Q1 Journal 1

The first time I read this quarter for pleasure, I began The Circle by Dave Eggers.  I read about seventy pages in around the first two hours, though I’m not sure exactly how much time it took because I stopped checking the time after immersing myself into the book.  The story first introduces the reader to the protagonist, Mae, a new worker at a company called the Circle who had a college roommate named Annie who already worked there.  Mae is simply a woman who had previously graduated from college and could not find work in anywhere except a utility place.  She seems to represent every one of us, the common people, though her new job gives her great opportunity and promise.  She and the reader are dazzled by how perfect the campus of this company seems, though the perfection, as I predicted as I read, probably implies that something will go terribly wrong in the future.  As Mae tours the campus, Annie plays friendly pranks on her from afar by showing embarrassing pictures of Mae on a big screen and by making a fake workspace for her lined ugly burlap.  Eggers puts the plot on hold for a few pages to reveal a flashback of Mae’s unpleasant experiences at her old job until Annie shows up, apologizes, and takes her around more of the campus.  I was shocked that Annie could have been able to find her high school yearbook picture and perfectly replicate Mae’s old workspace even though they only met in college.  As Annie tours Mae around the office of Bailey, one of the three Wise Men who run the Circle, she explains the history of the company probably more for our benefit than Mae’s.  Again, Eggers halts the plot, but he does this to give more information about the Circle.  It is interesting to see that the three men who run the place are called the Wise Men because it alludes to the Wise Men who were very knowledgeable about the stars and who brought gifts to the baby Jesus.  These men were probably called the Wise Men because they were geniuses and because their work was done to bear “gifts” to the public.  As I read, I learned that the Circle started with an invention called TruYou, a system that merges all of a person’s accounts into one and removes anonymity in the Internet, making everyone accountable for his or her actions online.  Though this has many benefits and I identify with the system’s purpose, I can see flaws in it.  I can think of many ways that multiple accounts could help people, such as when collaborating on something without the powers of editing another person’s posts, and I would be hesitant to give up all of my privacy whenever I post online.  Later that night, Mae attends a party on the campus where she meets a man named Francis, whom I assume would be her love interest throughout the story.  He is currently working on an invention called ChildTrack that shows the location of children at any point in time in order to prevent abductions.  Again, I see problems with this because parents can see their kids’ locations at any time, not just when the children are in danger.  I can see how people could abuse it by following their children’s every move. 

The next day, Mae starts her real work in the Customer Experience department, where we find that she is very good at her job from the start.  I like that the Circle values making their workers sound human as they do their jobs because I would hate asking questions to a robot.  Next, the workers attend a presentation in which Wise Man Bailey introduces a new product, SeeChange, which is basically a tiny hidden camera that can be used to track everything in an area without others noticing.  He makes an adage for this camera:  “All that happens must be known.”  Everyone in that audience is astounded, but I felt a little scared as I read that.  With all of these inventions, the Circle is gradually taking away our right to privacy, and the audience, which represents the public as a whole buys into these ideas.  This is the first clear warning that Eggers is trying to make a point about all of us being a mob that willingly gives up privacy for the sake of security.  This idea seems like it will become a main theme in the novel.  When I ended with that section, I could not wait to find even more time to read and to see how the story develops from there.