi was a controversial and highly divisive world figure. Supporters lauded his anti-imperialist stance and his support for Pan-Africanism and Pan- Arabism, and he was decorated with various awards. Conversely, he was internationally condemned as a dictator and autocrat whose authoritarian administration violated the human rights of Libyan citizens, and supported irredentist movements, tribal warfare, and terrorism in many other nations.

Settlers

Circle employees who live on campus in the fully-stocked HomeTown dorms.

Sardonic

Sardonic means grimly mocking or cynical.

PastPerfect

PastPerfect is a Circle-created technology that allows one to search back for all photos and information recorded at any point on one's ancestors. This information is, of course, public, and when Annie volunteers to be the first to try it out she is deeply and negatively affected by learning some things about her ancestors and having the public know them as well.

Completion

Completion becomes the goal of the Circle, though nobody is exactly sure what it would entail. It seems, by the end of the novel, that Mae's suggestion of all citizens being required to have a Circle account by law may bring Completion about.

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny is a term for the attitude prevalent during the 19th-century period of American expansion that the United States not only could, but was destined to, stretch from coast to coast. This attitude helped fuel western settlement, Native American removal, and war with Mexico.

Demoxie

Demoxie is the technological fulfillment of the program Mae suggests, wherein all citizens might be required to have Circle accounts and forced to weigh in by vote on certain issues.

Constitutional Convention

The Constitutional Convention took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain. Although the Convention was intended to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the Convention. The result of the Convention was the creation of the United States Constitution, placing the Convention among the most significant events in the history of the United States.

Klansman

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or simply "the Klan," includes three distinct movements in the United States. The first sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during the Reconstruction Era, especially by violence against African American leaders. It ended in about 1871. The second was a very large, controversial, nationwide organization in the 1920s that especially opposed Catholics. The current manifestation consists of numerous small unconnected groups that use the KKK name. They have all emphasized racism, secrecy, and distinctive costumes. All have called for the purification of American society, and all are considered part of right-wing extremism.

Digital Brownshirts

The Sturmabteilung (also known as the SA or the Brownshirts because of the uniforms they wore) in Nazi Germany functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Their primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Red Front Fighters League of the German Communist Party (KPD), and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists, and Jews, such as during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Again, Mercer mixes allusions to demonstrate his negative feelings toward Mae's involvement at the Circle and the actions they are taking.

ACLUtopia

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." Mercer uses the term to parody the way others view the Circle as supremely benevolent.

Infocommunism

Eggers creates this term to connote total sharing of all information.

The Circle Themes The Dangers of Modernity

Eggers is not shy with the main theme behind his technological satire: modernization comes at a high price. The fates of many of the novel's important supporting characters demonstrate this theme. Mae's demonstration of a technology supposedly harnessing social media's prevalence for public good drives her ex-boyfriend Mercer to suicide. A technology meant to help one connect with one's ancestors leads Annie to a nervous breakdown. Mae chooses technology over faith in the well-intentioned doomsdayer Kalden/Ty which has him all but fired from the company he founded. Mae herself notes that because of constant surveillance she has learned "the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all war chaos" (325). The main danger of modernity, according to Eggers's novel, is individuals wanting and obtaining too much information about the world, others, and themselves, a motivation that underlies the modern push toward more (and more invasive) technology.

Family

Eggers demonstrates the importance of family by comparing the lives of the novel's characters with particular reference to their relationships with their parents and the impacts of their family on their development. Most obvious is the comparison of Mae and Francis. Mae was raised an only child with two supportive parents, and thus their relationship is fraught with Mae's self-absorption and a discomfort with her parents now relying on her for health coverage. Francis, however, was put in the foster care system at a young age and two of his sisters were abducted and killed; he now is socially stunted, clingy, and sexually inept. Another example is contrast between Annie and Mae's background, especially in terms of socioeconomics. Annie comes from money and is a motivated and cheery young woman. On the other hand, Mae, growing up in the middle class with parents who jointly own a parking lot, feels constantly as if she owes Annie for helping her get a job and works terrifically hard in her first weeks to rise in the ranks. Furthermore, the turning point in their relationship, giving Mae the upper hand in the company, is when Annie begins to learn problematic things about her ancestors, shaking her self- confidence and ability to face society. Eggers uses the importance of this theme to drive home the dystopia of the novel's end - Mae sits next to her comatose friend at the Circle and thinks that she has "not reached her parents in a few months now," noting lightly that she will wait for technology to bring them back together.

Religion

"My God, Mae thought. It's heaven." This thought begins and continues throughout The Circle. For example, the founders of the company are three Wise Men doling out technological gifts to society, though these gifts lead to suicide and breakdown in many of Mae's closest relations. Kalden kisses Mae in the sign of the cross after their first sexual encounter and soon contacts her about the downfall of humanity. The night that Mae suggests the idea for Demoxie, a drunk man man approaches her in a bar to tell her she has "found a way to save all the souls" and draws a circle in the air that Mae realizes is in the shape of a halo. Eggers uses religion to underscore the terrifying and cult-like nature of the total devotion and idealism of Mae and other believers in the Circle's purportedly benevolent rise to power, and to beg the question of whether more technology is leading society toward heaven or perhaps hell.

Sex, Lust, and Love

Mae has sexual relationships with two men in the novel (Francis and Kalden) and thinks back on a third (Mercer). In all of these relationships there seems to be a period of infatuation in which, directly after their first encounters, Mae cannot stop thinking about them. This colors her world positively, but can soon slip into anger and disgust due to lack of contact or miscommunication. This parallels Mae's relationship with technology to some extent. Technology adds new "layers" to her life, but potentially overwhelms her when the excitement wears off. Mae portrays some unappealing representations of women in relationships: the hot and cold ex, the obsessive and often tipsy hook-up, and the resigned girlfriend. However, these realities all demonstrate a lack of true connection and communication that is satirical in light of the Circle's purported aid of communication and knowledge.

Identity

As a classic coming-of-age tale, Mae attempts to define her identity as an adult in the working world. However, the novel also addresses the pitfalls of attempting to create an online identity. TruYou, the original idea behind the Circle, combines all online interaction into one identity. In turn, the company uses this identity in various ways to pull information and cater services to employees and customers. Through Gus's LuvLuv presentation we see a notable example of an online identity's inadequacy. Mae is made uncomfortable by a program attempting to create a person and infer further information about her using what she has posted online. She is confused by the fact that she is indeed trying to create an online persona that represents her and will make people like her. Mercer notes the irony in this attempt, telling her that as she works more and more on her online identity, she is creating a less complex and colorful persona in the real world. Thus, the creation of one's identity and the ability of others to understand that identity is crucial to Mae's journey at the Circle and is a major question regarding the limits of technology.

Human Rights

"Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible human experience is a basic human right," says Eamon Bailey. This is one of two major rights Eggers espouses satirically in The Circle - equal access and equal say. In an age of increased pressure for equality between races, genders, sexualities, and more, at first glance something titled equality can seem only for the better. However, we see that total access can be destructive when private information is made public for all (e.g., Mae and Francis's dirty video, Annie's family history). Furthermore, support for totally equal say - demonstrated through the lauding of Demoxie by Circlers and the public alike as a new and necessary kind of democracy better able to serve the people - is almost laughable. Both ideas of supposed steps forward in human rights show the problematic nature of attempting to scale up technological advancement and ability into political or social policy.

The Imporance of Names

"'Mae.' She felt stronger every time she heard it."

Eggers demonstrates the power of names to Mae through her intoxication by this approximation of her voice saying her name as a reminder to answer a CircleSurveys question. She also feels most aroused by Kalden when he is saying her name, perhaps because hearing her name feels like the existence and shared knowledge she craves. In contrast, Kalden's lack of name serves as a major fixation for Mae since it reveals how little she knows about him; a lack of mutual connection and hindrance of her ability to gain information.

Names are shown as having the power to give things greater worth, such as Mae's comparison of her old building, 3B-East, to the buildings of the Circle which are named after famous time periods - the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Old West - and take on some of the grandeur of those names. Each new technology is named something trendy but meaningful, and we witness Francis's delight at the change of his technology from Child Track to TruYouth when it begins to get off the ground.

Finally, Mae is disquieted when Renata has chosen a username for her - MaeDay - as it takes away her power to define her own online identity. However, the carelessness with which it is done and the way Mae must accept it parallels the Circle's casual power over her.

The Circle Quotes and Analysis "The tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs. No one needs the level of contact you’re purveying. It improves nothing. It’s not nourishing. It’s like snack food. You know how they engineer this food? They scientifically determine precisely how much salt and fat they need to include to keep you eating. You’re not hungry, you don’t need the food, it does nothing for you, but you keep eating these empty calories. This is what you’re pushing. Same thing. Endless empty calories, but the digital-social equivalent. And you calibrate it so it’s equally addictive."

Mercer, p. 134

Mercer is often used to directly address the main theme of the novel, the dangers of modernity and specifically of Mae's increasing reliance on connection and affirmation through the Circle. The fact that the Circle can calibrate itself so easy to an individual, catering groups specifically for one's interests and learning one's consumer views so that advertisements can be targeted more effectively, builds into a system that can be addictive. However, Mercer is not completely right as Mae has attempted to distance herself socially and online and has been chastised for it. Mae's addiction is comprised of social aspects, the desire to exist and be noticed, and the direct power the Circle has over her as employer and near-God.

“Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?”

Annie, p. 16

This line references Mae's move from a job she didn't enjoy, working in utility in building 3B-East, to working at the Circle. It demonstrates the hopeful tone of the book's beginning, promising a simple ladder-climbing job rather than the whirlwind of "layers" Mae is soon swept up in.

"I want to be seen. I want proof I existed... Most people do. Most people would trade everything they know, everyone they know - they'd trade it all to know they've been seen, and acknowledged, that they might even be remembered. We all know the world is too big for us to be significant. So all we have is the hope of being seen, or heard, even for a moment.”

Mae, p. 490

The desire to exist and to have people acknowledge she exists is Mae's main motivation in the book. That she brings "most people" into her discussion means Eggers is directly asking readers to contemplate their own social media use and what they look to gain from it. However, Eggers satires Mae's (and potentially

readers') idea that more sharing means a more solid existence using Mercer's comments that Mae has become less of a person in real life because of her commitment to her online persona.

“We are not meant to know everything, Mae. Did you ever think that perhaps our minds are delicately calibrated between the known and the unknown? That our souls need the mysteries of night and the clarity of day? Young people are creating ever-present daylight, and I think it will burn us all alive. There will be no time to reflect, to sleep to cool.”

Mercer, p. 434

Again, Eggers uses Mercer to ask the reader to pause and reflect on the ideals espoused by the Circle and by Mae that all people should be able to know everything. He is speaking directly about the publication of information about Annie's family which foreshadows her breakdown (a result of her delicately calibrated brain being pushed too far), but also speaks to Mae's confusion over whether her problems come from knowing too little or too much.

"Increasingly, she found it difficult to be off-campus anyway. There were homeless people, and there were the attendant and assaulting smells, and there were machines that didn't work, and floors and seats that had not been cleaned, and there was, everywhere, the chaos of an orderless world."

p. 373

Though Mae feels as if she is becoming more connected with the world by interacting with clients from across the US and sending smiles to Nepal whenever asked, she is actually becoming acclimated to the upper-class, gated life of the Circle. The Circle is expanding itself to the rest of the world to attempt to organize the chaos therein, but this may be less than benevolent or sensitive when done by employees who cannot face the real world after becoming reliant on all the Circle gives them (and forces them to take).

“SECRETS ARE LIES

SHARING IS CARING

PRIVACY IS THEFT”

p. 305

These three phrases are used in the presentation Mae and Eamon Bailey give to educate Circle employees on the wrongness of her illegal kayaking trip for a number of reasons and introduce her transparency. They are broad generalizations that sum up Eamon Bailey's idea that all information should

and must be shared for a happy and effective world. However, the three, especially the childish-sounding "SHARING IS CARING" demonstrate the Circle's attempt to make everything into buzzwords and sweeping innovations without looking further into cases in which they may not apply.

“I think you think that sitting at your desk, frowning and smiling somehow makes you think you’re actually living some fascinating life. You comment on things, and that substitutes for doing them. You look at pictures of Nepal, push a smile button, and you think that’s the same as going there. I mean, what would happen if you actually went? Your CircleJerk ratings or whatever-the-fuck would drop below an acceptable level!“

Mercer, p. 263

Mercer uses this quote to criticize Mae, who he feel is losing her spark in real life as she cultivates her online identity and connections. However, this quote asks a larger question - what is the worth of real experience versus virtual experience? What impact can one make on others and on oneself from afar?

“This was a new skill she'd acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos.”

p. 325

This quote functions both thematically and emotionally. It demonstrates the irony that more transparency has meant more hiding in many ways for Mae, having to mask her emotions and hold secret conversations more and more though she is supposedly more connected to the world than ever. On top of this, it reveals what pressure her work and relationships have put on her, causing her to hone her ability to hide her emotions, something with which many readers will likely be able to relate.

"In a world where bad choices are no longer an option, we have no choice but to be good."

Eamon Bailey, p. 292

This quote is one that walks the line between wildly utopian and jarringly dystopian. Eamon Bailey suggests that when everyone is fully monitored, there will no longer be any crime or wrongdoing, and people will be relieved by this. However, bringing in the word "choice" the reader realizes that Bailey's ideal sounds much like a totalitarian regime in which the government gets to decide what choices are "good" or "bad" and thereby control every aspect of people's lives.

"She thought of the foxes that might be underneath her, the crabs that might be hiding under stones on the shore, the people in the cars that might be passing overhead, the men and women in the tugs and tankers, arriving to port or leaving, sighing, everyone having seen everything. She guessed at it all, what might live, moving purposefully or drifting aimlessly, in the deep

water around her, but she didn't think too much about any of it. It was enough to be aware of the million permutations possible around her, and take comfort in knowing she would not, and really could not, know much at all."

p. 272

This passage, surprisingly, refers to Mae, espousing a view in direct opposition to that she holds for much of the book. However, she feels this way while on Blue Island during her illegal kayaking trip - the last major event in the book before she discusses the harm of anyone being unable to know everything and then goes irreversibly transparent. The passage is soothing, and lacks the feverish urgency of the rest of the book in which she is swept up in data and attempts to keep the screaming tear within her, which she attributes to the lack of knowing that calms her in this quote, at bay.

The Circle Book 1 Part 1 (pp. 1-84) Summary and Analysis Summary

Mae Holland has just arrived for her first day of work at the Circle: “the most influential company in the world.” The campus, located somewhere in California, is vast, including everything from athletic courts to fruit groves, and as Mae walks through it all on her way from the parking lot to the front hall she reflects on how she was able to get this new and exciting job.

Mae met Annie in college at Carleton; they roomed together for three semesters and formed a bond almost at the level of sisterhood. Mae specifically reflects on an incident in which she came down with the flu and Annie took her to the hospital and then painstakingly cared for her in the days afterward. Annie was two years older than Mae and had clearer ambitions. While Mae waffled between undergraduate majors, Annie graduated, got an MBA from Stanford, and was hired at the Circle. After only 4 years, she rose through the ranks to the “Gang of 40,” and pulled some strings to secure Mae one of the few and revered entry job placements at the corporation.

Mae is welcomed by Renata, who gives a tour of the building in lieu of Annie since she is busy in the Old West. Mae takes a moment to pause on the company’s practice of naming sections of the campus after historical eras in an effort to make the campus less impersonal. Renata shows Mae to The Renaissance, the building in which Mae will be working with the Customer Experience team. After walking by halls of tastefully personalized offices, Renata shows Mae to a tiny, burlap-walled cubicle replete with an outmoded computer. These awful working conditions prompt Mae to reminisce on her recent, unfulfilling post-grad years living and working a 9-5 job at a utility in her hometown. Just when her eyes are filling with tears, Annie speaks, revealing the entire thing has been a joke and joining Renata in showing Mae around.

After meeting various impassioned Circle employees, Annie and Mae split from Renata, and Annie takes Mae to a top secret room on campus, the Ochre Library. Before entering, they look together at a large, awkward painting of the Circle’s three founders, called the “Wise Men” - Ty Gospodinov, Eamon Bailey, and Tom Stenton. Ty was the originator of the Circle, originally the Unified Operating System, which at first simply combined all of one’s online interactions (social media, communication, business transactions, and more) into one online identity called a TruYou. This led to increased accountability (so- called “trolls” were no longer able to comment on content without using their personal account with their own names) and an incredible increase in the trackability of personal data, especially consumer data.

However, as Ty seemed to people aloof and somewhat strange, he joined with Bailey and Stenton before taking on investors and seeing the company soar.

In the Ochre Library, Bailey has collected thousands of antique books along with sculptures and a stained glass ceiling. Annie goes to a specific bookcase and removes a volume that causes a bookshelf to move inward and reveal a secret room with a pole down through the floor, which Annie says she can only guess goes to his parking space. Annie then has to attend a meeting, so she hands off Mae to Josiah and Denise with instructions to not let her do any work on her first day. They show her around the remainder of the campus, pausing to discuss the campus dorms available and fully stocked for any Circler who wishes to stay the night on campus.

That night there is a lavish party on campus, which Annie assures Mae is very normal. Mae drinks fairly heavily, and on her way to look for more wine she ends up following an unknown man to a waterfall on the side of the Industrial Revolution. They begin to talk; he tells her his name is Francis and proceeds to flirt with and offend Mae in equal turn. The two banter back and forth until Annie comes over to split them up and get Mae on a shuttle home. Mae falls contentedly asleep in her humble apartment.

Mae returns to the Circle the next day and Renata shows her to her new, real office. Mae receives a new tablet and phone and is instructed to get rid of her old ones; all of her data is also backed up into the Cloud almost instantly. Next, Mae meets Dan, her boss, who stresses the community aspects involved with having a job at the Circle and that this, along with her role in the Circle as a Customer Experience representative, is what gives the company its humanity. Dan then calls over Jared, who does her Customer Experience training, teaching her to respond to customer messages and especially to track customer ratings of her service.

Mae learns quickly and works steadily throughout the week; by Friday she has an aggregate rating of 97, high for a newbie. At lunch with Annie on Friday she enters a discussion with two other Circlers about Francis and learns of his dark past - two of his sisters had been abducted from a foster care home after the death of his parents - that has led him to work in child security for the Circle. Later that afternoon, Annie and Mae attend a weekly full Circle meeting called Dream Friday. This week, Eamon Bailey presents a new technology called SeeChange that allows users to place tiny cameras anywhere they like and share the footage with others. Bailey demonstrates the effectiveness of this innovation for everyday tasks such as viewing nature or traffic conditions, but moves on to the importance of these devices in holding accountable all governments, especially in countries going through revolution or upheaval. He presents the slogan “All that happens must be known,” calling the time at hand a “Second Enlightenment.”

That weekend, Mae returns home and her parents gloat over her newfound success. Her father tires quickly, however, as he has recently been diagnosed with MS, and Mae’s elation is brought back down to earth by discussing at length her parents’ struggles with health insurance. On Sunday she leaves home in the early afternoon and heads for her favorite kayaking spot, where she rents from a woman named

Marion. While out, she discovers a harbor seal, with whom she exchanges mutually fascinated stares. She kayaks to a far out shore and once sitting down on the beach she sobs over her father’s condition, eventually reveling in the feeling of crying and the beauty of the nature around her.

Analysis

Eggers’ initiation of the narrative on Mae’s first day at work allows the reader to be fully immersed in the spectacular world of the Circle. However, it is not a world entirely hard to understand for any modern reader, as it utilizes elements of real-world companies, specifically Google and Apple, to create the image of a lush campus and human-focused ideals, not to mention the use of the term “Circle” which was popularized through Google’s social media application Google+. These purposeful parallels allow Eggers to build an effective and near-dystopian satire throughout the novel, beginning with Mae’s intoxication under the powerful effects of money, prestige, and attention. The reader can sense the beginnings of trouble from Mae’s shock at all of her data so quickly being merged with the Cloud of the Circle as well as her realization that her parents already cannot understand her specialized jargon.

Eggers sets up Mae's home life as direct opposition to her working conditions - her father's condition makes her feel vulnerable and out of control, her parents' lives are eaten up by the inefficient process of dealing with health insurance, and her parents lack an understanding of what she's doing at work as demonstrated by the fancy pen they give her as a gift. This foreshadows the distance that will grow between Mae and her parents as she becomes more enmeshed in and reliant on the fast-moving world of the Circle.

The first night's lavish party demonstrates the careless wealth of the Circle, as when Mae notes while looking for more wine that it looks as though the buffet has been raided by animals. Mae's silly drunkenness and childlike flirting with Francis parallels her intoxication with the campus and employees at the Circle throughout the day.

SeeChange presents the reader with the first example of a kind of technology shown throughout the book - supposedly benevolent but with the possibility of overreaching the boundaries of private life. This is driven home by the slogan Eamon Bailey uses, "ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN." Though this is shown on the screen after an inspiring presentation about the efficacy of SeeChange for quashing violence in the upheaval of third-world revolution, the slogan has a ring of dystopian totalitarianism.

Mae’s kayaking trips, the first of which occurs in this section, become a theme throughout the novel and demonstrate her attachment to a less technology-saturated lifestyle. The look she exchanges with the seal presents a hyper-awareness of who is watching her in contrast to the all-seeing nature of SeeChange, and the fact that the seal arrives and departs with such rapidity contrasts with the persistent nature of information in the Cloud.

The Circle Book 1 Part 2 (pp. 84-146) Summary and Analysis Summary

Mae returns to work on Monday morning and is again swept up in answering customers’ queries. Francis invites her to lunch wherein they discuss his project with the Circle, ChildTrack, a chip implanted in children’s bones to allow parents and the police to track them at all times. At the end of the workday, Dan calls Mae into his office. Mae goes to the bathroom before the meeting and takes note of a man standing in the hallway; he introduces himself as Kalden and asks to watch her work. She consents, wondering whether he could be a spy of some kind though she takes note of his ID cord and his promise that he has worked there for a while.

After watching her curiously for some minutes, Kalden leaves quickly and a woman named Gina appears to set up Mae’s social accounts. Mae accidentally offends her multiple times, first regarding social life at the Circle as “extracurricular,” leading Gina to again stress the importance of maintaining a social community on the Circle’s campus, and then on the subject of her close friendship with Annie, which Gina clearly envies. Gina describes how to navigate her Zing account, both the InnerCircle stream (for fellow workers at the Circle) on which Mae has amassed over 8,000 messages during the past week and the OuterCircle stream (for communication with the outside world). Finally, Gina introduces PartiRank, short for Participation Rank, which takes into account all action on the InnerCircle and Gina notes some people take very seriously; Mae’s current ranking is 10,328. Mae sets out to comb through all of her missed messages that very night to demonstrate her devotion to social involvement at the Circle. She reads dated informational emails, responds to surveys and event requests, and gets wrapped up in the comments section of a friend’s post about having a stomach flu. Mae does not finish reading and responding to all of her messages, but finally decides she has to go home.

The next day, Mae begins to integrate monitoring her InnerCircle and OuterCircle feed activity into her already busy daily routine of answering customers. By lunchtime she is exhausted but exhilarated and looks forward to eating lunch with Annie when Dan calls her to his office. He introduces a man named Alistair who she has slighted by not attending his “Portugal brunch.” Mae plays off this apparent faux pas by apologizing and saying she wasn’t sure if she would be welcome there since she is so new. She is thanked and dismissed by Dan, and signs a statement for HR about the meeting. Mae rushes to meet Annie for lunch and Annie reveals that she was listening in on the meeting. Mae feels uneasy about her exposure at first, but then relieved that her friend had been watching over her. Annie reveals that Mae was likely invited to the brunch in the first place because a few pictures were on her computer, and now in the Cloud, from a visit to Portugal five years prior. Annie takes Mae to a building on campus full of

free samples from top brands, free to all Circle members, and leaves her there with instructions to take as much as she likes.

Mae left her phone on her desk during lunch and when she returns she finds eleven messages from Annie regarding a comment the latter made about Dan and Alistair. They range from calm to wildly upset and accusatory. Mae immediately calls Annie to apologize and invites her out for a drink that night since she is obviously stressed; Annie declines, so Mae invites Francis out and they drive to San Francisco. After dinner together, Mae kisses Francis, and they adventure through the city kissing passionately throughout. In the following days, Mae feels extremely content and spends more time with Francis.

At that week’s Dream Friday, Francis tells Mae that he thinks she’ll really enjoy the presentation and that they should sit in the front. An employee named Gus presents a new kind of online dating service called LuvLuv that can be used after setting up a date to analyze all data online about the person you are about to meet. Gus asks for a volunteer and Mae is horrified when Francis is called on in a rehearsed manner. Francis allows Gus to analyze Mae’s data with a focus on potential food allergies and then specific restaurants she has posted about liking or disliking as a way to narrow down date options. As soon as she can, Mae leaves the auditorium, mortified and fuming. Francis follows her to her office shortly after and apologizes, but she asks him to leave. Mae tries to pinpoint what made her so uncomfortable about the presentation as Francis does note that she made all the information he used publicly available. She works throughout the afternoon and finally realizes that she has three messages waiting from her mother, all telling her to come home.

Mae races to the hospital in her hometown after learning from her mother that her father has had a seizure. However, when she gets to the hospital he has already been discharged, and when she finally gets home she sees her ex-boyfriend Mercer’s truck in the driveway. Her father assures her that everything is taken care of and that Mercer was a big help. Mae is dismayed that she hurried home only to have been made superfluous by her ex, and at dinner she and he squabble over her reading customer comments regarding his business (selling custom chandeliers made of antlers) and the fact that her life seems consumed by online interaction and evaluation. Mae angrily waits for him to leave and cheers herself up by logging onto her Circle account and answering customer queries.

Mae does little on Saturday, savoring the time to relax and have a simple day with her parents. On Sunday she plans to do much the same, but when her father asks her to help him off the couch and accidentally soils himself, her parents ask her to leave and allow her father some dignity. Mae leaves in a rage, feeling cast out of her home on top of the trouble with Mercer two nights before, and decides to rent a kayak again to let off some steam. She paddles out looking for harbor seals. At first she finds none but then finds two who look at her simultaneously and then leave quickly as if realizing she is uninteresting. Out in the bay, she comes upon a small barge which houses a man and a woman who invite her on board for a drink. They talk for a short time, and then Mae has to leave to return her kayak on time.

Analysis

With PartiRank, the first extra "layer" of many is added to Mae's life at the Circle. As in the rest of the book, she experiences this as both overwhelming and exhilarating, but she is not immediately addicted to it. Because Mae is still a relative outsider at the company and to the company's (over)use of technology, the reader is presented with moments like Annie's quick spiral from playful to furious because Mae won't answer her phone. Such moments demonstrate at that point that she hasn't fully bought in to constant communication.

Mae is also hit by the realization that her private information has become public when Annie reveals why Alistair invited her to the Portugal Brunch she missed - a geotag on a photo that she'd had on her computer but is now in the Circle's Cloud. This foreshadows a lack of online privacy that seems playful and benevolent for the time being (allowing those with similar interests to be invited to certain events) but can easily turn overpowering and manipulative.

Mae's discomfort with the LuvLuv presentation piggybacks on the discomfort of the sharing of private information, but further attacks Mae's sense of identity. It seems that the image of Mae created during the presentation is incomplete while Gus, Francis, and the audience treat it as solid and complete evidence of her character. This lack of communication about privacy between Francis and Mae also foreshadows later problems in their relationship.

The appearance of Kalden adds an element of mystery to the Circle, and begins the irony of Kalden (who we later learn is Ty) discussing the Circle and the Wise Men disinterestedly to the confusion of Mae. The idea that Kalden may be a spy, which Mae contemplates and Annie later stresses, is ironic because he is indeed to some extent, sneaking around to obtain information on Mae and the Circle's progress to attempt to intervene and undermine the company at the right time.

Mae's experiences at home and out kayaking again demonstrate the differences between life on and off the Circle's campus. Her interaction with Mercer, who will channel Eggers' "danger of modernity" theme, is especially important and will be repeated throughout the novel to shed light and draw allusions to the progression of the company's power.

The Circle Book 1 Part 3 (pp. 146-192) Summary and Analysis Summary

When Mae returns to work on Monday, she finds she has many missed messages about parties at the Circle over the weekend, especially a barbecue for all new employees, and an immediate summons from Dan. He briefly chastises her for missing the event, then asks her to take over for Jared as the backstop for twelve new employees in Customer Experience answering their questions and taking on customer queries that are too difficult. The newbies come in and she works steadily, tackling both their customer queries and her own with only a brief respite for lunch. Jared tells her she needs to go to the clinic since she was supposed to go during her first week, so at the end of the workday she goes directly there.

Dr. Villalobos greets Mae at the clinic and they discuss the Circle’s comprehensive health plan which includes check-ups every two weeks for a preventative approach. She gives Mae a bracelet health monitor and asks whether she’d like the “full program” while preparing a smoothie. After Mae drinks the smoothie, Dr. Villalobos informs her that she has just ingested a sensor that will send all of her vital information to her wrist monitor and to the Cloud for full tracking of her moment-to-moment health including everything from number of daily steps to digestive efficiency. The appointment goes very well until Dr. Villalobos asks about Mae’s family history of illness, causing Mae to break down and tell the doctor about her father’s condition and the incident over the weekend. Dr. Villalobo asks Mae if she has considered getting her parents on the company’s insurance plan, urging her to ask Annie about it.

When Mae asks Annie about it, Annie quickly promises to get it done and four minutes later assures Mae that she has spoken to the necessary people and that her parents should be considered on the company’s plan immediately. Mae is stunned by the fact that her family will no longer be stretched thin under the weight of healthcare concerns, and Mae’s mother says over the phone that she has saved the lives of both her parents.

Mae wants to celebrate, so she decides to go to a circus act being performed on campus that night. The night is going fabulously until a performer runs at her unsteadily with his arms full of swords. A man pushes her out of the way just in time, and when he helps her back up she realizes it is Kalden. He takes her back to the lemon grove near the circus act and gives her a lemon flirtatiously, though nothing more happens between them that night.

In the morning, Mae tells Annie about this mysterious man and their encounter, and Annie makes fun of Mae's description that includes a youthful look but also gray hair. In her office, Mae searches the Circle’s

directory for many spellings of the name Kalden, but nothing comes up. After days of thinking of him and searching the internet, Mae enlists Annie’s help. Annie becomes unsettled by the fact that he is not listed as working for the company and that Mae has no pictures of him. She asks Mae to keep her posted on the situation. Mae continues ignoring Francis and has the same kind of halo as when she first spent more time with him, though this sours as the week progresses with no sign of him.

That week’s Dream Friday is cancelled so that all staffers can watch a press conference regarding an investigation into whether the Circle constitutes a monopoly. Annie does not seem very phased by this development, though she hints at trouble for the Senator heading the investigation. She continues to press Mae to get information on Kalden in case he is some sort of agent.

At the end of the day, Dan calls Mae to his office again to question her about her social involvement at the Circle, especially on her PartiRank and online interaction. He transfers her over to Josiah and Denise from HR who encourage her to join a group about MS, women’s basketball, and kayaking, communicating to her that it is selfish for her to hold onto the information and experiences she has rather than sharing them online for those who could benefit. After this session, Mae feels awful. She decides that she wants to improve her PartiRank drastically that very night, and begins to Zing. She goes from 9,101 to under 3,000 by spending over 9 hours online.

Analysis

At this point Mae is barely two weeks into her job, but is already being given responsibilities over others. On top of the fact that she is again chastised for missing optional on-campus events, her ability to have a life outside the Circle is rapidly diminishing. However, she is being praised and told she is valued all the while - as Annie says on her first day, she is climbing a ladder she wants to climb.

Mae's relationship with her parents, whom she recently lived with and thus depended upon, is turned on its head by the quick approval for them to be on the Circle's healthcare plan. As a plot point in a coming- of-age novel, this is a major step in her maturation. However, this setup will later turn darkly ironic when Mae's parents are forced to have SeeChange cameras monitoring every room of their house, increasing their distrust and displeasure with the Circle and Mae.

Dark foreshadowing is present in the press conference screened in lieu of a Dream Friday presentation, given that a higher-up like Annie does not seem worried by the news. Though Mae seems to remain blind to the situation until Kalden brings it up much later, the Circle quietly squashes any politician who stands in its way through the use of either its total access to information or its ability to fabricate, plant, and then use "evidence" to substantiate accusations. This is how the relationship between the Circle and the US government begins to spiral out of control.

Mae's interaction with Kalden in the lemon grove is erotic yet physically restrained. In her quick move from Francis to Kalden, Mae seems to seek out something in a relationship. The similarity of these encounters seems like déjà vu: both take place just away from the busy atmosphere of a party and involve fumbling flirtation while interacting with nature. However, Kalden is more mysterious and masculine and specifically notes that he had a good upbringing with parents who loved him.

This section begins to show Mae's reliance on technology, as she, like Annie after the series of unanswered texts, becomes increasingly angry with Kalden's lack of communication. She also scours the company database for him, but because she has no real name or photos of him, she grows angrier by his apparent ability to remain undetected. Like the Circle itself, Mae is prone to his whims and has provided him with all the information he might need, while he remains shrouded in alluring mystery.

The Circle Book 1 Part 4 (pp. 192-309) Summary and Analysis Summary

To increase her PartiRank, Mae stays overnight in the HomeTown dorms. The next day, she receives many compliments on her PartiRank; she works hard during the rest of the week to break into the 2,000 range made up of an elite group of Circlers called the T2K. On Thursday she works through the night without sleep. She becomes unsatisfied with the number of things she tracks about herself. In a caffeinated haze, Mae realizes that she has become anxious about not knowing things, especially after the scary meetings she’s been having and lack of communication from Kalden. She also remarks that she has been feeling a “black rip” within her through which she can hear “the screams of millions of invisible souls.”

She asks Francis to hang out late that night, and he invites her to his dorm. He makes her a drink, confessing that he has to take a few shots to get to sleep every night, and Mae both thinks this is sad and knows she’ll try it the next day. They put on some music and start to look through a photo album of different foster homes Francis and his siblings lived at as children; he notes that foster parents never put location markers in photographs given to the children so that they cannot be located again later. He confesses that he brought them here to scan them in an attempt to find some things out. He sees that her pulse is high while looking through the photos and she asks to see his, then begins to excite him sexually while they watch his numbers rise together. She initiates sex with him but he orgasms as he tries to take off his pants, and though Mae is pleased with her power over him she suddenly remembers the helplessness of her father on the couch and decides to leave. As she begins to go she sees Francis take his phone off of a cabinet and realizes he filmed them together. Though she asks him to delete it, knowing he and everyone at the Circle will be able to view it in the future since it is automatically uploaded to the Cloud, he argues that nothing is deleted at the Circle and that the experience is as much his at it is hers.

Mae worries about this video being accessible for a week, discussing it with Annie before a talk by Stenton. Stenton’s talk begins by calling out a member of the Circle, an aging man who has been recording ever moment of his life for the past five years by means of a small camera hung around his neck. Stenton brings up the topic of government and democracy, saying that public trust of Congress hovers at 11 percent (drawing ominous laughter from the audience as the Senator who had been leading the investigation into the Circle was recently found to have ethically problematic content on her computer). Stenton then introduces Congresswoman Santos who has decided to go entirely transparent, meaning she will have video and audio live streaming of all her interactions. She starts her transparency right then and the Circle employees go wild, applauding her and throwing a reception that night.

At the reception, she sees Kalden for the first time in two weeks and berates him lightly for his lack of contact. They have a confusing conversation in which Kalden manages to avoid all of Mae’s questions about what he does at the Circle. They each drink two glasses of wine, and then Kalden offers to let Mae see where “Stewart is stored” since the constant streaming from his life is too hefty to not have its own physical storage unit. They leave the party and go deep down to a basement; Kalden seems somehow to have access to a limitless amount of doors. They look at the storage units for Stewart and Santos, and then Mae kisses Kalden. He leads her to an enormous chamber nearby that was going to be turned into a subway track but may in the future house hundreds of units for the storage of peoples’ transparent lives. He tells her not to tell anyone he has taken her here, then kisses her more and takes her to a recess carved into the wall which he has equipped with a bed and says he sleeps in sometimes. They have sex there, with him speaking her name into her ear.

In the morning, Mae tells Annie about the encounter, but keeps the details hidden. Annie again presses her to find out his name when Mae reveals that all she has gained in terms of contact is a number at which to call him. Mae calls the number after the girls finish talking and finds it only rings and rings without a voicemail, meaning he still has absolute control over when they make contact. During lunch Mae is set up with a tiny headset so that she can participate in CircleSurveys, a program that asks survey questions, mostly for consumer purposes, throughout the day. This adds another “layer” to Mae’s work and another screen to her desk; the employee training her says she is expected to answer around 500 questions a day. When a question is ready for Mae to answer she hears a customized chime, but she is especially taken with the sound that plays to remind her of a question she hasn’t responded to when first asked: a version of her voice that sounds slightly off saying her own name quietly. Mae is able to integrate CircleSurvey into her daily routine, answering almost 1000 questions on the third day she has it and using it to distract her from Kalden’s lack of contact.

Over the following weeks, more and more elected officials go transparent, and those who haven’t begin to feel pressured by non-transparency’s apparent nature of hiding something. Furthermore, officials who challenge the Circle seem to all end up on the news days later being arrested for criminal online activity. The Circle begins to implement its own transparency plan, putting SeeChange cameras everywhere on campus, including eight in Mae’s pod. It becomes clear that many outsiders are watching Mae specifically and communicating with her throughout the day. One day, Mae is asked to send a smile to a woman who has escaped rape and prostitution under a paramilitary group in Guatemala to show her support and to send a frown to the paramilitary group itself. After doing so, Mae pauses briefly to think about the consequences of this action, but this thought is interrupted by a call from Kalden. She tells him that she is currently in the bathroom and he joins her there; they have quick but passionate sex inside a bathroom stall. As he is leaving she takes a quick picture of him, capturing only his right arm as he goes out the door.

Mae adds on another layer, Conversion Rate and Retail Raw, which together track the amount of impact that one’s support of a product has on its sales. To Mae’s befuddlement, the woman teaching Mae to use this new feature becomes very distressed by Mae’s closeness with Annie. A few nights later, Mae travels

back to her home to have dinner with her parents. Unbeknownst to her they have invited her ex- boyfriend Mercer, who has just gifted them one of his antler chandeliers, for dinner as well. Mae compliments the chandelier effusively to Mercer, and seeing his pleasure in this she takes a picture and goes upstairs to post the photo and Mercer’s contact information on her feed and other relevant sites. When she reveals this to Mercer he is really unhappy with her, but she is deaf to his pleas to stop because of her obsessive thoughts about PartiRank, Conversion Rate, and Retail Raw. Mercer leaves the house and Mae follows him to his car where he berates her, telling her that she doesn’t realize that technology and the people who produce it aren’t always benevolent and that she is boring now that she spends all of her life producing more and more data about herself and doing less and less offline.

Mae is infuriated by the conversation and drives back to her apartment fuming. On the way, she sees a sign for a kayak rental, though she knows it will be closed since it is almost 10 o’clock. However, when she gets there she finds a kayak outside of the locked area. She hesitates briefly, then drags the kayak to the water and sets out to Blue Island, a jagged and rarely visited island far out in the Bay. Yet again, a seal stares at her and follows her for some of her journey, but the animal leaves her before she reaches the island. Once there, she climbs to the peak of the rock, reveling in the fact that almost nobody had been there. She finds a nest in a tree at the peak and badly wants to see what’s inside, but can’t get high enough and knows that by taking it down to look she would upset the delicate contents. Now, looking out at the water, she is able to take comfort in not knowing everything, or even much at all.

When Mae arrives back at the shore in her kayak she is confronted by the police, who had been tipped off both by an anonymous caller and from a SeeChange camera that had been posted on the beach. Marion has her cleared of all charges, and she sleeps fitfully but returns to the Circle in the morning feeling as if she has a clean slate. However, in the morning Dan calls her in to a meeting and reveals that the Circle knows she was questioned by the police and finds it especially troubling that she was caught doing something criminal by a technology created right there at the Circle. Dan sends Mae to talk to Eamon Bailey, one of the Wise Men, who has taken interest in the incident.

That evening, Mae is led to Bailey’s office. They sit down, and he asks her how she feels about the incident and whether she would have done it had she known SeeChange cameras were present; Mae replies negatively to both. Bailey also questions her on whether secrets between people can ever be a good thing, to which Mae at first answers affirmatively thinking of her secrets regarding Kalden, but then changes her mind. Bailey goes so far as to say he believes all governments should disclose all of their plans to the people they govern and to the world, and that this would reduce wars based on supposition. He believes that in a world where everyone “has the tools to know anything” and where everyone is being watched, bad choices will no longer be an option, thus perfecting human beings. Finally, he asks if she has anything else to tell him and she reveals that she has been in his library before with Annie, which he promptly forgives.

At that week’s Dream Friday, Mae speaks alongside Bailey in front of all of the Circle to tell her story of nighttime kayaking and being caught by the SeeChange cameras. She announces that she will be going

transparent immediately. They present three new slogans to the Circle - “Secrets are Lies,” “Sharing is Caring,” and “Privacy is Theft.”

Analysis

The introduction of "the tear" shows just how far Mae has been pushed into mental dysfunction by working at the Circle for such a short time. She hears the screaming voices of others, meaning even in her head there is no escape from the masses that she, with her recent focus on PartiRank, constantly presents to herself. Mae will continue to question the source and meaning of this black tear, deciding it represents lack of total knowledge or, alternately, too much.

This section focuses on the theme of transparency, introducing Stewart and then Congresswoman Santos in quick succession, and then detailing Kalden and Mae's descent to the underbelly of the campus to look at Stewart's storage unit. This focus, especially Mae's fascination with the storage unit as a physical representation of Stewart's experiences, foreshadow Mae's transparency, the final occurrence in this section and in Book 2.

Kalden's use of Mae's name during sex and the use of her own name and voice for CircleSurveys highlights the importance of names in the book and especially to Mae. Names are representations of identity, something Mae seeks to find or build in real life and online. Their use means that someone is acknowledging one's existence and importance, though Mae and Kalden's relationship remain unbalanced due to her inability to return this acknowledgement and substantiate what they are to one another.

More and more "layers" are piled on Mae - she maintains an incredibly high PartiRank while being introduced to CircleSurveys, Conversion Rate, and Retail Raw. SeeChange cameras are installed throughout the Circle, and Mae begins to keep secrets from Annie and everyone else about her relationship with Kalden, adding a new level of mental pressure.

Mae's final kayaking adventure is filled with imagery and represents her last time truly in touch with life outside the Circle. While she is experiencing nature, she realizes that she does not need or want to know everything. However, once she is caught, Bailey is able to shape her feelings and even her memory into being one of selfishness and the necessity of constant surveillance and information-sharing. With their joint presentation at Dream Friday, Mae becomes the public face of the Circle and her life changes permanently.

The Circle Book 2 Part 1 (pp. 309-385) Summary and Analysis Summary

Mae now works full time showing viewers around the Circle’s daily action. Ninety percent of Washington has gone transparent (in a process now called “Clarification”), and Mae herself has 2.1 million followers and ranks in the top 10 of PartiRank. The buzz around the Circle now is all about “Completion,” though nobody knows exactly what that will entail. On the day Book 2 commences, Mae has an assignment to broadcast Stenton’s new aquarium (now replete with sea creatures from the Marianas Trench thanks to a ship developed by the Circle), specifically the feeding of a new shark who itself is transparent so that one can see the food it eats being quickly processed in its body. As the feeding is winding down, Mae spies Kalden skulking in the doorway and heads off in pursuit while trying to act for her viewers like this is routine meandering through the Circle’s busy offices. Just when she has lost sight of him, she gets a call from him saying he has blocked the audio on her recorder momentarily but that they have to meet, ending with his belief that Completion will be a bad thing for all humanity.

Mae proceeds to Customer Experience, where she still puts in a few hours a week, to clear her mind with some routine work. However, since she is now so well-known, and since the Customer Experience team has recently started stressing reciprocity in customer interactions, Mae gets caught up responding to customers who want to engage personally with her. However Mae makes it through her day and settles into the dorm she has now been occupying for 6 weeks straight. Mae begins the next morning with a tour of some educational programs that leads her to interact with Francis, who suddenly seems attractive to her again in light of a certain confidence she sees in him as well as a clear attraction to him by another of his female coworkers.

Mae waits outside for Annie, returning from an extended business trip, and shows her viewers a new, giant, glass sculpture of a hand reaching through a computer screen entitled “Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind.” Finally, Mae sees Annie and follows her, though it seems as if her friend is purposefully avoiding her, until finally getting close enough to welcome her with a hug and introduce her to the viewers. Annie seems somewhat annoyed, but then decides to disclose a new program called PastPerfect that allows one to track one's family history and see every piece of relevant information about one's ancestors using digitized photos, videos, and news reports. They leave the conversation officially on the fact that they don’t yet have a first person to test the search on, but Annie asks Mae to accompany her to the bathroom where Mae’s audio will be off. There, Annie and Mae have a conversation in which Annie’s envy of Mae’s situation is clear. When they broach the topic of Completion, Annie seems to know some things Mae does not, but Mae counters by revealing that she

will be broadcasting a sensitive meeting the next day. The girls finally separate and Mae stays in her bathroom stall sobbing for a few minutes before hurrying to an appointment with Dr. Villalobos.

At the clinic, Dr. Villalobos introduces Mae to a program called CHAD or Complete Health Data which supplies real-time data about the health of everyone at the Circle. However, Dr. Villalobos also wants to tell Mae that one of her viewers has been researching her DNA markers along with the food she’s been eating and has recognized an elevated risk of cancer. Finally, she shows that Mae’s parents have apparently covered up most of the SeeChange cameras that were equipped throughout their house along with the coverage of their medical treatment. Mae reveals that she hasn’t talked to her parents in over a week, but promises to pay them a visit to remedy the situation.

Mae leaves work at five and drives home to her parents’ house, on the way comparing her parents despairingly with Annie’s pristine family line tracing back to the Mayflower. She thinks back to the first time she had dinner at home with her transparency, a time that went very well, and hopes that this time will go even better. At dinner her parents act strangely, cooperating in conversation about fixing the cameras but sending each other sidelong glances, and finally coming out and saying that it has been very taxing to respond to all the people messaging them since the last time they were on Mae’s feed. When Mae leaves for the night, her mother gives her a note from Mercer. In the letter, he says hello to her audience and then proceeds to say that he can’t see her again, he has helped them cover the cameras, and her hyper-connected network has taken things too far. She decides that if her parents really are so upset she should confront them and walks back to her house. When she finds the house eerily deserted downstairs, she goes upstairs and she and all her viewers find them engaging in oral sex in their bedroom. She calls Bailey directly to ask if it can be deleted, but the answer is no.

Mae drives back to the Circle, resenting the chaotic world outside the confines of its campus. She begins answering queries but she again is swamped by customers who are offended when she does not give them all of her attention; she feels the tear inside her again and hears screams like those of drowning people. After calming down by answering a few CircleSurveys questions, she decides to see Francis since he is the only person she can find awake. Once there, he apologizes for his prior actions again and tells her that he did find a lot of the foster families he had stayed with. Francis tells her about a sexual fantasy he has where a sexy housewife invites him in and the two play out the scenario, ending in a short bout of sex. Afterwards, Mae feels content, and when they are falling asleep he tells her that he has a second fantasy that she rate his performance on a scale from 1 to 100, and though she is uncomfortable she gives him the 100 rating he desires.

Analysis

The transparent shark, which we see devour other creatures now and in a later section, clearly symbolizes the Circle. Besides devouring everything in its path, it demonstrates that just because something is

transparent doesn't mean it isn't powerful and terrifying. Ironically, Mae's followers are titillated by the display.

Tension begins to strain many of Mae's relationships to the limit - she is unclear on whether and how to heed Kalden's warnings, she and Annie begin to cultivate a competitive animosity, she alienates her parents perhaps permanently, and Mercer continues to pull away from her while reminding her of an outsider's point of view on the Circle. Instead of attempting to remedy these relationships, Mae focuses on her work duties and virtual relationships with customers and viewers, foreshadowing the only relationships she will have left at the end of the novel (Francis, perhaps Eamon Bailey, and her viewers).

The Chinese sculpture, created by a darkly sardonic artist, but interpreted as supporting the Circle, is an obvious irony. Mae even says that she feels the message of the sculpture must be obvious to everyone, interviewing some other employees who back up her supposition. The Circle already has an allusion to Communism in its Gang of 40 (likely a reference to the Gang of Four, a faction of four officials of the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution) and this drives home the connection between overreaching government and technological involvement in private affairs.

Dr. Villalobos's reveal of Mae's cancer risk briefly parodies a modern conflict of having perhaps too much information. Because of advanced medical techniques, one can calculate the risk for all kinds of diseases. This information can be used to adjust one's lifestyle, which is positive if the risk is high and the adjustment preventative, but can also be simply taxing if one now feels burdened by the knowledge when a risk is simply a propensity toward a medical condition rather than an indication of truly having that medical condition itself.

When Mae drives back to the Circle after leaving her parents' house, she notes that she feels uncomfortable anywhere that isn't the campus because of the homelessness, smells, and general chaos. This is what the Circle has been steering her toward - staying on campus at all times, insulated from the reality of a world that doesn't necessarily need absolute and Circle-mandated connection and order.

The Circle Book 2 Part 2 (pp. 385-466) Summary and Analysis Summary

At the Concept Kingdom meeting, the meeting which miffed Annie that Mae has access to, Bailey announces a new concept that would increase democratic participation by automatically registering those with Circle profiles and then taking all voting to the same online platform. As Bailey talks, Mae raises her hand and tentatively states an idea: to increase voting the government might require all voting- age citizens to have a Circle account. Stenton and Bailey chime in, enumerating other things that are required by law and discussing the feasibility of freezing members profiles until they have voted. Annie defiantly asks a few questions of Mae, but they are shot down by the Wise Men, who move on to taxes and all other government services being dealt with much more cheaply and effectively through the Circle. The meeting ends with Stenton noting the United States may not even need a Congress now that the will of the people can now be gauged so quickly.

Mae and Francis leave together and Mae is recognized everywhere. At a quiet restaurant, an older man sits down with them and tells Mae that for 20 years he has felt removed from the spiritual life, but now she has found a way to save all of the souls and create a world in which all people will be able to be God and cast judgment on one another. Mae and Francis laugh at the man, though apologizing all the while.

Mae wakes up with Francis in her bed the next day and sees that Kalden is calling but lets it go to voicemail repeatedly. Mae is invited that morning to see what developers have been working on all night - her idea, now called “Demoxie,” which requires all users to answer whatever questions are being displayed before the rest of their messaging systems can be unfrozen. That afternoon, the programmers plan a campus- wide trial of the new feature, and just before this time Mae finally decides to pick up one of Kalden’s calls. He tells her that her new idea of mandatory Circle profiles is what will finally close the Circle and create a tyrannical monopoly. She hangs up on him and goes out to answer the five Demoxie questions with the rest of the campus. The first three questions are light, but the fourth involves deciding a course of action on a drone strike, for which the campus votes 71% pro, and the fifth simply asks “Is Mae Holland awesome or what?” When the votes for the fifth question are tabulated Mae gets 97 percent, and she becomes immediately obsessed with the 3 percent, or almost 400 people, who gave her a frown rather than a smile, equating this to them loathing her and even voting to kill her.

As Mae walks dazedly toward the Customer Experience building, she runs into Annie who excitedly tells her she herself, with such a notably long family tree in America, will be the first person to try out the lineage- tracking program PastPerfect. Mae is taken aback that Annie volunteered rather than having it be

someone less known, but when Annie turns the conversation to her parents she quickly ends the conversation. Mae ruminates on how Annie’s socioeconomic background continues to keep her in second place, and then ricochets back to escalating panic over the Demoxie vote. She decides to do some work in Customer Experience to calm down and after staying four hours she returns to Francis’s dorm where he again orgasms before they can truly initiate sex.

Mae wakes up in the middle of the night, still fretting over the vote, and Francis encourages her to look up who frowned at her, telling her the voting results are all public. However, when he tries to show her the list she backs away and asks him to stop trying to show it to her. She goes in the shower to calm down and decides that this really is the dawning of a more pure kind of democracy in which people will be unafraid to cast and be held accountable for their votes.

Mae attends an Aspirant session where young entrepreneurs are given the chance to have their works-in- progress backed by the Circle and join immediately as employees. A main trend seems to be technological aids for locating criminals: coloring people differently by the crimes they’ve committed, tracking closely the inhabitants of a neighborhood’s homes, or even tracking specific movements within a home for domestic violence. During this last presentation a participant demonstrates a loud alarm which momentarily enrages Stenton.

After the meeting, Annie asks Mae to meet her again in the bathroom, and this time she dramatically announces that the PastPerfect project has dredged up some unsavory things about her ancestors, namely that they were slave owners. Mae tells Annie not to worry, and when the news comes out the next day people do seem to deal with it well. The incident provokes Mercer to write Mae another letter that tells her to encourage Annie to end her participation in PastPerfect, that people can only contain so much, and that he is fleeing north and will keep moving away from the reach of the Circle. Mae scoffs at the note, but the next day Annie summons her to the bathroom again in tears and says there are more problems in her family’s history. Two days later, even more information is discovered about Annie’s parents and she sends the zing, “Actually, I don’t know if we should know everything.” However, she, or another employee, edits the post later to jokingly fall within Circle thought. Annie and Mae converse about this one more time in the bathroom, and then Annie retreats to her office to lie down. Mae proceeds to ask her viewers to forgive Annie for her family’s wrongs and send her as much compassion as they can, which viewers receive with mixed results mostly due to stirrings over the slavery cases unearthed.

Mae gives another full Circle presentation, this time about a new technology called SoulSearch which will crowdsource the finding  of criminals. She demonstrates the program in front of the crowd by selecting a random fugitive of the law by photograph and sending all of the Circle’s social media followers to find her. This results in her being found and arrested in just over 10 minutes. Because someone in the crowd asks to do another, Mae decides to show Mercer the power of the network by sending people in pursuit of him. This time, he is located in just over 8 minutes, but he dodges his pursuers and gets in his truck. One of the followers manages to place a SeeChange camera on the

passenger window but he locates it and dislodges it so that Mae calls for the release of drones to follow him. Mae talks to Mercer through one of the drones, thinking the whole situation amusing, but more people begin to talk to Mercer through the drones and in a moment determination comes over Mercer’s face and he drives himself directly off the bridge.

Analysis

Things escalate quickly after Mae introduces the idea for Demoxie, and this section brings us to the climax of the book when Mae and the Circle drive Mercer to commit suicide. However, Mae is buffered the entire time by support from the Wise Men (besides Ty, though she doesn't yet know this) and her viewers. This support is shaken during the Demoxie trial run and when Francis offers to show Mae the list of employees who gave her a frown. She momentarily relapses into the view that being all-knowing is negative, but she snaps out of this and her fixation on those who do not support her, which gives her the ability to continue aiding the Circle toward Completion.

The theme of religion is hit hard in this section by the old, spiritually lapsed man who approaches Mae and Francis and tells her she has saved all the souls, drawing a circle in the air that Mae compares to a halo. This comparison to religion both underscores the Circle's cult-like nature and begs the question of whether the story is progressing toward a heaven-like utopia or hell-like dystopia - perhaps answered by Mercer's suicide and Annie's breakdown.

Mae has clearly surpassed Annie at this point, and though she attempts to wield this power for good (asking her viewers to show Annie support after information is revealed about her family through PastPerfect) it is not enough to save her friend who is crippled under the pressure and lack of privacy of the Circle. Mae is clearly proud of this dominance over Annie, without seemingly any real connection as friends remaining.

Mae continues her relationship with Francis, who doesn't seem to fulfill her emotionally or sexually but who mutually needs his existence confirmed and even numerically calculated. He is someone as dependent on the Circle as Mae, and also seems to not see the governmental implications of the technology he is helping to develop. Unlike Annie, he seems pleased with the information he has been able to gather on his family, and the only indication that he is less than satisfied with his life at the Circle remains the fact that he has to drink himself to sleep.

Due to Mae's hand in the Circle's near Completion through Demoxie, which is supposedly democratic but realistically leads to either mob-rule or totalitarianism, and her direct influence on Mercer's suicide, it is difficult to decide whether she is either the protagonist and villain of the novel. If nothing else, as Mercer warns her, she is one of many who are innocent in themselves and guilty en masse.

The Circle Book 2 Part 3 and Book 3 (pp. 466-497) Summary and Analysis Summary

Book 2 Part 3 begins a week after Mercer’s death and Annie’s collapse. Mae is talking to Bailey in his office, and she thinks about the tear in her and how not knowing causes it. She decides that she could have saved Mercer if he had made his mind known. She and Bailey go together to another feeding of Stenton’s shark. There, Bailey introduces Mae, supposedly for the first time, to the third Wise Man, Ty. It becomes clear that Kalden has been Ty all along. She realizes that this means Ty has been warning her about the Completion, but her attention is called to the feeding in which the shark again devours all in its habitat effortlessly. On their way out after the gruesome presentation, Ty presses a note into Mae’s hand.

She follows the instructions on the note which lead her to fool her viewers into thinking she’s in the bathroom but proceeds down to the cavernous subway area to which he had taken her once. There, she yells at him for concealing his identity but he pleads that he had to. He tells her that she’s the third person who knows his identity and that he’s revealing himself to her because she has the influence to slow down Completion by giving a message to her viewers. He promises that there will be more Mercers if she does not since soon nobody will be able to rise up against an all-controlling Circle. Mae protests that she does want everything seen and known because it makes people significant even after they die. He ends by giving her the note to read to her viewers and promising her that they can run away together after it is done.

Book 3 finds Mae sitting next to Annie who is still comatose. Instead of reading Ty’s note to her viewers, she has told them of his attempt to derail the Completion of the Circle. Stenton and Bailey have allowed Ty to stay on campus as an advisor, but nothing more. Mae has not seen her parents in months, and when Francis knocks on the glass she waves at him in a gesture that means she will see him later at a party for 10 million people now transparent worldwide. As she sits in the clinic, she thinks about how Completion promises unity and the end of all uncertainty. However, she ends on a final thought that not knowing Annie’s thoughts and feelings while in her coma is a selfish annoyance - that "the world deserve[s] nothing less and would not wait" (497).

Analysis

Mae seems remarkably stable after the loss or near-loss of two of her closest relations from before her life at the Circle began. Perhaps out of necessity of hiding her emotions from her viewers constantly, and

effecting impact almost solely virtually, she has lost something of her ability to truly feel. Buffered by support from Eamon Bailey and her viewers, she continues on with the Circle as it approaches Completion.

Again, Mae and her viewers watch the transparent shark devour everything in its path. Watching it alongside the three Wise Men, we see their three different reactions to it, but none of them stop it from doing what it will. At this point, like the Circle, nobody would be able to intervene with it transparently displaying the destruction of all things around it.

When Mae discovers that Kalden has been Ty the entire time, she confronts him about his concealed identity, again bringing the importance of identity and the irony of secrecy in a place supposedly so transparent to the fore. Mae's betrayal of Ty, which brings readers to the final, 2-page-long Book of The Circle, can be considered the final step towards the Circle's Completion and Mae's importance to that occurrence. Ty believes, and it may be the case, that she has enough power to stop the Completion if she wants to, but she has found identity and satisfaction through the Circle and is not prepared to give that up, no matter the consequences.

Her final thoughts as she sits next to Annie in the clinic betray how far her Circle mentality has been ingrained. Though people have always wished they could know what their ailing friends and family members think and how they feel, Mae is now only able to see this in light of selfish entitlement to shared information, the values of Eamon Bailey that drove Annie to collapse.

The Circle Symbols, Allegory and Motifs The Transparent Shark (Symbol)

The transparent shark both connotes Tom Stenton (who in appearance is compared to a shark and who wished to bring this shark back to the Circle and have it fed) and more importantly the Circle itself. It is transparent, but that doesn't stop it from devouring every defenseless thing in its path, which is what the Circle may turn into soon after Completion.

The Tear (Symbol)

Mae, at various times in the novel, feels a black tear inside her accompanied by millions of "drowning screams." She debates whether this is caused by knowing too much or too little, at times making a decision one way or the other but always feeling very clear about her decision. This indecisiveness illuminates her confusion with the way she feels, and the tear itself is complex in that it forces her to turn inward momentarily (rather than presenting herself outward to viewers), but also has her hear what seems to be the screams of millions of others inside her, as if she cannot get away from her connection to the masses.

The Chinese Sculpture "Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind" (Symbol)

The Chinese sculpture is an ironic symbol of the Circle's omnipresence that allows it to reach into the lives of its users. Circle employees seem to find it obvious that this is a positive symbol of the Circle reaching out with a helping hand, missing the fact that both the in-text creator and Eggers himself mean it satirically, menacing even (or especially) in its giant transparency.

Stewart's Storage Unit (Symbol)

Mae's fascination with Stewart's Storage Unit far in the basement of the Circle is symbolic of exactly what all the sharing she and others have been doing amounts to. It physicalizes the amount of information one can put out, but its storage in a dank and secluded place demonstrates the sadness and wastefulness of attempting to share everything with everyone.

Mae's Screens (Symbol)

Mae is given two screens on the day she begins work at the Circle and is flattered to have so much technology all to herself. Throughout the novel, she slowly amasses 9 screens (11 if one counts her 2 bracelets, one with health information and one displaying her transparent broadcast) which constitute the number of "layers" that have been put on her. These show a progression of time and her rise through the ranks of the Circle, but more than that they demonstrate the information overload Mae is exposed to constantly.

The Circle Metaphors and Similes "Non-communication in a place like the Circle was so difficult, it felt like violence." (Similie)

Eggers makes a number of connections between technological actions and violence, demonstrating the visceral way one ties their real identity to their online identity and actions.

"It's plankton-inspection time... little startups hoping the big whale - that's us - will find them tasty enough to eat." (Metaphor)

Though the Circle is also symbolically compared to a shark, this metaphor (handily spelled out for Mae by Annie) seems more benevolent and references the taking on of young entrepreneurs to work on their projects with the company.

"She found the buffet, and found it in shambles, a feast raided by animals or Vikings..." (Metaphor)

Mae is dazzled by her first party at the Circle, which is described as a kind of organized chaos. However, this metaphor makes it clear that employees at the Circle can be messy and wasteful, in stark juxtaposition against the manicured background of the campus.

Again, Eggers links online interaction and violence even more viscerally. When 3 percent of people frown at Mae in the 4th question of the Demoxie trial, she takes it very poorly, likely because she has so enmeshed her real identity with her online identity and her position at the Circle.

"He tilted his head, like a traveler puzzling out some odd local customs." (Similie)

Kalden seems perpetually curious and yet extremely guarded in his conversations with Mae, as if trying to assess her as much as possible while allowing her to do the same as little as possible. This is perhaps because he is trying to get a reading on whether she is the right person to ask to act out and stop Completion.

The Circle Irony Mae and Kalden's Conversations

There is dramatic irony in Mae and Kalden's discussions of the Wise Men and the functioning of the Circle once it is revealed that Kalden is actually the Circle's founder Ty. For example, Mae asks Kalden whether he realizes that Ty said the Circle is democratic and access must be given to all, and Kalden says with a sign that "Whoever invented TruYou is some kind of evil genius" (404).

The Chinese Sculpture "Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind"

Mae and other Circle employees seem convinced that the only artistic interpretation of the Chinese sculpture is that the Circle is reaching out through technology to help the world. However, with the knowledge that the sculpture is Chinese and that his past artwork has been used to make "darkly sardonic" statements, it is clear to the reader that the sculpture likely named his sculpture "Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind" ironically and intends it to be a portrayal of a giant, transparent monstrosity reaching through a screen and thereby infiltrating people's lives.

Sending Smiles

It is clear from Mercer's espoused views and Eggers's writing that the sending of smiles to warring third- world countries is done in part tongue in cheek. Furthermore, when Mae's parents beg for the smiles to stop because they feel forced to reply to them and some individuals turn nasty if not replied to, which ironically shows the negative impact of sending a smile.

Secret Bathroom Meetings

As the transparency of Mae's life increases, she ironically has to hide more and more, both literally in the bathroom to have conversations with Kalden and Annie, and hiding her emotions from her viewers since she is forced to be "on" at all times.

Counting the Grains of Sand in the Sahara

This task is used idiomatically to refer to an unattainable task. That the Circle is attempting to complete it just for fun shows their casual yet scary power to wield science and find out the answer to any question, even those that don't need to be (or shouldn't be) asked.

Mae's Parents' Gift

Mae's parents' gift seems well-intentioned, but is actually something which she never will have the chance to use working at the Circle.

The Circle Imagery The Circle's Campus

Eggers paints a detailed picture of the Circle's campus from the outset of the novel, immersing the reader in the world alongside Mae. With everything from a doggie daycare to a cafeteria made completely of glass, the company seemingly proffers all the benefits of modernity, like the technology produced therein. However, the fact that Mae is constantly being toured around and asked to rate and comment the places she visits begins to reveal the more problematic aspects of the Circle.

Sex

Sex is described in equal parts graphically and unforgivingly by Eggers, including both the extreme pleasure of Mae's experiences with Kalden and the quick disappointment of her times with Francis. Eggers uses these situations to bring out themes in the novel such as the importance of names (through Kalden repeating her name during sex), Mae's increasing love of power (through her ability to control Francis's arousal), and the Circle's overuse of measurement (through Francis's "fantasy" of Mae rating him).

Data

Eggers shows rather than tells regarding the Circle's obsession with data, providing the reader quite often with the specifics of Mae's PartiRank, health statistics, viewership, customer ratings, and more. The reader is able to experience the Circle the way Mae does - through the constant publication of data on her every move allowing for easy comparison of her progress through the company.

Kayaking

Mae's kayaking trips are described in great detail, and provide a respite from the data and tense interactions of Mae's time on the Circle's campus. Especially of note is Mae's final kayaking trip to Blue Island, where she kayaks far out, sees harbor seals, climbs to the island's peak, and finds a tiny nest that she knows not to look into, realizing the vastness and unattainability of nature around her.

The Circle Eggers's Epigraph: East of Eden and The Circle An epigraph is a short quotation at the beginning of a book or chapter intended to suggest its theme. Eggers includes an epigraph just before Book 1 of The Circle begins, reading:

"There wasn't any limit, no boundary at all, to the future. And it would be so a man wouldn't have room to store his happiness.

John Steinbeck

East of Eden"

East of Eden is a Nobel Prize-winning novel by John Steinbeck, published in 1952 and itself spanning from the 1860s to the early 1900s. There is an irony to the choice of this quote. While it speaks of the future and perhaps references the happiness of innovation, the events of East of Eden center around agriculture, family, and religious allusion. Like The Circle, many early critics found East of Eden heavy- handed in its religious message, but Steinbeck was effective in focusing on one theme and weaving it through an expansive novel, much like Eggers. The theme of religion itself is important to the Circle, and the two novels share a focus on family lineage and the definition of right and wrong deeds. By beginning with this quote, and segueing directly into Mae's evocation of "God" and "heaven," Eggers establishes a tone of religious hope for progress and future happiness that juxtaposes the stark technological dominance the Circle eventually comes to represent.

The Circle Literary Elements Genre

Science Fiction

Setting and Context

California, Modern Day

Narrator and Point of View

Third-person limited, following the protagonist Mae

Tone and Mood

The Circle is at once fantastical and darkly cynical. Eggers uses the two contrasting tones to create tension between Mae's intoxication with the Circle and the stressful and tragic events that surround the company's dangerous escalation of power.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist: Mae

Major Conflict

As the Circle proceeds toward Completion, some characters (Mercer, Kalden, and even Annie) attempt to warn Mae of the potential for the destruction of all humanity, while others (Eamon Bailey and her viewers) pull her further into the fold. Mae must decide what level of access to information is best for society and herself.

Climax

Mae's pursuit of Mercer during a Dream Friday presentation using the new technology SoulSearch drives him to suicide.

Foreshadowing

Mercer voices his forebodings about the dominance of and invasion of privacy caused by the Circle throughout the novel, and these very things end up causing his suicide as well as Annie's breakdown, Kalden/Ty's removal from office, and Mae's distancing from her family.

Understatement

N/A

Allusions

There are many allusions to Christianity in the novel, such as Kalden kissing Mae in the shape of a cross and calling the Circle's executives the Wise Men.

Imagery

Eggers creates a rich picture of the Circle's campus through detailed exposition of its lush locations and varied characters.

Paradox

More communication and transparency can hinder people's true understanding and connection.

Parallelism

N/A

Metonymy and Synecdoche

N/A

Personification

N/A

The Circle Links Ring of Power: "The Circle," by Dave Eggers

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/the-circle-by-dave-eggers.html?_r=0

A New York Times Sunday Book Review by Ellen Ullman.

‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/19/book-review-the-circle-dave-eggers/ LoBsBOJuqGzNCK5TTgUg7I/story.html

A book review from the Boston Globe by Jane Ciabattari.

Dave Eggers’ The Circle: What the Internet Looks Like if You Don’t Understand It

http://www.wired.com/2013/10/the-circle-review-dave-eggers/

A book review from Wired by Graeme McMillan.

The Circle

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle

The Circle on Goodreads.com, which includes lists of related books, reader ratings and reviews, Q&A, and quotes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/the-circle-by-dave-eggers.html?_r=0

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/19/book-review-the-circle-dave-eggers/LoBsBOJuqGzNCK5TTgUg7I/story.html

http://www.wired.com/2013/10/the-circle-review-dave-eggers/

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle

The Circle Essay Questions 1. How do the three Wise Men's visions of the Circle differ, and by the end of the novel which

has had the greatest hand in shaping the company?

Though Ty conceived of the original idea behind TruYou and the Circle, Eggers writes that his motives were purely for the sake of ease. That the Circle has become a powerhouse with the ability to perhaps take the place of the government and further mandate its use is the doing of Stenton, who seems to have been motivated by the desire for money and power, and Bailey, clearly motivated by a strict moral bent. Furthermore, to the extent that Mae has aided in the Circle's Completion, she has been following the guidance of Bailey in doing so, multiplying his impact on the company's outcome.

2. Choose a moment in Mae's first week at the Circle. How does this moment foreshadow what is to come in the rest of the novel and in the development of the Circle as a company (and Mae's role within it).

At Mae's first Dream Friday, Eamon Bailey presents SeeChange. Though his most moving examples of the technology's utility have to do with reducing police violence and increasing accountability in countries undergoing revolution, at one point he calls for the cameras to show the audience video streams from his mother's house, causing "a roar of laughter" at the fact that she is walking down the hall in a towel. The SeeChange cameras present many problems of privacy throughout, and one that is especially important is that fact that Mae's own parents later feel their privacy invaded by the presence of these cameras in their home. The blurring of public and private information due to live video streaming, especially in the case of Eamon Bailey's mother since she seems unaware that the cameras exist in her home at all, are important to problems later in the novel.

3. Mae and other characters measure themselves through the use of many devices in the novel - client ratings, PartiRank, Conversion Rate, health sensors, and polls to name a few. Is this measurement a positive or negative thing? Does it bring people closer to or push them further from knowledge of themselves and/or others?

An example of measurement pushing people further from true connection is its importance to Mae and Francis's relationship. The first time they engage sexually, it begins because of their mutual fascination with the power they have over each others' heart rates as displayed on their health-tracking bracelets. However, it seems that for Mae this encounter is more about a fascination with her power over him and her power to increase these numbers, a major part of her job at the Circle. After the encounter, she feels uncomfortable and leaves quickly, making it

clear that the experience did not bring them closer together. Furthermore, Francis brings measurement back into their sexual relationship later in the novel by asking her to rate him; Mae feels pressured to give him a 100, which does satisfy him, but again reveals the lack of true connection to one another and even the validity of measurement itself in a relationship setting.

4. Mae is romantically involved with three men in the novel - Francis, Kalden, and Mercer. What are the similarities and differences in these characters, and how do her interactions with them help understand what her character is looking for in others?

It seems from Mae's interactions with Francis, Kalden, Mercer, and even Annie that she thrives in a more subordinate role in a relationship. However, as we learn about her main motivation for going along with transparency in light of its negative impact on her mental state, Mae wants to be acknowledged as existing; she needs attention. This is how she ends up with Francis rather than Mercer or Kalden. Francis is someone who puts her in a subordinate role in the relationship but still showers her with attention and praises and supports her decisions in the company rather than looking at things critically. This is much like what Mae receives from the Circle itself - subordination but intense attention.

5. What does Annie, and Annie's relationship with Mae, signify in the novel?

Annie is someone that things come easily to, which Mae seems jealous of but resigned to, partially laying blame on genetics and socioeconomics. However, as Mae becomes increasingly important in the company, she sees a chance to overtake Annie. Annie's downfall is hastened by revelations about the very family Mae was jealous of, including problems directly related to privilege such as owning slaves in two countries. Thus, the rise and fall of Mae and Annie's relationship easily takes on a significance related to class in today's job market.

6. Why does Ty maintain a secret identity with Mae? Do you think it was effective?

Ty seems to have been gauging whether Mae will be the most effective tool for bringing down the Circle and at what time it will be most effective to do so. He reveals himself after the tragedies surrounding Mercer and Annie, perhaps thinking these events will have sufficiently enraged Mae against the Circle. However, it seems he has waited too long, as Mae has been taken under Eamon Bailey's wing and especially influenced by his vendetta against secrecy. Thus, Ty's secrecy itself is his eventual downfall, paralleling the squashing of all secrecy by the Circle once it has grown to its final size and power at the novel's end.

7. What is the importance of kayaking to the novel? Why do you think Eggers specifically chose kayaking as Mae's form of escape and release?

Kayaking is a special hobby for Mae because it requires a relationship with nature and is necessarily done solo, at least within one kayak. Eggers is able to effectively isolate Mae from society and the Circle during these kayaking trips, allowing her at one point even to specifically dwell on the positive impact of not knowing everything about the nature she is surrounded by. However, the Circle's own SeeChange cameras are what cause Mae to stop kayaking, symbolizing the company's triumph over all non-Circle aspects of her life.

8. What does the naming of various buildings at the Circle after famous time periods (Old West, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment) signify?

Proponents of the Circle, especially Eamon Bailey, seem to see the increasing impact of the Circle on daily life in the US as a sign that a "Second Enlightenment" is coming. This grandiose is manifested in a nostalgia for other great time periods, especially those of technological and philosophical advancement like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, two of the most important buildings to the story.

9. What is the importance of Mae's father's condition in the novel?

What seems to upset Mae most about her father's condition is the lack of control he, and by proxy she, feels due to it. Through working at the Circle, Mae begins to rely on strict order and measurement, and even nebulous concepts like health and attraction are quantified whenever possible. Her father's condition also drives home her parents' age and the gap between them and the young, hip reformers of the Circle. These generation differences must be negotiated carefully with regard to technology, but as Mae is swept up quickly in the current of the Circle, this ends up impacting their relationship negatively.

10. The Circle is set in the near future and many of the technologies in the novel are either akin to those that exist through companies like Apple and Google or are quite possible to create with today's technology. Did this novel make you rethink your or your society's use of technology? If so, what might be done to better society's intersection with technology?

Innovation does not always lead to the greater good. Though many technologies in the novel have positive applications, such as reducing crime, abduction, and domestic violence, they violate important rights to privacy and individual agency. This is also important with regard to the mixing of private companies and the government, as what is most effective and appealing to a younger generation does not always trump the rules set out purposefully by the founding fathers to ensure fair and and appropriate representation.

The Circle Quizzes 1. Where did Mae and Annie meet?

A. Princeton B. Longfield C. Carleton D. The Circle

2. Who shows Mae around the Circle on her first day? A. Dan B. Francis C. Renata D. Eamon Bailey

3. What building is Customer Experience in? A. The Wild West B. The Renaissance C. 3-B D. The Second Enlightenment

4. Where did Mae work before being hired at the Circle? A. The Apple Store B. A local hardware store C. Carleton D. A utility company

5. Which of the Wise Men is most mysterious and distant? A. Tom Stenton B. Francis Garaventa C. Eamon Bailey D. Ty Gospodinov

6. Which of the Wise Men is the most friendly? A. Francis Garaventa B. Eamon Bailey C. Ty Gospodinov D. Tom Stenton

7. Which of the Wise Men flaunts his wealth most? A. Eamon Bailey B. Francis Garaventa C. Ty Gospodinov D. Tom Stenton

8. Which of the Wise Men first created TruYou? A. Tom Stenton B. Ty Gospodinov C. Francis Garaventa D. Eamon Bailey

9. What does Francis say is the best thing about Mae the first time they meet? A. Her intelligence B. Her voice C. Her owl collection D. Her body

10. Who is Mae's boss in Customer Experience? A. Jared B. Annie C. Francis D. Dan

11. Who trains Mae in Customer Experience? A. Annie B. Dan C. Jared D. Francis

12. Why does Francis care about his job? A. He studied public policy at Harvard. B. His sisters were abducted as children. C. He grew up in an all-black neighborhood. D. He studied abroad in India.

13. Which is NOT a reason Eamon Bailey gives for SeeChange being a positive innovation? A. It can increase accountability for crime. B. It can show you weather conditions. C. It can connect parents and their lost children. D. It can expose the reality of nations in turmoil.

14. What disease does Mae's father have? A. Pneumonia B. Chron's disease C. Multiple sclerosis D. Psoriasis

15. In what ways does Mae's father's condition NOT affect her family? A. Mae's mother has to work two jobs. B. Mae's father feels undignified. C. They cannot go as many places because he tires easily. D. Mae's mother has to spend a lot of time dealing with his health insurance.

16. What is Mae's ex-boyfriend's name? A. Mercer B. Eamon C. Francis D. Kalden

17. What is Mae's ex-boyfriend's profession? A. Working for the Circle B. Repairing refrigerators C. Creating chandeliers out of antlers D. Teaching math at the local elementary school

18. Who is the owner of Maiden's Voyages, the kayak rental? A. Mercer B. Marion C. Francis D. Maddy

19. What animals often stare at Mae while kayaking? A. Trout B. Seals C. Dogs D. Dolphins

20. Why is Alistair upset with Mae? A. She didn't attend an event he was hosting. B. She covered up a SeeChange camera. C. She kept her relationship with Kalden secret from him. D. She didn't respond to his texts quickly.

21. Where does Mae first meet Kalden? A. At the reception for Congresswoman Santos B. At the party her first night on campus C. In the hall outside her office D. In the lemontree grove

22. What is Mae's Zing account name? A. Maek.It.Happen B. MaeDay C. Maeby_its_Maebelline D. Maelstrom

23. What does PartiRank track? A. The influence of one's posts on others' buying behavior B. One's popularity at the Circle C. One's activity on the InnerCircle and OuterCircle D. One's activity in the InnerCircle

24. What are the top Circlers in PartiRank called? A. Wise Men B. Demoxies C. T2K D. Plankton

25. Why did Mae get invited to the Portugal Brunch? A. She unknowingly uploaded pictures of Portugal to the Cloud. B. She had written a paper on Portugal at Carleton. C. She had posted about her love for Portugal on Myspace in middle school. D. She had mentioned Portugal once on her first day at the Circle.

Quiz 1 Answer Key 1. (C) Carleton 2. (C) Renata 3. (B) The Renaissance 4. (D) A utility company 5. (D) Ty Gospodinov 6. (C) Ty Gospodinov 7. (C) Ty Gospodinov 8. (B) Ty Gospodinov 9. (B) Her voice

10. (D) Dan 11. (C) Jared 12. (B) His sisters were abducted as children. 13. (C) It can connect parents and their lost children. 14. (C) Multiple sclerosis 15. (A) Mae's mother has to work two jobs. 16. (A) Mercer 17. (C) Creating chandeliers out of antlers 18. (B) Marion 19. (B) Seals 20. (A) She didn't attend an event he was hosting. 21. (C) In the hall outside her office 22. (B) MaeDay 23. (D) One's activity in the InnerCircle 24. (C) T2K 25. (A) She unknowingly uploaded pictures of Portugal to the Cloud.

The Circle Quizzes 1. Who does Gus call onstage during his presentation on LuvLuv?

A. Kalden B. Mae C. Francis D. Annie

2. What statement might Mercer agree with? A. The Circle is becoming a monopoly. B. Non-transparent government officials have dangerous secrets. C. Online communication is more effective. D. Everyone has the right to know everything.

3. Who cares for Mae at The Circle's clinic? A. Dr. Villalobos B. Annie C. Dr. Mercer D. Francis

4. What does Mae's temperature at the clinic remind her of? A. Her father's disease B. Her day's rating aggregate C. Her anxiety level D. Francis's heartbeat

5. Who tells Mae that she has saved her father's life? A. Her mother B. Mercer C. Annie D. Kalden

6. What does Kalden give Mae after they leave the circus together? A. A lemon B. A tour of the building C. A kiss D. A sweater

7. How does Mae feel looking at pictures from Francis's childhood? A. Hopeful B. Confused C. Proud D. Sad

8. What difficulty does Francis suffer from sexually? A. Fear of intimacy B. Too much tongue C. Premature ejaculation D. Body odor

9. What does Francis do after his first sexual encounter with Mae? A. Zing about it B. Upload a video of it to the Cloud C. Ask her to rate him D. Cry

10. Who is the first government official to go transparent? A. Congressman Stenton B. Mae C. Congresswoman Santos D. Congresswoman Renata

11. How is the information from "transparent" individuals stored? A. Old information is deleted as new information comes in B. In the individual's phone C. In the Cloud D. In large units cooled by water

12. Where do Kalden and Mae have their first sexual encounter? A. In the bathroom B. Near the abandoned subway line C. In Mae's on-campus dormroom D. In the lemontree grove

13. Why is Mae aggravated after Kalden gives her his phone number? A. He gave her a fake number. B. He still holds the power over when they communicate. C. He calls her constantly. D. He allowed the video of their sexual encounter to be uploaded to the Cloud.

14. What is CircleSurveys? A. A program that revolutionizes democratic voting B. A program that gathers consumer data by headset C. A program that Completes the Circle D. A program that allows Mae to connect with her clients

15. Why is the Circle attempting to count the grains of sand in the Sahara? A. To demonstrate its power to Chinese competitors B. To Complete the Circle C. To solve the water crisis D. To prove that all questions can be answered

16. Where does Mae meet Kalden and Annie secretly after SeeChange cameras are placed around the Circle?

A. In her on-campus dormroom B. In the Glass Eatery C. The bathroom D. Near the abandoned subway line

17. What is Conversion Rate? A. The amount of money one spends on campus B. The number of new employees one brings in to the Circle C. One's popularity on the InnerCircle D. The rate which an individual's posting influences others' consumer actions

18. Who says, "You think you're at the center of things, and that makes your opinions more valuable, but you yourself are becoming less vibrant"?

A. Mae's mother B. Kalden C. Annie D. Mercer

19. What is Mae nearly arrested for? A. Having sex in the workplace B. Borrowing a kayak after hours C. A fender-bender on the way to see her father in the hospital D. Breaking into the Circle's vaults

20. Who says "Everyone should have a right to know everything, and should have the tools to know anything"?

A. Mercer B. Kalden C. Annie D. Eamon Bailey

21. What animal from the Marianas Trench eats everything in Tom Stenton's aquarium? A. A harbor seal B. An octopus C. A shark D. A large turtle

22. Who says, "The Circle is almost complete and Mae, you have to believe me that this will be bad for you, for me, for humanity"?

A. Mercer B. Mae's mother C. Kalden D. Annie

23. What is the name of the Chinese sculpture on the Circle's campus? A. Grasping for Modernity B. Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind C. Screensaver D. The Circle is Complete

24. What is PastPresent? A. A technology that finds all information on one's ancestors B. A technology that creates more representative democracy C. A technology that allows parents to track their children D. A technology that finds out your date's likes and dislikes

25. Who is chosen as the first participant in PastPresent? A. Mercer B. Francis C. Mae D. Annie

Quiz 2 Answer Key 1. (C) Francis 2. (A) The Circle is becoming a monopoly. 3. (A) Dr. Villalobos 4. (B) Her day's rating aggregate 5. (A) Her mother 6. (A) A lemon 7. (D) Sad 8. (C) Premature ejaculation 9. (B) Upload a video of it to the Cloud

10. (C) Congresswoman Santos 11. (D) In large units cooled by water 12. (B) Near the abandoned subway line 13. (B) He still holds the power over when they communicate. 14. (B) A program that gathers consumer data by headset 15. (D) To prove that all questions can be answered 16. (C) The bathroom 17. (D) The rate which an individual's posting influences others' consumer actions 18. (D) Mercer 19. (B) Borrowing a kayak after hours 20. (D) Eamon Bailey 21. (C) A shark 22. (C) Kalden 23. (B) Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind 24. (A) A technology that finds all information on one's ancestors 25. (D) Annie

The Circle Quizzes 1. What does a Scottish doctor warn Mae of?

A. Her risk for STIs B. Her risk for MS C. Her risk for DNA D. Her risk for cancer

2. Who is the first Circler to go transparent? A. Eamon Bailey B. Annie C. Mae D. Stewart

3. What is Mae's response to Francis drinking every night to fall asleep? A. She sees no problem with it because she drinks most nights herself. B. She pities him and leaves quickly. C. She disapproves but then knows she will try it herself. D. She asks him to stop if they are going to be together.

4. What is Francis's sexual fantasy? A. Having sex in a public place B. Having a video of a sexual encounter posted online C. Being invited in by a lonely housewife D. Having sex in the shower

5. Why does Francis want to be rated on his sexual performance? A. He knows Mae likes to be surveyed on things. B. He is gathering information for a new sexual health program. C. He thinks he did a bad job. D. Not knowing takes the enjoyment out for him.

6. What rating does Mae give Francis when he asks her to rate his sexual performance? A. 100 B. 70 C. 51 D. 99

7. Who suggests that having a Circle account could automatically register one to vote? A. Mae B. Eamon Bailey C. Annie D. Tom Stenton

8. Who suggests that having a Circle account should be mandatory? A. Annie B. Eamon Bailey C. Tom Stenton D. Mae

9. What does Kalden see as the final step to "Completion" of the Circle? A. Mandatory Circle accounts through Demoxie B. Everyone knowing their family's history through PastPerfect C. Total tracking of health and wellness through CHAD D. All people being trackable through TruYouth

10. What is NOT a question asked in the Demoxie trial-run? A. John or Paul or...Ringo? B. Is Mae Holland Awesome or what? C. Should the Circle switch to 2-ply toilet paper? D. Should the Circle offer more veggies options at lunch?

11. How many people said "smile" to the final question in the Demoxie trial run? A. 97 B. 93 C. 90 D. 99

12. Which of these is UNTRUE about Annie's family? A. Her parents watched a man drown. B. Her ancestors owned slaves in America. C. Her ancestors owned slaves in Ireland. D. Her grandfather was in the mafia.

13. Who reveals that Mae can find out the list of who frowned at her via Demoxie? A. Annie B. Kalden C. Mercer D. Francis

14. Who is it revealed frowned at Mae via Demoxie? A. Kalden B. Annie C. Alistair D. Dan

15. What is Mae's response to the Demoxie votes being public? A. Fierce aversion, then acceptance B. Fierce aversion C. Neutral D. Acceptance

16. What innovation is NOT presented at the Aspirant session Mae attends? A. A retinal program that colors people by crimes they've committed B. An in-house motion sensor that alerts police to domestic violence C. A chip inserted into children's bones for parental tracking D. A program that allows users to view all individuals in a neighborhood to view all residents' and strangers' whereabouts

17. What is Stenton's reaction to the alarm that goes off during the Aspirant session? A. Praise B. Confusion C. Fury D. Nonchalance

18. Who writes the Zing, "Actually, I don't know if we should know everything"? A. Mae B. Annie C. Mercer D. Francis

19. What is SoulSearch? A. A program that reveal's one's soulmate based on social media preferences B. A program that allows one to find anything they've lost through tracking chips C. A program that helps one make moral judgements D. A program utilizing social media to locate fugitives

20. Who is SoulSearch used on? A. Kalden and Ty B. Fiona Highbridge and Mercer C. Francis and Mae D. Annie and her parents

21. What is the result of the SoulSearch demonstration? A. Mae has a breakdown. B. Kalden reveals his identity. C. Annie goes into a coma. D. Mercer kills himself.

22. Who does Kalden reveal himself to be? A. Eamon Bailey B. Ty Gospodinov C. Francis Garaventa D. Tom Stenton

23. What happens to matter eaten by Stenton's shark? A. It is regurgitated by the shark. B. It is digested into fine white ash. C. It becomes transparent. D. It is digested slowly through the shark's transparent body.

24. What does Kalden ask of Mae after revealing his identity? A. That she give a message to her viewers that halts Completion of the Circle B. That she give a message to her viewers applauding Completion of the Circle C. That she break up with Francis D. That she pay attention to Annie

25. Does Mae do as Kalden wishes at the end of the novel? A. No B. She is too confused to decide C. Yes D. Yes, grudgingly

Quiz 3 Answer Key 1. (D) Her risk for cancer 2. (D) Stewart 3. (C) She disapproves but then knows she will try it herself. 4. (C) Being invited in by a lonely housewife 5. (D) Not knowing takes the enjoyment out for him. 6. (A) 100 7. (B) Eamon Bailey 8. (D) Mae 9. (A) Mandatory Circle accounts through Demoxie

10. (C) Should the Circle switch to 2-ply toilet paper? 11. (A) 97 12. (D) Her grandfather was in the mafia. 13. (D) Francis 14. (C) Alistair 15. (A) Fierce aversion, then acceptance 16. (C) A chip inserted into children's bones for parental tracking 17. (C) Fury 18. (B) Annie 19. (D) A program utilizing social media to locate fugitives 20. (B) Fiona Highbridge and Mercer 21. (D) Mercer kills himself. 22. (B) Ty Gospodinov 23. (B) It is digested into fine white ash. 24. (A) That she give a message to her viewers that halts Completion of the Circle 25. (A) No

The Circle Quizzes 1. Who is Mae dating at the end of the novel?

A. Mercer B. Francis C. Kalden D. Ty

2. What is Annie doing at the end of the novel? A. She is home resting. B. She is in a coma. C. She has joined the Wise Men. D. She is back at work at the Circle.

3. What happens to Kalden at the end of the novel? A. He and Mae are engaged. B. He is maintained at the Circle as an advisor. C. He is fired from the Circle. D. He is applauded for his foresight.

4. What is Mae's final thought of the novel? A. That she is happy to be dating Francis B. That she should call her parents C. That she is happy Completion was avoided D. Annoyance at Annie keeping her thoughts to herself

5. Why does Mae say to Kalden that she wants to be watched all the time? A. She wants proof she existed. B. She wants to make Bailey proud. C. She wants to maintain her viewership. D. She thinks all data is important.

6. Where does Francis produce wine from during his first meeting with Mae? A. Behind a table B. A waterfall C. The lemontree grove D. A cooler

7. What is a reason that Eamon Bailey uses to say that Mae hiding her kayaking adventure was wrong?

A. There are kayaking groups to join on the InnerCircle. B. His disabled son could have watched videos from it. C. The police were disturbed for a minor crime. D. She could have damaged a SeeChange camera.

8. What does Mae NOT take from the room of free products? A. A sports bra B. Jeans C. Aloe D. Phone covers

9. Who is upset that Mae is invited to the Concept Kingdom meeting? A. Annie B. Kalden C. Francis D. Mercer

10. What does Mae make her drone say to Mercer? A. "I just wanted to say hi." B. "I love you." C. "Turn around!" D. "Admit that you were wrong."

11. Who does Mae debrief with a week after Mercer's death? A. Kalden B. Eamon Bailey C. Her mother D. Annie

12. What is the main dining hall at the Circle called? A. The Glass Eatery B. The Hangout C. Circular Foods D. Box'd

13. Does Mae continue working in Customer Experience after going transparent? A. No, her only job is communicating with her viewers B. Yes, full-time C. Yes, a few hours a week D. No, she is transferred to PR

14. What campus event does Mae find unnerving? A. The concert of an unpaid musician B. The reception for Congresswoman Santos C. Dream Friday D. The circus performance

15. What can't employees do at the Circle? A. Delete B. Date other employees C. Eat lunch off campus D. Live on campus

16. What CircleSurveys sound is intoxicating to Mae? A. A voice saying her name B. A droplet noise C. A soft chime D. A voice saying Kalden's name

17. Where has Mae not had sex? A. Her dorm on campus B. Her apartment C. The Grand Canyon D. The bathroom

18. If Mae posts about a keychain and 40 of her followers each buy 2 keychains for $5 each after 3 days, what would her Retail Raw be?

A. x1200 B. $400 C. $1200 D. x400

19. What is Mae's relationship with her parents like at the end of the novel? A. Strained B. Grateful C. Close D. Resolved

20. What does the once spiritual man tell Mae at the bar after her idea for Demoxie? A. She has created a new religion. B. She has sinned but will be forgiven. C. She has sent us all to Hell. D. She has saved all the souls.

21. How many screens does Mae have by the end of the novel? A. 10 B. 7 C. 9 D. 8

22. What does a government official going transparent begin to be called? A. Turning Trans B. Clarification C. Transparenzing D. Clearing the Air

23. Why did Ty first create TruYou? A. He cared deeply about police violence. B. He wanted a more representative democracy. C. He wanted to be able to see the weather at his favorite surf spots. D. He was tired of remembering different passwords.

24. What gift did Mae's parents give her after she begins work at the Circle? A. A car to visit them B. A new laptop C. A fancy pen D. A bracelet

25. What island does Mae visit on her illegal nighttime kayaking trip? A. Angel Island B. Jackal Island C. Coney Island D. Blue Island

Quiz 4 Answer Key 1. (B) Francis 2. (B) She is in a coma. 3. (B) He is maintained at the Circle as an advisor. 4. (D) Annoyance at Annie keeping her thoughts to herself 5. (A) She wants proof she existed. 6. (B) A waterfall 7. (B) His disabled son could have watched videos from it. 8. (C) Aloe 9. (A) Annie

10. (A) "I just wanted to say hi." 11. (B) Eamon Bailey 12. (A) The Glass Eatery 13. (C) Yes, a few hours a week 14. (D) The circus performance 15. (A) Delete 16. (A) A voice saying her name 17. (B) Her apartment 18. (B) $400 19. (A) Strained 20. (D) She has saved all the souls. 21. (C) 9 22. (B) Clarification 23. (D) He was tired of remembering different passwords. 24. (C) A fancy pen 25. (D) Blue Island

The Circle Bibliography Maddy Cohen , author of ClassicNote. Completed on May 13, 2015, copyright held by GradeSaver.

Updated and revised by Neal Adolph Akatsuka November 7, 2015. Copyright held by GradeSaver.

Dave Eggers. The Circle . New York: Vintage Books , 2013.

"Circle (Eggers)." LitLovers. 6/14/2015. <http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/ 9412-circle-eggers>.

Ellen Ullman . "Ring of Power: 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers ." The New York Times. 11/1/2013. 6/14/2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/the-circle-by-dave- eggers.html?_r=0>.

LAUREN CHRISTENSEN. "Book Review: The Circle, Dave Eggers’s Chilling, New Allegory of Silicon Valley." Vanity Fair. 10/8/2013. 6/14/2015. <http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/ 10/dave-eggers-the-circle>.

Jane Ciabattari. "‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers." The Boston Globe. 10/19/2013. 6/14/2015. <http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/19/book-review-the-circle-dave-eggers/ LoBsBOJuqGzNCK5TTgUg7I/story.html>.

Graeme McMillan. "Dave Eggers’ The Circle: What the Internet Looks Like if You Don’t Understand It." Wired. 10/11/2013. 6/14/2015. <http://www.wired.com/2013/10/the-circle- review-dave-eggers/>.

Alexander Linklater. "The Circle by Dave Eggers – review." The Guardian. 10/12/2013. 6/14/ 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/12/the-circle-dave-eggers-review>.

http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/9412-circle-eggers

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/the-circle-by-dave-eggers.html?_r=0

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/10/dave-eggers-the-circle

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/10/19/book-review-the-circle-dave-eggers/LoBsBOJuqGzNCK5TTgUg7I/story.html

http://www.wired.com/2013/10/the-circle-review-dave-eggers/

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/12/the-circle-dave-eggers-review

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ClassicNote on The Circle
Table of Contents
Biography of Dave Eggers (1970–)
The Circle Study Guide
The Circle Summary
The Circle Characters

Mae Holland
Annie
Renata
Kevin
Ty Gospodinov/Kalden
Eamon Bailey
Tom Stenton
Francis Garaventa
Marion
Mae's Mother and Father
Mercer
Dan
Alistair
Jared
Dr. Villalobos

The Circle Glossary

Calatrava Fountain
Hardtack
Calder Mobile
Koyaanisqatsi
Vertigo
Black Lightning
Protégée
Subsidy
Ochre
Asperger's
IPO
TruYou
Valhalla
FCC Investigation
Spruce Goose and Enola Gay
Riesling
Tatum O'Neal and Paper Moon
Mossad
Zing
Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Revolution
Tiananmen Square
The Hague
Second Enlightenment
SeeChange
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
ChildTrack/TruYouth
MaeDay
InnerCircle and OuterCircle
Participation Rank/PartiRank
Lisbon
The Y
Retinue
pH Level
Hep C
LEED
Transparency
Donald Judd Sculpture
Conversion Rate and Retail Raw
CircleJerk
Julian Assange
Pentagon Papers
Gadhafi
Settlers
Sardonic
PastPerfect
Completion
Manifest Destiny
Demoxie
Constitutional Convention
Klansman
Digital Brownshirts
ACLUtopia
Infocommunism

The Circle Themes

The Dangers of Modernity
Family
Religion
Sex, Lust, and Love
Identity
Human Rights
The Imporance of Names

The Circle Quotes and Analysis
The Circle Book 1 Part 1 (pp. 1-84) Summary and Analysis

Summary
Analysis

The Circle Book 1 Part 2 (pp. 84-146) Summary and Analysis

Summary
Analysis

The Circle Book 1 Part 3 (pp. 146-192) Summary and Analysis

Summary
Analysis

The Circle Book 1 Part 4 (pp. 192-309) Summary and Analysis

Summary
Analysis

The Circle Book 2 Part 1 (pp. 309-385) Summary and Analysis

Summary
Analysis

The Circle Book 2 Part 2 (pp. 385-466) Summary and Analysis

Summary
Analysis

The Circle Book 2 Part 3 and Book 3 (pp. 466-497) Summary and Analysis

Summary
Analysis

The Circle Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

The Transparent Shark (Symbol)
The Tear (Symbol)
The Chinese Sculpture "Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind" (Symbol)
Stewart's Storage Unit (Symbol)
Mae's Screens (Symbol)

The Circle Metaphors and Similes

"Non-communication in a place like the Circle was so difficult, it felt like violence." (Similie)
"It's plankton-inspection time... little startups hoping the big whale - that's us - will find them tasty enough to eat." (Metaphor)
"She found the buffet, and found it in shambles, a feast raided by animals or Vikings..." (Metaphor)
"Which of them had pushed that frown button, each push of that button the pull of a trigger... she felt full of holes as if every one of them had shot her, from behind, cowards filling her with holes." (Metaphor/Simile)
"He tilted his head, like a traveler puzzling out some odd local customs." (Similie)

The Circle Irony

Mae and Kalden's Conversations
The Chinese Sculpture "Reaching Through for the Good of Humankind"
Sending Smiles
Secret Bathroom Meetings
Counting the Grains of Sand in the Sahara
Mae's Parents' Gift

The Circle Imagery

The Circle's Campus
Sex
Data
Kayaking

The Circle Eggers's Epigraph: East of Eden and The Circle
The Circle Literary Elements

Genre
Setting and Context
Narrator and Point of View
Tone and Mood
Protagonist and Antagonist
Major Conflict
Climax
Foreshadowing
Understatement
Allusions
Imagery
Paradox
Parallelism
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Personification

The Circle Links

Ring of Power: "The Circle," by Dave Eggers
‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers’ The Circle: What the Internet Looks Like if You Don’t Understand It
The Circle

The Circle Essay Questions
The Circle Quizzes
Quiz 1 Answer Key
The Circle Quizzes
Quiz 2 Answer Key
The Circle Quizzes
Quiz 3 Answer Key
The Circle Quizzes
Quiz 4 Answer Key
The Circle Bibliography
Copyright Notice