59 pages • 1 hour read
Dave EggersThe Circle
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Authenticity and Humanity in the Digital Age
Throughout The Circle, Eggers examines how living an increasingly digital life alienates people from their humanity. This is most clearly illustrated through Mae’s trajectory in the novel. In the beginning, she is excited about her new job at The Circle but still very connected to her real life. She leaves campus each weekend and partakes in wholesome activities like visiting her parents and kayaking. On the bay, she relishes in the natural beauty around her and has one of the few moments of authentic connection in the novel when she encounters the harbor seals. As such, Mae goes through a reverse coming-of-age journey in the novel, where she is her most authentic and human self in the early chapters.
Hints of technology’s capacity to disconnect people from their real lives emerge after Mae’s first weeks at The Circle. A stark example is when she is reprimanded for leaving campus for the weekend rather than participating in campus activities; essentially, the expectation is that Circlers work seven days a week, not five. This flattens their multifaceted identities, giving them fewer chances to interact with the world outside The Circle. When Mae explains that she was visiting her sick father, her superior insists that rather than spending her time with him, she should be attending MS support groups on campus. The absurdity of this suggestion—that one should focus on their feelings about someone else’s illness rather than spending precious time with that person—highlights the sort of alienation that can result from prioritizing the digital world over the real world.
Mae’s dehumanization becomes more apparent when she is pressured into going transparent. She views the changes that transparency motivates in her as positive—she chooses healthier snacks, for example, and works harder knowing that she is being observed. However, her interior monologue shows she is not behaving authentically or doing things she truly wants to do. Instead, she is curating her life for an online audience, living a shallow, focus-grouped existence. This is most clear in her interactions with her family. In contrast to earlier in the novel, Mae visits her parents infrequently, choosing to maintain contact through SeeChange cameras instead. When she does finally visit them, their interactions are strained since Mae is performing for the camera and incorporating product placement into their time together. Technology’s dehumanizing impact on her life is symbolized by her preoccupation with her phone at the dinner table; she prioritizes her online interactions to such an extent that she tunes out the loved ones who are actually in the room with her.
One last example of technology eroding authenticity and humanity is Mae’s love life. While she has palpable sexual chemistry with Kalden and finds herself enamored with him—to such an extent that she struggles to focus on her work—she seeks out a relationship with Francis because she sees a coworker flirting with him. This directly contradicts her true feelings about Francis, whom she finds disgusting. Likewise, Francis has little regard for Mae or her pleasure; he records their first sexual encounter without her consent, and though he lasts only a short while in bed, he does not seem interested in finding other ways to satisfy her. Their inauthentic relationship is symbolized by their roleplay, in which Mae pretends to be someone else to please him. While this is not an inherently inauthentic gesture, it symbolizes how disconnected she has become from her desires at The Circle.
The Dangers of Surveillance
One of The Circle’s main mantras is “All that happens must be known,” and the company presents surveillance as a public good, insisting that it motivates people to behave more honestly. Many of its projects involve expanding the surveillance state, like TruYouth, which would ostensibly eradicate child abductions by planting tracking chips in children. Mae reinforces these beliefs after she is caught stealing the kayak—she tells Bailey that she wouldn’t have done this if she knew she was being watched, perpetuating the idea that constant surveillance inspires people to be their best selves. This initially seems validated when Mae goes transparent, as she makes healthier choices and works harder to create a better picture of herself for her audience. However, the novel consistently critiques these ideas and asserts that surveillance is more harmful than beneficial.
The dangers of surveillance emerge through various scenarios. A recurring thread is sexual exploitation, where surveillance technology records people performing sex acts without their consent. When Francis records Mae and him hooking up without asking, she feels disgusted and mortified and asks him to delete the footage. However, he insists doing so would be dishonest, perpetuating her violation. Similarly, Mae accidentally broadcasts footage of her mother performing oral sex on her father, humiliating her parents during a moment of intimacy. While the higher-ups at The Circle insist these vulnerable moments will soon be so commonplace that people will lose interest, this is not the current reality, and Eggers stresses that surveillance technology will ultimately violate the most sacred of private boundaries.
Surveillance is also presented as a problem for politics and corruption. While The Circle argues that politicians should go transparent because they have nothing to hide, they manage to find compromising evidence for every politician who resists them. This creates a societal belief in privacy as inherently deviant and creates an opportunity for compromising evidence to be planted on dissidents' computers. With such power, The Circle can manipulate politicians to work in their favor, such as ruining the life of a senator who wanted to bring an antitrust case against the company. Likewise, The Circle’s aim for transparent voting is problematic for democracy. Secret ballots allow people to vote their conscience, even if they are in the minority. Public voting opens people up to manipulation since they can be targeted for voting a certain way. The risk of this is shown through the poll about Mae, where 3% of voters do not think she is “awesome.” Though Mae ultimately chooses not to see who voted against her, Francis asserts that this information is available, opening up that 3% of voters to retaliation from an increasingly powerful Mae.
The ultimate danger of a surveillance society is shown in the SoulSearch demonstration. Mob rule quickly extends beyond the ability to track someone down, and Fiona is nearly killed by the angry crowd. The Circle’s choice to track down a civilian rather than a criminal shows how easily surveillance technology can be abused beyond its intended goals; while the ethics of stalking someone who has committed a crime are murky, the technology allows people to target anyone they like, regardless of what they have done. The danger of this is embodied in Mercer’s death, showing that a surveillance state ultimately puts its citizens at risk rather than keeping them safe.
Women in Tech
Tech is a male-dominated field, and The Circle is no different. The patriarchal nature of the organization is represented by its three leaders, dubbed the Three Wise Men. In addition to marking these leaders as male, this phrase deifies them by comparing them to biblical figures. This creates an environment in which men are revered. By contrast, the women at The Circle struggle to find and keep their footing, showing how the company replicates unequal gender dynamics rather than subverting them. Through this lens, Eggers critiques initiatives to include women in tech that don’t address underlying misogynistic attitudes.
One way that The Circle perpetuates patriarchal power structures is by pitting female employees against each other. At first, Mae and Annie are allies; Annie gets Mae her job at The Circle and consistently offers her support. Since Annie is one of the few female higher-ups, she is willing to play this mentor role for Mae, an entry-level customer service employee. However, as Mae ascends the ranks, it becomes clear that there is no room at the top for multiple women. Mae and Annie both become increasingly motivated by jealousy when the other succeeds. This dynamic comes to a head in the big meeting where Mae proposes Demoxie, an idea the male managers love. When Annie offers legitimate critiques of the idea, she is denigrated, showing that only one woman can be elevated in this environment.
This cutthroat atmosphere motivates The Circle’s female employees to act against their own best interests. In Annie’s case, falling out of favor motivates her to volunteer for PastPerfect. This program makes her into a guinea pig, one of the many ways The Circle instrumentalizes its female employees in the name of company growth. Participating in PastPerfect becomes Annie’s downfall as dark secrets about her family history are exposed. In a culture that dehumanizes women, her innocence is disregarded in light of other people’s crimes. She is forced to bear the weight of her entire lineage, and she suffers as a result, ultimately ending up comatose.
Mae is also exploited by her male coworkers for their projects. For example, Bailey manipulates Mae into going transparent, a move that helps make transparency more appealing to the greater public. Here, the higher-ups recognize that a woman’s likeability is marketable, something that can be used to manipulate others into buying a product or behaving a certain way, but Mae is not given a choice in the matter. Another example is LuvLuv, where Mae’s information is used without her consent to create a presentation. Rather than asking her to participate in his pilot as an equal, Gus simply views Mae as a dataset. As such, the profile he creates for her is flat and incomplete, a poor representation of who Mae is as a person. This reflects a general misogynistic view of women that disregards their individuality and humanity.
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