Previous Next

Book II, Part 2

Summary: Book II, Part 2 

Back at the Circle, Mae experiences a panic attack where she starts to feel a tear inside her and “a million souls” screaming. Desperate to connect with someone, Mae visits Francis. Francis tells her about a fantasy he has about a sexy housewife, and they role-play before having sex. Francis asks her to rate him on a scale of 1 to 100, which Mae finds distasteful. After badgering her, Mae relents and gives him a 100. Bailey holds a meeting to introduce a new concept of using Circle accounts to encourage voter participation. Mae suggests taking the idea one step further by requiring all people of voting age to have a Circle account. Jealous, Annie challenges Mae’s idea, but Bailey and Stenton suppress her. The discussion turns to how Circle profiles could be frozen to penalize those who don’t vote, and how profiles could be used to administer government systems, like taxes. Stenton wonders whether Congress is needed at all since the will of the people could be known immediately through Circle’s systems.

Mae gains celebrity within the Circle and beyond for her revolutionary idea. The Circle begins developing a prototype of Mae’s idea called “Demoxie,” a play on the word democracy. Demoxie requires users to answer questions and freezes their accounts if they don’t answer. Mae is amazed at how quickly her ideas are coming to life. Mae finally picks up Kalden’s call. He tells her that her idea is what Bailey and Stenton have wanted all along, Completion, a form of tyrannical monopoly. Mae feels confused and hangs up. Later, during a demonstration of Demoxie, a series of questions are flashed across campus, one of which asks employees to vote on whether Mae is awesome. Ninety-seven percent flash a smiley face, and three percent answer with a frown. This sends Mae into a tailspin, wondering who the three percent is and whether they want to kill her. Francis tells Mae that if she’s so bothered about the three percent, she should just track them through the Circle. Francis tries to show her how, but she freaks out. Mae runs into Annie, who tells her she’s volunteered to be the first person to try out PastPerfect. Mae despairs over how Annie’s socioeconomic status will always give her an advantage. At a regular session where Circle hopefuls pitch their ideas, Mae hears about a tracking system that gives criminals colors by the crimes they’ve committed and even tracks movements inside people’s homes to catch instances of domestic violence.

Analysis: Book II, Part 2

Book II, Part 2 leads up to the climax of the book, when Mae inadvertently casts her hand in helping the Circle reach Completion. Mae’s been at the Circle for months, and her going transparent has given her a newfound sense of confidence. She’s now an official representative of the Circle whose opinions, actions, and endorsements can influence the masses. Mae now feels freer and more confident to offer her ideas. She’s become a perfect expression of the “Passion, Participation, and Transparency” which is written all over the Circle walls.

When Mae offers the idea of making a Circle account mandatory for those of voting age, the idea catches fire. Annie attempts to criticize Mae, but she’s quickly stifled by Bailey and Stenton. The force and power Mae displays here is, ironically, somewhat lost for the reader, since she has so clearly been primed and led to the idea by Bailey and Stenton and her experiences at the Circle at large. In reality, she’s just a mouthpiece for the propaganda that the Circle has inculcated in her. Nevertheless, Mae gains a surge of confidence that buoys her for some time.

Mae’s life is so intertwined with the Circle at this point that even her face-to-face relationships now solely take place within its walls. Her relationship with Francis, who never fully satisfies her emotionally or sexually, is her only substantial friendship now that her friendship with Annie has become more strained. Mae’s relationship with Francis is based on mutual necessity and isolation rather than choice. His lack of family will eventually mirror Mae’s estrangement from her own family, dislocating her further and further from the necessary bonds that keep a person’s psychology healthy and in balance.

Furthermore, Francis’s insistence that Mae rate his sexual performance shows how superficial their relationship is, and how human interactions are reduced to quantifiable encounters in a rating-obsessed world like the Circle. Even though Mae finds giving a rating distasteful, she concedes, as Francis is currently the only person available to her sexually and emotionally. This shows how easily Mae’s given over to the life of a Circler and made her life a commodity.

Eggers makes another overt comparison to the Circle’s cult-like status when the eccentric stranger brands Mae a god for her Demoxie idea. When she and Francis are outside, the man comes up to them and traces a ring around Mae’s head like a halo, proclaiming she’s found a way to save everyone’s souls. It’s not clear whether the man is mentally ill or not, but the encounter draws a clear line between the Demoxie idea and religious dogma.

Previous section Book II, Part 1 Next section Book II, Part 3

Take a Study Break