Utopia/Dystopia Abitur Zusammenfassung

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this prefix. - describes a world that is worse than Ours - propaganda is used to control the citizens of society - Information, independent thought and freedom are restricted - A figurehead or concept is worshipped by the citizens of the society - Citizens are afraid of the outside world and the government -> Absolute control by the system (dictatorship) - Individuality and dissent are bad -Discrimination, bad living conditions (sickness, poverty) - War and Terrorism - No policy - Limited freedom -> pessimistic about the future society (Difference) - Technological underdevelopment or overdevelopment - Everybody cares for himself -> selfish and collapsing - control of the society - pressure, manipulation, control, fear of getting caught, being tortured,losing all social contacts and being humiliated, working as inescapable power machines, worlds governments are dehumanized The Circle Mae Holland The protagonist of The Circle, Mae Holland is a bright young woman whose friend, Annie Allerton, gets her a job at the Circle. Over the course of the novel, Mae goes from being politely skeptical of the Circle's policies to becoming an enthusiastic advocate for these policies. Little by little, Mae comes to accept that privacy is immoral, that human beings have an obligation to socialize with millions of other human beings via the Internet, and that the Circle is building a global utopia. She becomes distant from her family and old friends, effectively trading a couple dozen "real people" for millions of virtual friends worldwide. As Mae becomes increasingly loyal to the Circle, it becomes increasingly obvious to readers that Mae is a pawn: the Circle's executives are using her as a poster child for their company and a tool with which to manipulate the world's population into accepting the Circle. In the novel's final pages, Mae betrays Ty Gospodinov-the founder of the Circle, who has come to question his company's ethics-which signifies that she has surrendered to the Circle's corrupt agenda. Annie Allerton Annie Allerton is a high-ranking member of the Circle. For the first half of the book, Annie seems to be an enthusiastic advocate of the Circle's culture and beliefs: Annie encourages Mae to post online about her experiences, and she expresses shock and anxiety when Mae ignores her messages for even fifteen minutes. However, in the second half of the novel, as Mae becomes increasingly enamored with the Circle and its philosophy of transparency, Annie becomes increasingly uneasy and stressed out. Seemingly jealous of Mae's new success, Annie begins ignoring her old friend and eventually has a nervous breakdown, which places her in a coma. The breakdown in Annie's friendship with Mae is one of the most tragic aspects of The Circle, and the arc of their relationship is an argument that social networking pushes people further apart instead of bringing them closer together. 3 Wise Men Ty Ty Gospodinov, an introverted computer genius, is the founder of the Circle and the creator of TruYou, the online identity system at the core of the Circle's success. In creating TruYou, Ty thought that he was creating a digital utopia, but he becomes uneasy with the Circle's rapidly growing power. Although he's one of the three "Wise Men" who run the company, he is sidelined by the others after he calls for privacy protections. Throughout The Circle, Ty is a mysterious character, seen only via webcam at the occasional company meeting (although it's hinted that those webcasts are not what they appear and Ty may have suffered a sinister fate). At the end of the novel, it's revealed that Ty is actually Kalden-the mysterious Circle employee who has been having an occasional affair with Mae Holland. Kalden, trying to act on his ethical qualms with the Circle, enlists Mae to help him undermine the Circle's plans, but Mae betrays Ty to the other two Wise Men, who seemingly place Ty under arrest (or, it's implied, have him murdered). Tom Stenton Tom Stenton is one of the Three Wise Men who run the Circle. Of the three, he's the most stereotypically corporate-aggressive, dangerously charismatic, and ethically lax. Throughout the novel, Stenton seems to play a minor role in the company, at least from the perspective of Mae Holland and her fellow Circle employees. Only toward the end of the book does it become clear that Stenton is the most powerful of the Wise Men, and the one whose vision of ruthless, totalitarian control will prove most influential. As Eggers implies, Stenton is a "shark": he devours everything in his presence and always gets his way. Bailey Eamon Bailey is one of the Three Wise Men who run the Circle. Of the three, he is the most charismatic and-at least according to Ty Gospodinov-sincere. Bailey is a folksy speaker, a pious Christian, and the father of a child, Gunner, who has cerebral palsy. He is passionately devoted to the notion that human beings should share their experiences with one another, and every Friday he makes speeches to his adoring employees about the Circle's utopian mission to eliminate secrecy and unite the world electronically. In a way, Eamon is the most dangerous of the Three Wise Men, since he seems to be the only one to sincerely believe in the ethics of total transparency (Ty rejects transparency as totalitarian, while Tom Stenton welcomes it because it's totalitarian). As we see, Eamon is instrumental in persuading the employees of the Circle, including Mae Holland, to surrender their privacy to the company, which bolsters an ideological program that threatens to engulf the entire planet. Francis Francis Garaventa is a Circle employee who dates Mae Holland on and off for most of the book. Francis could also be considered Eggers's portrait of (or, if you prefer, his nasty caricature of) the typical Bay Area "tech nerd"-even his first name suggests his symbolic connection with San Francisco. Francis is a shy, awkward man. He suffers from premature ejaculations, which means that he and Mae have many erotic encounters but they never have sex. In spite of Francis's awkwardness and sexual difficulties, Mae finds him to be adorable and deeply sympathetic. In part, his allure has to do with his difficult childhood: more than one of Francis's siblings were killed while he was still a child, and, as a result, he is passionately working to design a program for tracking down kidnapped children. Francis is, one could argue, the archetypal "shy boy" who some people find sexy-he's quiet and awkward, but his awkwardness makes him strangely alluring. Mercer Mercer Medeiros, Mae Holland's old boyfriend, embodies the analog way of living and the last gasp of resistance to the Circle's unethical philosophy of transparency. He's everything that Circle employees aren't: confident, outspoken, good with his hands, overweight, poorly dressed, unkempt, and committed to the importance of face-to-face contact. Mercer is the only character in the novel who offers an eloquent response to the Circle's worldview: he insists that the Circle has reduced human connection to a shadow of what it once was, trading rich and nuanced relationships (which, he maintains, can only exist when people interact face-to-face) for shallow, meaningless social networking "friendships." Toward the end of the novel, as the Circle prepares to flood the entire industrialized world with cameras, Mercer writes Mae a letter insisting that he's going to live as a hermit. When Mae sends a fleet of drones after Mercer to harass him, he commits suicide by driving his car into a gorge. He'd rather die, it's suggested, than live in under the Circle's totalitarian regime. Mae's parents Vinnie Holland, Mae's father, is a loving parent who suffers from MS and is unable to get good healthcare. To help her father, Mae arranges for him to receive high-end healthcare from the Circle. However, Vinnie quickly becomes exasperated with the constant surveillance that the Circle demands in exchange for healthcare. As the novel goes on, Vinnie becomes an increasingly minor character, reflecting Mae's alienation from her family and friends, and her growing commitment to the Circle's mission. Mae's mother is proud of Mae when she gets a job at the Circle; she's even prouder when Mae arranges for the Circle to provide healthcare for Vinnie Holland (her husband). However, Mae's mother quickly becomes skeptical of the Circle's commitment to creating total transparency. When the Circle installs cameras in her house, she covers the cameras with cloth to protect her privacy. This rebellion against the Circle leads to a rift between Mae and her mother, which eventually causes them not to speak anymore at all. Plot 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 Tru You, 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. Utopia/Dystopia Ty's original idea of the circle -> "Instead, he put all of it, all of every user's needs and tools into one pot and invented TruYou - one account, one identity, one password, no multiple identities. Your devices know who you were, and your identity- the TruYou, unbendable and unmaskable-was the person paying, signing up, responding, viewing and reviewing, seeing and being seen. The employees and their families are ebing cared of -> "Of course it's free. It's part of your health plan!" -> "Have you asked HR about adding your parents to the comany plan?" Social groups for people to publish their experiences All your private information is kept (and/or private) -> "I heard you spin?" they already know information -> ".., but the meaning was clear: We don't delete at the Circle" -> "Now as you can see, LuvLuv has searched everything Mae's ever posted. It's collated this information and analyzed it for relevance" Pressure on people to post and publish everything about their lifes People are being tracked the whole time Employees are being manipulated into a very digital and unsocial world/ the loss of connection to the real world