The Circle Book II, Part 3 Summary & Analysis

Book II, Part 3

Summary: Book II, Part 3

Annie and Mae meet again in the bathroom. Annie explains that PastPerfect has discovered that her family was slave owners and she’s frantic about what the public will think of her. The incident inspires Mercer to send Mae a letter, urging Annie to stop participating in the program. He also reveals he’s going to go off-grid because he’s scared of where things are heading. Annie learns more scandalous news about her family. Old surveillance video has surfaced of her mother and father sitting drunk on a pier one night witnessing a man drowning and doing nothing about it. Annie breaks down in tears, disgusted by her parents’ apathy and neglect. Annie starts to question the Circle’s mantra that all information should be known, but Mae counters that her viewers will forgive her and show her compassion and to have faith. Annie, unable to cope, suffers a nervous breakdown.

Mae gives a Circle presentation on a new technology called SoulSearch which will promote live crowdsourcing to hunt fugitive criminals. She demonstrates this by selecting a random fugitive’s photo and posting it live to the Circle’s social media networks asking for the public’s help to locate the criminal. Mae is astounded when the fugitive is found and arrested within minutes. Mae decides to try out the technology on Mercer, who’s been avoiding her. When Mercer realizes he’s being pursued, he tries to escape in his truck. A follower places a SeeChange camera on Mercer’s truck, but Mercer swats it away. Mae sends drones after him. Watchers look on as surges off a cliff in his truck, killing himself. Everyone watches in shock and horror.

Mae begins to feel the tear inside her again. Bailey tries to console her. He invites her to go to watch another feeding of Stenton’s transparent shark, where they bump into Kalden, who Bailey introduces as Ty, founder of the Circle. Mae is horrified. Ty hands her a note to meet him underground. She scolds Ty for misleading her, but he insists he’s been hiding his identity to protect her. Ty warns Mae that there will be more Mercers if the Circle gains full control of public life. Mae counters that everything should be known and seen because it makes people significant. He implores her to read a note to her viewers denouncing the Circle’s missions and asks her to run away with him across the world.

Analysis: Book II, Part 3

The final climax of the novel occurs when Mae drives Mercer to suicide and Annie suffers a nervous breakdown after Mae betrays her privacy. At this point in the novel, Mae has now been completely subsumed within the Circle’s ideological framework and she struggles to delineate what’s right and wrong for herself, outside of the Circle’s missions. Her role in Mercer’s death and Annie’s breakdown is unclear to even her, which muddies her role as either protagonist or antagonist, as she could be both.

Unlike Mae, Annie’s experiences with PastPerfect make her seriously question the Circle’s aims for full transparency and eventual Completion. Mae has suffered moments of having her privacy invaded, when her intimate moments with Francis are recorded and made public, and when she inadvertently makes her parents’ private moments public, and Bailey refuses to delete the video. Each time, despite her protests, Mae has complied with the consequences, never giving them much contest. Annie’s uncovering of her family’s past has shaken her and her opinion of her parents to the core. Annie questions whether making everything known is right and seems to be willing to leave the Circle over it. Annie relies on the Circle much less for her personal and professional relevance as it hasn’t been responsible for creating her identity as it has with Mae. For this reason, the Circle’s influence on Mae is deeper and more intransigent.

Mae believes she’s doing the right thing when she enlists the help of Annie’s “fans” and her own to curry support for Annie. Like Bailey, she has an evangelical-like belief and faith in humanity’s capacity for compassion. Her insistence on uncovering Annie’s shame comes off as grotesque, however, and at odds with a sense of human decency. This underscores the short-sightedness of certain progressive ideals, especially when they’re taken too far.

Even worse, Mae drives Mercer to suicide when she hounds him with the Circle drones as part of her SoulSearch demonstration. Again, Mae is completely blind to herself and believes what she’s doing is right. She wants to win Mercer over to the power of the program to capture criminals and “clean up” the world. Mae also wants to prove to Mercer that she has power herself, showing the corruption inherent in her nature and susceptibility to importance and power. Mercer’s death draws complicated boundaries around who gets to proclaim what’s good and what’s not for humanity.

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