The circle summary book 2

Ethical Issues

1. use the ethical theory of utilitarianism (consequentialism) to argue both for and against the goals of the Circle (utilitarianism is explained on pg. 44 of the Business Ethics textbook).

https://openstax.org/details/books/business-ethics. ( this is a text book pg 44 )

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

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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

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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

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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."

Biography of Dave Eggers (1970–) Copyright © 2015 by GradeSaver LLC 1

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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