The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Mae Holland had moved back in with her parents after graduating from Carleton. She was $234,000 in school loan debt and took the first job offered to her at the utility company. It had been eighteen months since she started that job and she hated every second of it. Arriving on the campus of the Circle was the pivotal moment in her life. The Circle was the most powerful internet company in the world, employing ten thousand people on its San Vicente campus, as the driving force of the electronic age. Annie, Mae’s best friend since college, was one the Gang of 40 that consisted of the most crucial minds in the company. TruYou was the driving force for the Circle. With TruYou users had one identity, one account and one password for everything they needed on the web. It was the pathway to vanquishing false identity and everything you needed to accomplish you could, with TruYou. The goal was to one day close the Circle, making life transparent to all.

Intriguing. Haunting. Exciting. Terrifying. Complex. Those words are the best way to describe The Circle. I don’t want to be anywhere near the world Dave Eggers created. Mae acts as our naïve eyes and ears. She is young, gullible, impressionable, excitable and easily manipulated. She wants approval and to be recognized. She starts her work at the Circle simply grateful to be granted the opportunity to work for such a prestigious company. Every time someone approaches her with any criticism or reproaches, Mae works harder to prove herself worthy. This means she dedicates more time on social media, providing more information about herself and her interests because the Circle promotes community. Mae begins to understand that her experiences should be shared with everyone because everyone has the right to know what she knows and experience what she experiences. To not share those experiences would be selfish and counterintuitive to the process at the Circle. Why wouldn’t she or anyone else shy away from transparency when they could share their lives daily with millions of people through video feed. Privacy shouldn’t exist. TruYou and the Circle need to be expanded so that privacy no longer exists and everyone will live as if they are being watched, because they are.

The Circle demolishes and demoralizes any idea that privacy is sacred. It promotes the idea that “Secrets are lies. Sharing is caring. Privacy is theft.” Eggers created a deceptively simple setting for the destruction of privacy as we know it. He takes our current social media aware society and amplifies it, enveloping the masses into a world where they begin to feel entitled to penetrate and expose everyone’s life. This isn’t Orwell’s 1984 but it is extremely creepy because everyone has become big brother and the majority of people are happy about it. I was absorbed and terrified. Eggers presents the novel in three parts, with each one throwing us deeper into this mind frame of the Circle. A few of the minor characters act as the conscience while Mae represents the masses. As she dives deeper into transparency we see the world following suit. Egger is a talented writer who understands how simple delivery and gradual change can lead to unknowing domination. I enjoyed this novel for its incredible and unsettling view. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.  There were moments when the novel became predictable and Mae unbearable but overall I like it and would recommend it.