The roman novel called The Circle is a current topic book and the newest work from the popular author Dave Eggers. But is this book, which splits the critiques world a real dystopian masterpiece like 1984 or Brave new world? Let’s take a look in at the world of Mae Holland to find out if the anthems or the scorchers are right.
As mentioned before the book tells thea story about a young lady called Mae Holland who applies to for a new job at one of the famous companies in the the world known as The Circle. At her old working place she felt never overburdened nor insufficiently challenged, that is one of the reasons why Mae is deeply grateful about Annie’s recommendation of herself and describes her new working place as heaven. But soon the Circle reveals his native face and the place with all time clean places, an own gym, several perfect restaurants and nice people turns into an monopole which refuses every employee his one privacy by the help of the Circle’s inner and outer social media accounts. If Mae notices the dangerous of the ideas of her new heads of the business I will lleave that open.
The most important fact is that Dave Eggers picked up a very interesting and contemporary topic, which concerns everybody in the world. Even the people who hasn’t haven’t gotten an smartphone nor computer. In addiction the author built up an current world which appears as almost the same thansimilar to our world,. The only acceptation exception is the extremely need of social media tools. This makes the difference between the potential of the book and the actual story.
As good as Eggers intentions were he doesn’t implement it convincingly. At the beginning his writing style fits in to the situation, the reader is like Mae overwhelmed by the perfection and the unbelievable new impression of the company. Nevertheless the opinions about the topic surveillance split up in black and white. Every person, who is able to think logical and knows one or two things about the topic realisesrealizes that the authors makes himself comfortable to completely ignore the most important aspects of the grey zones… Only at the end it appears such an situation, but even in this case Eggers doesn’t let reflecting his own characters reflect their doings. As a reaction the reader gets the impression that the authors created most of the characters and dialogs just to underline his opinion of the black/ white world concerning surveillance.
That means Mea is incredibly one dimensional for a protagonist. She is naive, and later she became more and more egotistic and narcissistic because of the circle’s intrigues. She never ever questions anything or even cares about the opposite opinions of others. Mae can be defined as the black side of social media… A brainwashed zombie… The white side, the complete opposite is her ex-boyfriend Mercer, he refuses everything what is linked with the internet and social media. As you can see he is designed as the proper antagonist of Mae. His role is just to remember the reader how dangerous surveillance can be but hasn’t got any other treats. Especially at the end of the story the plot becomes more and more exaggerated and at one point I dropped off Eggers intention that the Circle or an other big company in our reality can be compared as a totalitarian system.
The writer should have more concentrated on the successful intentions and ideas in his story. Not everything is bad. For example there are more-dimensional characters in the Circle like Francis or Annie both represent an own topic of the surveillance, but in the so called grey zone (surveil kids because of the high criminal rate). They develop in the history and that causes more attention from the reader. He becomes more empathetic and the situations becomes more emotional which appeals to the reader as well written.
All in all this book is in the beginning a real an page turner, but not because of the unbelievable good designed characters or writing style. It is more about the curiosity for the introduced system. What will happen to the world? Is it possible to retrogressive the whole society? Due to that and the overexplaining of the intentions and ideas my by using simple metaphors and extreme appealing of the opinion about the topic I would recommend this book for youngsters, who haven’t read classic works yet like Animal Farm, 1984, or Brave new world.
And thanks again to Sternchen for correcting my revier, you’re helping me a lot.
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