Secrets are lies. Sharing is caring. Privacy is theft.
The Circle is a dystopian novel written by Dave Eggers and published in 2013. Mae Holland is rescued from her Soul-Crushing Desk Job at the local power utility when her college friend Annie gets her a job at the Circle, the world's largest technology company. As Mae, and the reader, are introduced to life at the Circle and its plans for a more connected future it raises questions about the future of privacy.
The book was adapted into a film in 2017. A sequel novel, The Every, was released in 2021.
The Circle provides examples of the following tropes:
- Audience Surrogate: Throughout the first part of the book, the reader is introduced to the world of the Circle through Mae's orientation as a new employee.
- Author Tract: The story is unrepentantly a framing device for social commentary on technology and social media.
- Bad Influencer: Mae becomes the spokesperson for the Circle through perpetually live-streaming herself. Although she theoretically doesn't do anything illegal, she alienates herself from her parents, who run away to escape her, and uses her celebrity to petty revenge on Mercer that leads to him getting killed, allows Completion to occur by betraying Ty, causes her "best friend" Annie to have a breakdown and presumably attempt suicide, and plays a central role in normalizing the Circle's privacy-free misery.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Tom and Eamon share the title of Big Bad. Although arguably the entire Circle and society at large is the Big Bad, including Mae herself.
- Big Brother Is Watching: The Circle's SeeChange cameras, which end up being ubiquitously placed everywhere. Later, people begin to wear these cameras, including Mae herself..
- CamelCase: The Circle's typical way of naming its products (TruYou, SeeChange, CircleSearch, etc.)
- Corporate Conspiracy: The titular tech company (a combination of Facebook and Google) has the goal of "Completion", where all data is indexed and accessible through the Circle. Its main stepping stone to achieve this promoting "full transparency", an attempt to get so many people to "go transparent" (be filmed and observed at all times) that everybody will eventually need to participate.Eamon: So any information that eludes us, anything that's not accessible, prevents us from being perfect.
- Crapsaccharine World: Invoked in-universe. The Circle campus is full of cool amenities and it has an explicit policy that "anything that makes our Circlers' lives better instantly becomes possible", but solitude and negative emotions are not tolerated.
- Cult: The Circle is one in everything but name. It's an extremely secluded community that emphasizes the familial bond between its members, has a wide-spread campus on which it is entirely possible to live, members leaving the Circle's ground and/or spending time by themselves or with non-Circle members is not forbidden per sé, but heavily frowned upon and discouraged and every 'Circler' (Mae included) shows a nigh fanatical devotion to the Circle itself and its leaders, the Three Wise Men.
- Despair Event Horizon: Annie suffers one when she learns about her family history, and does not recover.
- Downer Ending: After a brief Hope Spot at the end of Book II, Book III starts with the revelation that Mae betrayed Ty by outing him to the world and the other two Wise Men, leading to him being excluded from the company and confined on the campus grounds. The book ends with The Circle complete, with no one left to stop it from spreading its influence across the world and Mae thinking about a way to make even thoughts transparent.
- Driven to Suicide: A possible interpretation of how Annie ends up comatose at the end of the novel.
- Famous, Famous, Fictional: The list of companies taken over by the Circle begins with real tech companies before mentioning Alacrity, Zoopa, Jefe, and Quan.
- Frame-Up: It is heavily implied that, due to the large amounts of data it indexes and controls, the Circle is easily able to deal with those who resist its 'transparency' by digging up old dirt or outright framing them for various unforgivable crimes.
- Happiness Is Mandatory: In the Circle, any amount of negativity or negative emotions is seen as a bad thing.
- Hate Sink: Mae herself evolves into one over the course of the book. The ending pretty much spells it out for the reader what a horrible person she has become.
- Hospital Hottie: Dr. Villalobos, Mae's doctor at the Circle's on-campus clinic, is described as radiantly beautiful and becomes a popular fixture when Mae starts livestreaming her daily life.
- Hypocrite: Mae is all for the Circle's philosophy of complete transparency and vigorously defends it against any nay-sayers. But in Book I alone there are at least two times where she becomes an involuntary victim of it and reacts with horror and disgust. One is when Francis chooses her for the LuvLuv-presentation without asking and the other is when he records her giving him an orgasm without her consent. Mae is furious about both and even begs Annie to help her take down the video.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: It becomes evident the longer the story goes that Mae considers herself automatically superior because she's part of the Circle. However, whenever a higher-ranking Circler chastises her even a little bit, she falls into an emotional crisis and mentally beats herself up for being 'selfish' and not valuing the Circle enough.
- Known Only by Their Nickname: Mae's actual first name is Maebelline.
- Lack of Empathy: Mae develops this over time. It arguably reaches its height when she shares a chandelier Mercer made on her social media without him knowing or approving and then gets mad and confused when he's understandably upset over it.
- MegaCorp: The Circle is explicitly described as having taken over today's major tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
- Nice Mean And In Between: The Three Wise Men who run the Circle. Eamon Bailey (Nice) is the folksy "Uncle Eamon" and public face of the Circle, Tom Stenton (Mean) is the self-proclaimed "Capitalist Prime" CEO, and founder Ty Gospodinov (In-Between) is the reclusive genius who designed the TruYou unified identity system that is the basis of the Circle's business but also recognizes that the Circle has gone too far and wants to stop Completion.
- Never My Fault: Mae never seems to acknowledge it when she hurts other people, intentional or otherwise, instead pushing the blame completely on whoever she upset for being just too sensitive. When Mercer ends up being chased over a cliff in his car because she decided to make him the subject of a new tracker-app out of petty vengeance, it briefly, keyword briefly, looks like she might finally break out of this mindset. Only for Eamon to pull her right back into it, by assuring her that what happened was entirely Mercer's fault for trying to run away.
- No Communities Were Harmed: The Circle campus is located in the fictional Bay Area city of San Vincenzo.
- Popularity Cycle: Lovable Alpha Bitch Annie brings self-confessed nobody Mae into The Circle. Mae grows annoyed with how often Annie is described as being 'the greatest'. However, when Annie starts to suffer from burnout due to her insanely long days, Mae moves up. The final nail in the coffin for this turnaround is when Annie tries to recapture her reputation by entering an invasive history project...which only proves that she was a descendant of slaveowners. This leads to her ultimately falling into a Convenient Coma, possibly having been Driven to Suicide, while Mae becomes one of The Circle's de facto leaders.
- Pride Before a Fall: Annie's arc. She begins as the most beloved employee of the Circle, before being replaced by Mae and going to increasingly desperate lengths to recover her position.
- Real Women Have Curves: Mae’s narration describes, how after finishing high school, her fave softened and curves appeared after gaining much needed weight.
- Spell My Name with a "The": The titular tech company is always referred to as "the Circle".
- Temporal Theme Naming: Buildings on the Circle campus are named after various historical eras.
- Unreliable Narrator: The entire book is written from Mae's point of view and as a devote Circler, she tends to dismiss or downright villainize anyone who speaks out against it. She later goes on to assume that everyone who criticizes her personally must merely be jealous of her position, going so far as to have a minor mental breakdown when she believes Annie doesn't respect her as a peer.
- Villain Protagonist: Mae slowly slips into being this over the course of the book, ending with her betrayal of Ty and her direct responsibility for the Circle's completion.
- Wacky Startup Workplace: Despite being the world's largest and most powerful technology company, the Circle still cultivates the appearance of this with its amenities, frequent employee socials, and on-site dorm housing.
