The Circle: General Likes/Dislikes

What did you like or dislike about the book?

Hello! I hope I am at the right place for the book discussion.

I liked that the book was very readable. The author gave me a clear picture of the place Mae worked. The people seemed real enough to me.

I didn't like Mae. And the book scared me sleepless the first night after finishing it.

> 3 That's a very visceral reaction, Merryann, and you're definitely in the right place! I can't say it scared me to that point.

In general, I was not a huge fan. Many of the characters didn't seem like real people to me, and that made it hard for me to care/engage with their struggles.

That said, I can see certain companies on which The Circle might be based, and they (and the extent of what they know about me) are definitely scary.

#3 -- Oh, I agree, the campus was well-described, though some parts of it were a little weird or impractical. Multilevel glass dining area?

But I found it hard to like the characters, and I think Eggers does not write women well (or at least, he didn't write Mae as a woman well; I can't speak for women in his other books).

>5 foggidawn: I have to agree about Mae. She is far too docile to be as successful as she appeared to be.

I didn't read her as docile at all. I found her single-minded goal of succeeding in the company to be strong and admirable...for a while at the very beginning. I'm referring to the way she stuffed down her initial (normal) reactions of surprise that she wasn't performing well enough and rather than argue with her supervisors, just redoubled her efforts to do every single thing demanded of her both at work and off.

But while she could understand exactly what they wanted from her at work, she either couldn't or didn't care about what her parents and Mercer needed from her. Pretty soon I found her self-centered to the point of being nauseated by her. Why could she clearly see that SHE didn't like Francis invading her privacy, but she could NOT see that Mercer did not like her invading his privacy? Bleah!

There's plenty of things I did dislike about the book, and I'll most likely get to them at some point as we go along. Not to start off on the wrong side of the bed, I'll begin by listing some of my likes, which have some caveats:

1) Mae's backround well contrasted her job offer at the Circle. Then again, it really had to.

2) On occasion I picked up on symbolic and historical references which I though somewhat nuanced.

3) Eggers might have read a bit of Jean Paul Sartre, given some distinct existential breakdowns that Mae experiences in the book. I'll cite some examples if people get into this one here or elsewhere in the threads. I'm not a big fan of much of his work, but Sartre does delve into a few realistic concepts, particularly in his novels (and more specifically nausea); Eggers taps into some of the ones I like, so I tip my hat to him for that. I really regret he didn't expand on them. Mae's a flawed character, and is intended; her flaws just are not well executed.

So now that I have my likes out of the way....

I also disliked how, in all the discussion about making The Circle mandatory, no one ever talked about how they were going to mandate accounts for people who don't have computers or wrist watch computers or internet. And what about homeless people? And what about people whose jobs physically prohibit them from being on the computer all day like surgeons and chefs and factory workers?

I still don't really understand how The Circle was making so much money. Especially if they wanted everything to be open access, because sharing is caring, etc. Even advertizing seems to be against that mantra. Shouldn't they be sharing their users' attention for free?

There were just too many questions left unaddressed.

#9 -- Yes, the ending seemed kind of rushed, to me.

Sequel, do you think? Perhaps one in which Ty chooses a better champion to assist him, and we get the more traditional last-minute saving of the day that I so hoped for?

>11 Merryann: I think the ending was very traditional for a totalitarian cautionary tale. It's the same ending as 1984 and its contemporaries, for sure.

>12 norabelle414:

Agreed.

5: I think Eggers does not write women well
I haven’t read anything else by him (and after this book, doubt that I will), but yeah, seemed risky for a male author to present such an unpleasant female as the central character. Not so much because she was unpleasant, as that her internal life, such as it was, was so, well, as labwriter put it in the intro thread, “Does Eggers actually know any women?”

9: There were just too many questions left unaddressed.
Taking over the world is so easy. Everyone becomes civil (well, except for invasions of privacy) and compliant. Politicians are clamoring to get everyone registered to vote.

And do you want your politicians to be transparent? I don’t. Too much posturing.

I felt that Eggers wasn't so much trying to tell a story but rather paint a picture. The picture was of this society where all information should be available, secrets are lies, blah blah blah, etc. Sure, he was preaching, but I don't have any problem with a novel being socially conscious and preachy, *if* it also tells a compelling story along with it. He didn't really do that. His characters were by products (innocent bystanders) of his attempt to paint this picture. They only existed to illustrate his point. Whatever plot points he introduced, likewise. And his forced metaphors, don't get me started.

It was, simply put, the story of this woman who joins The Circle and gets brainwashed into completely drinking the Kool Aid (while the world sort of drinks along with her, and those who don't suffer the consequences).

He could have done so much more. As a portrait of a society leading into dystopia, it was compelling. Fascinating, even. But that's all he offered. As a story, it lacked any sort of believable dramatic arc or relatable (and dynamic) characters and that's where he lost me.

When I read a book, I like to get immersed in a good story. This one simply didn't go anywhere.

>14 qebo: I also felt that the main plot twist hinged on the idea that people don't vote because it is too hard to register to vote. Personally I think that's just not true. I know plenty of people who are registered to vote but do not vote. Most people I know who do not vote do so because they don't care about the election or they feel their voice doesn't matter or they don't think they have the time to go to a polling place. The Circle could solve many of these issues, it's true, but they only got to that conclusion through this idea that it is too hard to register to vote.

The longer I reflect on this, the more I think that Eggers had a good idea but implemented it poorly.

I liked the book more than most people seemed to. The concept was an old concept reworked, but it did give me food for thought and it was entertaining.

I didn't like most of the characters, but I can enjoy books in which I don't like the characters if they are interesting, and I did think Mae was interesting. I didn't like her at the beginning, but thought she was just insecure although also wanting to be a great achiever, even if it was through using her friends. By the end, she was just a nasty piece of work.

The book seems to underestimate the distaste of Americans for invasions of privacy. Witness the flak the NSA is currently receiving. Also, the tendency of Americans to get violent doesn't seem to be taken into account. In the real world, how long before Eamon Bailey, with his annoying Stuart Smalley shtik, gets punched in the throat?

i didn't mind this book at all. i had a number of 'yeah but…' moments throughout the read, but i managed to set them aside and just be entertained by the story. i had been led to believe it was going to be a really disturbing, keep me awake at night novel. but it wasn't those things for me. yes, it had me thinking a lot about my own social networking, and how little a regular person really knows about internet giants like Facebook or google, but i wasn't 'scared straight', so to speak. i was more taken by the cult aspect of it all and the hive mentality that existed to allow things to perpetrate to such an extensive/invasive level. (which may be an utterly naïve comment, i realize. heh!) i think i was weird in thinking the book was fun, rather than a deep, cautionary warning. i think that may be the opposite of what eggers was hoping to achieve. oops! :)

I enjoyed the book, although, after Loranne's stunned reaction, I have lowered my rating from 4.5 to 4 stars. But I'm wavering between them.

I think my enjoyment is related to how I read it--as a dystopic fantasy, not bad realism. The book is not believable, but neither are most dystopias. Nineteen Eighty-Four is not believable. Zamyatin's We isn't believable. The Hunger Games isn't believable--or for that matter, very good. The Circle's world is a world without countervailing forces—no privacy push-back, no Justice Department, no real competitors, etc. That said, I found the non-realism generally true--true in the way Nineteen Eighty-Four is, or rather was, true. And insofar as it was "true," it was also scary.

This difference of opinion puts me at odds with most of analyses above. I agree that, if you took it as straight realism, it wasn't very good at it. The real world won't get us to the Circle, just as the fulfillment of 1984 is a lot more Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not the full-scale, worldwide totalitarianism of Nineteen Eighty-Four, with all it's craziness, like editing old, forgotten newspaper articles for no good reason.

I disliked the book for not being quite true enough, and for a main character I didn't care enough about. Eggers had a hard trick. He needed a "down" ending, but he couldn't get there by force and domination, the way Orwell got Winston to his unfortunate end. Even so, I think we could have cared more about Mae. She could have had a peripety toward evil, not being basically a nothing who ends up fully siding with the bad guys.

I didn't mind the writing. It worked rather well in audiobook, where the banality of so much of the dialogue ("Does that work for you?" "Yes it does!") highlights the banality of the characters. But Eggers didn't often show me things I hadn't seen before, or often said but never so well expressed.

I still don't really understand how The Circle was making so much money. Especially if they wanted everything to be open access, because sharing is caring, etc. Even advertizing seems to be against that mantra. Shouldn't they be sharing their users' attention for free?

It's getting a cut of your purchases. But more generally, once you have that kind of control, you can monetize in a million ways. For example, the companies that give out the free products—that is, the Circle's version of Amazon Vine—presumably pay for the access.

>9 norabelle414: "I still don't really understand how The Circle was making so much money."

And what about the poor musicians that perform at the Circle campus? The Circle doesn't pay them, and they can't make up for it on music sales, because in a Circle-dominated world, data has to be free.

>16 norabelle414: >14 qebo: I also felt that the main plot twist hinged on the idea that people don't vote because it is too hard to register to vote.

It always seems strange to me when reading about how the voting system works, or doesn't, in the USA.
In The Netherlands everybody is registered to vote when they turn 18. You automatically get a letter in the mail when there is an election, and you have to bring that with you when you vote. You also have to bring your ID with you, which can be a passport, an ID-card or a driver's license.
Since 2005 you're also required to show an ID to an officer of the law when so requested (not willy nilly, there has to be a decent reason for them to do so). It's not actually required to carry one with you, but you have to show it, and if you can't you may get a fine.

For a long time the idea of having your ID with you at all times was unthinkable. It invoked too many memories of WWII. I don't really understand why this law has come about. 9/11 Probably played a part in this.

Regardless, the main thing I don't understand is the way the USA needs people to register before they can vote, and stranger maybe that they have to register with a political affiliation. With gerrymandering as a result, if I understand correctly.

I disliked Mae because her motivation was purely external. All she cared about was what others thought of her and she worked very hard to make sure all of her stats are as high as she could get them so everyone would think highly of her. I can't think of any time she thought about the impact her company had on the world. Even when the Circle imposed itself on her parents, she never really considered the ramifications of the world being in her parent's house without their permission.

Cory Doctorow wrote an amazing YA book called Little Brother which I thought dealt with the thin line between national security and personal privacy much more realistically, IMHO.

I felt really annoyed when I read about the business of rating each customer contact. I would probably drop my rating if I was given a second survey. Just ornery that way, I guess.

And I agree with everyone who commented on Eggers difficulty with writing a female character.

>14 qebo: I think that there are examples of some of our politicians exposing themselves to one degree or another that has left us gagging.

Would it have killed Eggers to try and talk to a marine biologist? There is an excellent aquarium not too far from his home that would have been happy to answer his questions. Or was he too hell bent on having those scenes in the book?

re: #21 timspalding

"I read it--as a dystopic fantasy, not bad realism."

exactly my experience, and i had a great time!

I liked it too. It was very much a book with a message, and it wasn't subtle about that message, but for a kind of muckraking dystopia, I thought it was both thought-provoking and entertaining.

How in the heck are any of these companies making money? That's what more people should be asking. There's a big difference between open access and encouraging people to post personal information online so that they can become part of a giant product - a massive mount of mineable data.

I found the way Eggers portrayed the benevolence of the Circle particularly well-done (and creepy). It was understandable why people would want to work there and would count themselves fortunate to have that opportunity, even though it was like middle school on crack. The way that everyone was simultaneously terrified of being outside the circle (where life isn't too nice) but also constantly looking for approval and acceptance and affirmation and accrual of points that are metrics of their worth - that was such an apt reflection of the way that Facebook and other companies that treat users as their product dole out rewards and keep people addicted to those small crumbs of affirmation.

#9 - I also wondered about the (many) people who are not online. I think in this particular dystopian world (and one might argue in our economy, which is so dependent on digital transactions and data-mining) those people simply don't count.

As for people who have actual jobs to do, that's another one of Egger's points, I think - this is a society in which people work frantically at things that produce nothing of any value.

The people who lived out in the bay on a barge were the kind of people who the Circle has no interest in and no time for. I think they were there to remind us that even in a highly wired, busy, connected world. some people opt out and don't miss it at all and in fact experience things that everyone else is busily missing.

I posted some words, then saw they should have gone under the 'characters' subject, so I'm going to cut and paste them to move them. That left me this empty box that won't close until I put some words in it, so here you go:

Have a lovely day, everyone!

One thing I expected to bother me but didn't was the unresearched technology aspect. I think it's because, for the most part, it was rather vague, and I didn't have trouble with suspension of disbelief. Some of the other oddities, discussed in a different thread, did bother me to a degree.

Yeah, by and large he wasn't bullshitting. ( Canonical "It's a Unix system. I know this" reference? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng ). It's hard to see how SeeChange could possible work on the scale the novel requires. But he doesn't make up an explanation for it.

I rather dislike the notion that Egger's has "difficulty with writing a female character." Do his male characters all seem well drawn and his female ones poorly? Can't we merely ascribe it to the fact that Mae is blank, weak and annoying—and necessarily so!?

27–29

Great to see you here, Barbara.

I agree about the corporate culture part. Forced socialization is a big part of social tech culture. For example, LibraryThing made its staff read this book. Okay, we made it "semi-mandatory." Also, @Lorannen refused to join my Portugal club.

33: I rather dislike the notion that Egger's has "difficulty with writing a female character."
Yeah, me too, why I said "risky" -- I'm disinclined to read another book of his for more data points.

I'm unconvinced of "necessarily so"... Elaborate?

I think he needed to end on a dystopian note. Nineteen Eighty-Four ends with Winston loving Big Brother, The Circle had to end with Mae loving the Circle, as it were. But, although a small amount of force is presumed--Annie's collapse--Eggers' overall message was domination without explicit force. So he couldn't have Mae win, and he couldn't have her killed or tortured. With those parameters, she can't undergo a true transformation--he acquiescence needs to be believable. Ergo, she had to be something a twit to begin with! :)

36: I dunno. If you have to start out as a twit to succumb, it seems not so much of a dystopia.

It's a structural problem. She has to be a blank--insecure, inexperienced and fearful. It's a structural problem. You really care about Winston. You root for him, even if you know he's gonna get it in the end. You don't really root for Mae.

38: Yup. As a consequence of this discussion, I've begun 1984.

#34 -- "Also, Lorannen refused to join my Portugal club." -- Ouch. I bet that dropped her staff rating by several points.

But seriously, going back to #33 and the question about writing women well, way back in post #5 I tempered that statement by saying that I don't know about women in any of his other books, so maybe it is just an issue with how Mae is written. My problem with her is not that she's vapid and insecure, it's how she deals with relationships -- both romantic and friendships. It just doesn't ring true to me. Maybe this was intentional, trying to show that she can't even function in relationships like a normal person. And it's hard to say if the men in the book are better written than Mae, since the focus is so much on her that there are necessarily going to be gaps in all of the other characters because we see them through a kind of Mae filter.

>36 timspalding: I can see your point, but I'm still not joining your Portugal club. Nor am I going to give him a pass for writing entirely uninteresting characters across the board.

>19 cpg:

On the other hand, we have all those sheeple that participated in this. Yikes!

>42 cpg: Milgram / Stanford anyone?

re: #33 - timspalding

hi tim. i am with you on this one; i didn't have any trouble with how he wrote any of the characters, male or female.

i am wondering if, because people aren't really loving, feeling connected to, or compelled by the characters - and mae , in particular - the assertion that eggers didn't write women well is the result?

while reading the book, i could think of people, in real life, who were very much like the characters in the book.

>44 JuniperD:

Right. I'm afraid this arises from the idea that you need to like the characters in a novel in order to enjoy it.

Yes. Also, the book presented a future that could easily happen in my lifetime, and is very scary. So, immediately upon finishing The Circle, I began picking it apart. I fervently WANT the book to be full of errors, to have non-realistic characters, and scenes that I can discount for one reason or another, because I am afraid of that future and feel powerless to stop its coming.

45: I'm afraid this arises from the idea that you need to like the characters in a novel in order to enjoy it.
I’m afraid this seems a tad condescending.

I’m not convinced that people here who have criticized the novel were seeking to “enjoy” it.

And I enjoyed it somewhat, despite finding things in it to criticize.

I enjoyed it! I didn't like Mae and had some issues with the technical side of things but I would definitely recommend it to others.

I think that it is not so much about 'liking' the characters as it is about engaging with some of them. If the characters do not engage the reader then they are little more than ants: of interest only for their collective patterns of behaviour. In this case the collective patterns of behaviour are only of passing interest to me.

This is interesting. I generally don't have to find the characters likeable so much as that I need to think the author found them in some way likeable, or at least wasn't condescending to them or using them merely as embodiments of things we should despise. (I sometimes find Carl Hiassen's characters to fall into that category - oh, look at this stupid human being! - whereas Elmore Leonard could make the stupidest of human beings still weirdly sympathatic. In some ways he believed enough in his characters, however lame they were, to breath life into them.)

I never felt Eggers was viewing his characters as chess pieces or even as uninteresting, boring, silly human beings who could serve as a warning to us. I felt bad when Mae stopped kayaking. I felt bad when Mae got caught up in playing the role the Wise Men wanted her to play. I think the key was "felt" - she was human enough to me (and I felt Eggers had enough feeling for her) that it mattered. So I can see how, if I didn't connect at all to Mae and her situations, I might not have enjoyed the book.

But I did enjoy it - both in the sense of simply having a good time while reading it, but also as a book that made me think and feel.

As someone who is particularly averse to multitasking, I thought that too much of the book's premise relied on everybody actually hyper-multitasking and everybody buying in that this was feasible & desirable (i.e. P184 Josiah "visibly shaken" that Mae hadn't been reading his WNBA feed).

Eggers posited occasion after occasion where some additional process was tucked in - new screen, new thread for Mae to track. But after taking five pages or so to describe what each new task looked like and what Mae had to to to come to grips with it, he again and again tells us she mastered it and successfully tucked it in with the other things she had to do.

For me, thus went past mere suspension of disbelief. Somewhere around page 200, I thought the book ought to have ended with "and Mae spent the rest of her life at her desk..."

One of things that bothered me is that each time Mae got a new task, she got a new screen. She was up to what? 7? 8? It wasn't a big enough problem to take away from my enjoyment of the book, but it is one of the little things that stuck in my mind.

I found the extreme multitasking pretty improbable, but had to just let that go for the sake of the story.

>53 TooBusyReading: The number of screens was one of the technical issues that bothered me, too. That's not the way I would solve the problem.

I have a friend who keeps dozens of tabs open on her browser. I have no idea why!

Um, I presently only have 22 tabs open on my browser, and that's only because my laptop was acting up more than usual the other day and I was worried it might decide to suicide itself, so I went through making sure I had any links I'd still need and closing out the tabs. Normally I have 30-45.

suicide itself? Isn't that redundant?

tabs for later reading, tabs for stuff that's always open (mail, calendar, LT, some other forums. (pinned so they take up less space in the tabs)). That's why.
This is independent of working on combining or other stuff on LT, or when browsing pix on some sites, or on doing genealogy, where I open a new window and fill those with tabs. I can certainly understand the usefulness of multiple screens for different tasks, but after 5 it became a bit ridiculous, certainly.

It would be nice to have a system where you could tab the screen, and the keyboard and mouse would know that was your focus, and you could work that. And also have it respond by touch, to scroll for example.

6 tablets in front of you, I could work with that.

In (most? all?) Linux distros you can have multiple "desktops," however many you want I'm pretty sure. I normally keep just two; one for my normal always-up stuff and another one to shift over to for when I use GIMP or something like that where I want the clean space.

I really enjoyed the book, even if at times it made me so uncomfortable I had to put it down for a few minutes. I didn't read it as reality, it came across to me almost as a prequel to 1984, sort of a "this is how you get there". I didn't find any of the characters particularly likeable, but I think that was sort of the point. That is the sort of people that would need to populate a reality that would let the Circle happen. Mae has a great tear inside of her that she tries to fill with external validation instead of inner fortitude or sense of self. I liked that every kernel of privacy that was eroded had just a little bit of noble in it. Who wouldn't want to prevent child abduction, or prevent crime or preserve knowledge?

One part that drove me a little crazy was the customer response surveys. I thought the initial satisfaction, universally in the high 90's, was a little unrealistic and the fact that follow-ups always raised the rating even more so. However, the fact that everyone is constantly watching what you do and reacting to it in real time makes a certain sort of internal logic to why you would always rate positively.

Certain writers have a skill at making their work compulsively readable that I can't really define. Eggers pulled me along consistently throughout the book. If it hadn't been for time constraints, I would have finished this in one or two sittings, so I have to give him high marks for the writing skill. The only thing it really lacked was a stronger emotional connection to anyone or anything. Mae's decision at the end could have had a bigger impact if there was a bigger sense of betrayal, but it was really the only way to end the book.

Thanks, PolymathicMonkey - I think I'd feel overwhelmed with so many options. I'm distracted enough as it is!

I thought that too much of the book's premise relied on everybody actually hyper-multitasking and everybody buying in that this was feasible & desirable

I thought the mounting collection of screens was pretty funny.

It's true that technologists like their screens. In my experience, however, the people who use them effectively do not devote any of them to scrolling mind candy…

One of things that bothered me is that each time Mae got a new task, she got a new screen. She

See, I found that hysterical!

I enjoyed the book, as much as Upton Sinclair Jungle. The loss of privacy became more and more apparent. Like Sinclair I thought it could'nt get worse until I read more. After reading Island of Privacy by sociologist Christena Nipper-Eng a work written before the advent of smart phones and many other cyber/cloud devices, I have been concerned with privacy I my life. Yes I'm on Facebook and Fourquare, but I also can stop at anytime. In Circle as Mae comes further and further in, backing out in no longer an option. I had the same viseral feeling and compelling to read feeling read Circle as reading The Jungle. Eggar's writing was spot on and a good read, the premise however was frightening.

> 53, 61 My issue with this is that it seemed so RIDICULOUS, like the book was lampooning itself, which didn't fit with the rest of the tone of the story for me. It was just SO absurd. And I don't think much in the rest of the book is designed to be quite as outlandish. Except maybe the whole rating Francis' "performance" business.

>63 lorannen: Yes, that's it; thank you -- it seemed inconsistently ridiculous, and didn't maintain the world it tried to build.

I enjoyed the book and found myself wondering about the transparency of Bailey and Stanton. They obviously had intense hidden agendas while advocating world-wide openness. It made me think of Animal Farm -"all animals are equal, some are more equal than others".

I also found myself giggling when I stopped reading to answer a text, e-mail or check LT or Facebook.

I was never sucked in that the story was completely believable, but I found it a great cautionary tale.

I experienced a sort of unpleasant vertigo whenever I moved from the book to social media. It all seemed so pointless and malign.

Just saw a bit about press freedom in turkey, where someone created a twit-something to put on top of their twitter avatar, to show they support press freedom in Turkey...

Do social media campaigns like this work? Or is it just the rare example that works, while 99% don't change a thing, and people move on to the next cause after a week or 2... ?

Right.

Clay Shirky makes a good case that trivial technologies here end up being hugely powerful in low-freedom contexts. The Egyptian revolution* was a good example of that. I'm not so sure about Turkey. But it needs to involve more than changing your avatar either way, as the Egyptian revolution certainly did. And I doubt that a non-Turk having a press-freedom thingy makes any sort of difference.

*The Egyptian revolution also shows that a lot of good will does not cure what ails a country. Egypt is tearing itself apart right now. It's worth asking whether social media didn't contribute to that.

I started out liking the book and it certainly made me think about who "knows" me based on the books I buy, the food I purchase, medications etc. What I didn't like was how 1-dimensional Mae was. People she really cares/cared about are falling apart all around her and she doesn't stop to question anything. What happened to Annie, Ty and Mercer and her parents? Is it believable that she doesn't have a single moment of doubt? I can like a novel in which the characters are unlikable, but there has to be some kind of growth or trauma that molds them into the creatures they become.

I agree with an earlier poster who speculated this might be the beginning of a series. Mae somehow has to realize the consequences of her actions. For example, her role in Mercer's death. I need her to grow, to think about something.

There are people like Mae who do not recognize the consequences of their actions, or misinterpret them. With Mercer, I think that Mae thought everything would have been okay if only he had willingly "got with the program." I don't think she was capable of seeing beyond that.

I do think that, while there was not what I'd consider to be growth, the story did mold her into the creature she became. At the beginning she was just another fairly naive 20-something who wanted a good job and the prestige that came with it. Then she started buying into all the Circle stood for.

If it had been a different author, I could see this being the first of a series, but I think Eggers is done with it and will move on to something entirely different. My reasoning for that line of thought? Absolutely nothing.

I think you are correct about this not being a series. That is just my desire to have everything "come out right".

I feel like the point about whether Mae was too dumb for this to be a dystopia wasn't satisfactorily addressed. From messages 36-38:

So he couldn't have Mae win, and he couldn't have her killed or tortured. With those parameters, she can't undergo a true transformation--he acquiescence needs to be believable. Ergo, she had to be something a twit to begin with! :)

I dunno. If you have to start out as a twit to succumb, it seems not so much of a dystopia.

It's a structural problem. She has to be a blank--insecure, inexperienced and fearful. It's a structural problem. You really care about Winston. You root for him, even if you know he's gonna get it in the end. You don't really root for Mae.

I don't see how the point about the structural problem really deals with qebo's criticism. Structural problems aren't scary; structural problems don't carry the threat that this situation could arise in the real world if we aren't careful. The frightening part of a dystopia is seeing that normal people who make decisions that seem reasonable at the time could end up with something that's actually awful. If the dystopia can only come about when everyone is like Mae, then we don't really need to worry about it.

There were lots of points when Mae had the opportunity to listen to a dissenting view and be persuaded by it, to analyze things critically and still decide that what the Circle was doing was for the best. When Bailey initially asks whether she can think of any situations when privacy would be desirable, she's very quick to say "nope" even while actually thinking of such a situation. He could have persuaded her that the trade-offs were worthwhile, without needing her to blindly accept that privacy is totally superfluous. Similarly, when Mercer or Mae's parents or Annie objects to the lack of privacy, Mae could have listened, seen their point of view at least partially, and still decided that the Circle's route was better because of the benefits it offered. But immediately accepting everything offered by the Circle, and immediately rejecting any sort of dissenting view, just didn't come across as realistic at all. And if we have a dystopia that only comes to pass when the people in today's world are completely clueless, then it loses most of its power as a dystopia.

I totally agree

@Merryann wrote,

>7 Merryann: Why could she clearly see that SHE didn't like Francis invading her privacy, but she could NOT see that Mercer did not like her invading his privacy? Bleah!

I had the same feelings as @Merryann.

But to be a bit more generous to Eggers, I think what he was trying to do is describe what it's like when someone "drinks the cool-aid." Her fight to maintain her criticism, truly her freedom, is represented by the "dark tear" which overcomes her intermittently, which she can only quiet by going back to Customer Experience and plugging herself in totally. She has been taken in by Baily, one of the wise men, who presents his arguments in Utopian fashion. And she is vulnerable. So I think I get what Eggers is trying to do; the loss of herself, her ability to see what is going on, was something that evolved, and solved an existential problem for her.

That said, I don't think Eggers succeeded at making it believable.

@bfister wrote,

I found the way Eggers portrayed the benevolence of the Circle particularly well-done (and creepy). It was understandable why people would want to work there and would count themselves fortunate to have that opportunity, even though it was like middle school on crack. The way that everyone was simultaneously terrified of being outside the circle (where life isn't too nice) but also constantly looking for approval and acceptance and affirmation and accrual of points that are metrics of their worth - that was such an apt reflection of the way that Facebook and other companies that treat users as their product dole out rewards and keep people addicted to those small crumbs of affirmation.

I totally agree. It really made me want to reflect on my own cravings for "likes" on Facebook.