Dave Eggers „The Circle“

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a big aquarium in one of its buildings text type: Novel ->Utopia/dystopia storyteller: Third-person prom Med's eyes -> omniscient narrator (auctorial) swims around the aquarium, grasping onto everything it can touch => Bailey backs for total transparency between everyone (everyone should be able to touch/know/see everything) swims in aquarium, devours everything it sees, eats the octopus at the end => stenton bites himself through everything until he gained power and get his own way a shy and cautious denizen of the aquarium, which is not ready to present itselp the public, it's more likely to be hidden in the background=> as the founder of the circle, Ty has the least influence and transforms people into docile, obedient servants. tends to stay in the background of the company, he only appears in videocalls and avoid every kind of Mea loves to go kayaking, it provides her with some alone time and privacy-> at the end she doesn't go kayaking anymore, because she needs no privacy" The voice in Mae's headset symbolizes the way that the circle, and social networking in general, mea Holland. Annie Allerton, her best friend since college gets her a job at the circle she is sceptic at first but the becomes an enthusiastic advocate for the polices of the circle. Gradually, she completely Palls behind the guidelines of the district. she accepts that you have to socialize people via the internet and that the circle with its machinations is building a global utopia. she distances herself from friends and family and even replaces real people with virtual ones. The circle uses Mea's loyalty to their company as a tool to manipulate people worldwide into accepting the circle. Finally, Mea reveals Ty's plan to undermine the company, how she surrenders to the circle's corrupt agenda. ·annie allerton Annie and Mea are best friends since they were roommates at college. she is a high-ranking member of the circle, but it doesn't get clear what she actually does she manages Mea a job at the circle but pulling some strings there. At the beginning Annie seems like a full supportive employee who accepts their philosophy of transparency. Annie even advises Mea to post her experiences. Mea becomes more and more successful in the company and she begins to love the circles philosophy of transparency. But Annie gets jealous of Mea's success and starts ignoring her and suddenly has a nervous breakdown, which places her in coma This tragic situation in the novel points out that the circles philosophy is wrong, because social networking pushes people further apart instead of bringing them closer together. Ty Gospodinov/ Kalden: 2 He is the founder of the circle and the creator of Truyou (online identity system on which the circle is based). In creating Truyou he planned to create a digital utopia, but now he is unsure of himself with the increasing power of the circle. He is one of the three wise men" who run the company. He calls for privacy protections what gets him sidelined by the Other two wise. Ty stays a mysterious character in the story, he only appears via webcam at company meetings. It is implied that these video calls are not what they taken for and that Ty has suppered a dark pate. At the end it gets revealed that Ty is kalden, a circle-employe, who has a inmitten appaire with mea. TY/Kalden wants to do something because of his ethical concerns with the circle. He asks Mea to help him undermine the circle's plans, but she betrays him. The other two wise Men place him under arrest (or murder him). Tom Stenton He is one of the three wise men who run the circle. stenton is a stereotype for the vision of the company. He is aggressive, dangerously charismatic and ethically careless. Mea and other circle-employees see him standing in a minor position in the company. At the end gets clear that stenton is the most powerful of the three wise men and his vision of ruthless and total control will have the biggest influence. He can assert himself and always gets what he wants. Eamon Balley See He is the last of the three Wise Men, he is christian, has a son named Gunner and fully Pollows the philosophy of the circle. He is devoted to the vision that humans should share all their experiences to create a completely transparent world. Every Friday he holds speeches to his adoring employees about the utopian mission of the circle to eliminate privacy and unite the world digitally. Bailey is the most dangerous of the three Wise Men, because he seems to be the only one who really believe in the ethic of total transparency. He is responsible for convincing the employees as well as mea to surrender their privacy to the company. Francis Ganaventa: He is a circle employee who has an on-opp relationship with mea. He is shy and awkward but still adorable and deeply sympathetic (in Mea's view). They had many sexual and erotic encounters but never had sex. Francis suppers from premature ejaculations, what doesn't bother mea. His attraction can have something to do with his difficult childhood. More than one siblings of him were killed, while he was still a child. Now he's working to design a program for tracking down kidnapped children. He is the shy boy", who some people find sexy and mysterious. Francis could be a portrait/ implementation of Dave Eggers as the typical Bay Area tech nerd" - even with a symbolic connection in his name to san Fransisco. mencen Medeiros: He is the old boyfriend of mea and implies the analog way of living and the last piece of rebellion against the unethical philosophy of the circle. He embodies the opposite of a circle-employee. He is confident, open, technically gifted, overweight, poorly dressed and committed to the importance of pace-to-face contacts. He is the only character in the novel that gives the circle à counter-answer to the worldview->rich and nuanced relationships only can exist when people interact personally not virtual Toward the end when the circle decides to install cameras worldwide, Mercer writes Mea a letter. He tells her that he is going to live as a hermit. As a response, Mea sends him a bunch of drones to harass him, so he commits sucide, by driving into a gorge with his car. He would rather die then live under the circle's totalitarian regime. Vinnie Holland (mea's father). Mea's father is a great loving parent, who suppers from MS and doesn't get a good healthcare Mea arranges a high-end healthcare prom The circle por him. He becomes angry about the constant surveillance that the circle demands in exchange for healthcare. In the following story he becomes a minor character who reflects Mea's alienation from her family and friends, and her growing commitment to the circle's vision. mea's mother, first, she is very proud of her daughter Mea she gets a job at the circle and even prouder whe she manages a health care por her usband vinnie. shortly after she becomes skeptical of the circle's vision of total transparency. At the point when the company installed cameras all over the house (as a return for the health care), she covers them with cloth to protect her privacy. This rebellion against the circle causes a alientaion between Mea's mother and Mea which leads to them not speak anymore at all. A young woman named Mae Holland comes to the campus of a company called Circle, one of the most praised and innovative technology companies in the world. Mae was recruited to work in the company, thanks to the help of her close friend and college roommate Annie Allerton, who is one of the highest employees of the Circle. Annie welcomes Mae and gives her a tour of the facilities that are beautiful and modern. Everyone who meets Mae is extremely gracious and enthusiastic about Mae joining the company. In the course of the tour, Annie Mae talks about the Circle. It is run by three people known as the three wise men. Ty Gospodinov, the founder and most technically savvy of the wise men, is a hermit and almost never appears in public again. Tom Stenton, the most aggressive and money-hungry of the wise men, is responsible for the company's "dirty work". Finally, Eamon Bailey, the most charismatic and beloved of the wise men, is responsible for realizing the company's vision of global networking. Mae starts working for the Circle in the Customer Experience department. There she spends her time interacting with customers who have questions about Circle products. Your job generally seems superficial, and it is not clear how it fits the mission of the company as a whole. Mae quickly realizes that the circle almost constantly organizes parties and social events. At a party, she meets a quirky employee named Francis Garaventa. Mae quickly learns that Francis is an orphan, and several of his siblings were kidnapped and killed when he was a small child. As a result, Francis is working on a project for the Circle aimed at chasing kidnapped children. Mae also participates in presentations led by Eamon Bailey. On the one hand, Eamon introduces a program called SeeChange - a camera system that allows Circle users to observe any point on earth at any time. Although Mae is impressed by the utopian spirit of the Circle, she does not spend as much time on campus as her colleagues because she likes to visit her parents. Her father suffers from MS and he needs constant care; unfortunately, his health care does not provide him with the painkillers he needs to feel comfortable. At work, Mae is encouraged to spend much more time participating in social life at the Circle. She is supposed to participate in parties and meetings and, more importantly, she is urged to post online about her activities. Mae feels that this is important for her job and throws herself into the task of building an online presence: She stays up late at night and publishes status, likes other people's videos, etc. Around the same time, Mae meets a mysterious man named Kalden. Kalden asks Mae questions about himself and her work, but he refuses to answer many questions about his own life - he doesn't even give Mae his last name. Mae is trying to find, Kalden online, but she can't find anyone with his name. Later Mae goes out with Francis and they kiss.. The day after her date, Francis helps to give a presentation about a new dating website called LuvLuv; during the presentation, he demonstrates the website by displaying Mae's personal data. Mae is angry with Francis and refuses to talk to him. Soon after, she learns that her father's health is rapidly decreasing. She goes home to visit her father, and during her visit she argues with her old friend Mercer Medeiros. Mercer expresses his skepticism about Mae's new employer and suggests that constant SMS and social networks destroy Mae's relationships with her friends and family. Around the same time, Mae Kalden meets at a circle party and they have sex in a secret room At work, Mae learns that she can take her parents into the health insurance of her company; with Annie's help; she does so. In the meantime, the Circle is beginning to advance the idea of becoming completely transparent (which requires its users to share all their personal information and experiences with other users). The Circle installs cameras almost everywhere on its campus. In secret, Kalden and Mae meet in the bathroom (one of the only places without cameras) and have sex. One night after Mae Mercer and her parents saw dinner, Mae goes to the beach and sees an unreturned kayak near her favorite kayak shop. She decides to take it out and then return it and plans to leave it as she found it. However, when she returns ashore, she is surprised to find police officers waiting to arrest her. Mae is forced to call the owner of the kayak shop, a woman named Marion. Although she is ultimately not arrested, experience frightens Mae. The next day Mae learns that Circle users reported Mae after seeing them "steal" the kayak on a hidden camera near the beach. Mae meets Eamon Bailey, who convinces her that "secrets are lies" and that people have a moral obligation to share their experiences with other people. After that, Mae posts almost constantly online and shares every detail of her life with other people. The novel jumps forward for almost a year. The Circle has grown to handle virtually the entire flow of information in the world, and Mae has become transparent and has been promoted to virtual tour guide for the company. As part of transparency (which is inextricably linked to her job as a leader), Mae always wears a lens around her chest that allows everyone in the world to see what she sees and hear her voice. Mae enjoys her transparency and notes that she keeps her honest and energetic at all times: She must always be "on" for her millions of observers. Mae revives her relationship with Francis, but cannot have sex with him because he suffers from premature ejaculation. Mae is also getting further and further away from Annie, who seems to be revised and jealous of Mae's growing popularity in the company and among its users. Mae learns that her family "does not respect the circle". After their parents accepted the company's health insurance, the Circle installed cameras in their house, which Mae's parents then covered with fabric to block their view. Angry, Mae asks her parents to uncover the cameras. Mercer tells Mae that her parents deserve privacy - a proposal that Mae rejects as absurd. At work, Mae suggests a new idea: to require all Circle users to vote online via a Circle-controlled interface. Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton like this idea, and they also suggest that the company requires all Circle users to pay their taxes through the Circle, test their children through the Circle, etc. The resulting program called "Demoxie" allows everyone in the world to vote on each topic. Mae receives several calls from Kalden in which he urges Mae to speak out against the circle because he becomes dangerous and totalitarian. Mae ignores Kalden. She stays up late at night and posts online, and she becomes paranoid and worried about the smallest problems. The circle proposes projects that would enable police officers to target people who could become criminals even though they have not yet committed crimes. Meanwhile, Mae realizes that Annie suffers from paralyzing fear. Annie has registered as a guinea pig for a new Circle program that tracks people's ancestry and family history. Through this program, Annie discovered that some of her ancestors were slave owners, and as a result her online followers send their cruel messages. Mae is trying to help Annie by telling her own observers-millions of them to support Annie and overlook her family's crimes. Mae receives a letter from Mercer explaining that he will become a hermit in order to escape the surveillance of the circle. Shortly afterwards, Mae demonstrates a new Circle program designed to track down refugees. She decides to demonstrate the program on Mercer and sends a team of drones to fly after him. In the middle of her demonstration, Mercer drives his car into a canyon to escape the drones (and perhaps escape the surveillance culture that the circle has anchored more generally). He dies - it's an obvious suicide. Mae is desperate, but Eamon Bailey convinces her that Mercer was a disturbed young man and that she did not play a role in his death. Mae is finally introduced to Ty Gospodinov, the third and most withdrawn of the wise imen. She is amazed to see that Ty is actually Kalden. Privately, Ty explains that he has been trying to destroy his own company for years: He never wanted the Circle to destroy people's privacy and believes that Tom Stenton will turn the Circle into a tyrannical monopoly. He asks Mae to use her influence to denounce the company. In the short, last part of the novel, Mae decided not to denounce the company, but to inform Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton about Ty's subversive plans. Stenton and Bailey then arrested Ty (or possibly murdered him), and Mae has not seen Ty since then. Mae...