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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Identity

One of the key features of Mae as a character is her quest for identity. She wants to be seen and heard, just like any other young person. The Circle is in part a coming-of-age story, and Mae’s journey from college to the working world is a common one in America. For any young person under the age of twenty-five, identity is often still largely being formed, and a job is often a first “marker.” Unlike Annie, Mae is often unsure of herself and lacks confidence. When Mercer insults her, it sends her reeling, and when she’s praised, like when her mother refers to her as their savior for putting the family on the company’s health insurance plan, Mae feels ecstatic. Other people can influence her as well. Mae often wrestles with questions of morality and feels unsure of where she stands when people like Bailey or her boss, Dan, question her. One of the key reasons Mae falls prey to the Circle’s plans to extinguish human privacy is because of added attention she receives in her job. It is intoxicating, indicating how technology and the attention it provides can be enticing for youth and their search for identity. 

Merging of Government and Technology

At the beginning of the novel, the Circle is hailed as having swallowed up Facebook, Google, and other tech giants to become the giant in network technology. Ty’s invention, TruYou, which sets the Circle on the map, originally aimed at streamlining users’ accounts into one online presence, or persona. Under Stenton’s and Bailey’s guidance, the Circle catapults to power, and becomes extremely influential in directing public opinion, having cornered the market on social interfacing. The power is so great that it subsumes any political power that Washington has. It becomes an open secret that the Circle frames any politicians who oppose them, and members of Congress quickly fall in line with Circle’s transparency agenda, which erases all their privacy. 

The Circle’s “Demoxie” system, one of the last steps in completing the Circle, is a big step in merging politics and technology, for all public voting would be administered by the Circle. It also points to the Circle’s larger agenda—to control all data on the web. Egger is clearly outlining the dangers technology companies pose to governments. When tech companies begin to direct politics, and vice versa, the public’s rights to privacy become threatened, among a host of other issues caused by any totalitarian entity that knows, organizes, and administers all information on the web. 

Meaningful Relationships

Throughout the novel, Mae’s relationships get further and further strained. At the beginning of the novel, Mae recalls how Annie took care of her when she broke her jaw in college, and how Annie’s round-the-clock care cemented their close bond. By the end of the novel, she and Annie are at odds over Mae’s constant web presence, and they can no longer have authentic conversations because Mae is being recorded all the time. Mae’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend Mercer, who loathes social media, becomes completely toxic, and she ends up driving him to suicide by chasing him with cameras during a company demonstration. Tragically, she and her parents no longer speak by the end of the novel, after they’ve become completely alienated by Mae, who can’t understand their resistance to comply with the Circle’s rules to film them at home. The only in-person relationship Mae can sustain is the one with Francis, who can never seem to be in sync with Mae sexually. The novel suggests that technology can create huge wedges in human interaction by replacing real face-to-face interaction with online personas. Mae is no longer able to maintain healthy, authentic relationships because her entire existence is mediating through her webcam, phone, and computer.

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