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Eamon Bailey
Francis Garaventa is a Circle employee who dates Mae Holland on and off for most of the book. Francis could also be considered Eggers’s portrait of (or, if you prefer, his nasty caricature of) the typical Bay Area “tech nerd”—even his first name suggests his symbolic connection with San Francisco. Francis is a shy, awkward man. He suffers from premature ejaculations, which means that he and Mae have many erotic encounters but they never have sex. In spite of Francis’s awkwardness and sexual difficulties, Mae finds him to be adorable and deeply sympathetic. In part, his allure has to do with his difficult childhood: more than one of Francis’s siblings were killed while he was still a child, and, as a result, he is passionately working to design a program for tracking down kidnapped children. Francis is, one could argue, the archetypal “shy boy” who some people find sexy—he’s quiet and awkward, but his awkwardness makes him strangely alluring.
Francis Garaventa Quotes in The Circle
The The Circle quotes below are all either spoken by Francis Garaventa or refer to Francis Garaventa. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book One, part 2
Quotes
"It's the worst story," Annie said. "His parents were such fuckups. I think there were like four or five kids in the family, and Francis was youngest or second-youngest, and anyway the dad was in jail, and the mom was on drugs, so the kids were sent all over the place. I think one went to his aunt and uncle, and his two sisters were sent to some foster home, and then they were abducted from there. I guess there was some doubt if they were, you know, given or sold to the murderers."
"The what?" Mae had gone limp.
"Oh god, they were raped and kept in closets and their bodies were dropped down some kind of abandoned missile silo. I mean, it was the worst story ever.”
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Book One, part 6
Quotes
"You're enjoying this?" she asked.
"Mm-hm," he managed.
Mae thrilled at her power over him. Watching Francis, his hands on the bed, his penis straining against his pants, she thought of something she could say. It was corny, and she would never say it if she thought anyone would ever know she'd said it, but it made her smile, and she knew it would send Francis, this shy boy, over the edge.
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Book One, part 8
Quotes
"Was the information he presented incorrect? There were factual mistakes?"
"Well, it wasn't that. It was just . . . piecemeal. And maybe that made it seem incorrect. It was taking a few slivers of me and presenting that as the whole me—"
"It seemed incomplete." "Right."
"Mae, I'm very glad you put it that way. As you know, the Circle is itself trying to become complete. We're trying to close the circle at the Circle." He smiled at his own wordplay. "But you know the overall goals of completion, I assume."
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Get the entire The Circle LitChart as a printable PDF.
Francis Garaventa Quotes in The Circle
The The Circle quotes below are all either spoken by Francis Garaventa or refer to Francis Garaventa. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book One, part 2
Quotes
"It's the worst story," Annie said. "His parents were such fuckups. I think there were like four or five kids in the family, and Francis was youngest or second-youngest, and anyway the dad was in jail, and the mom was on drugs, so the kids were sent all over the place. I think one went to his aunt and uncle, and his two sisters were sent to some foster home, and then they were abducted from there. I guess there was some doubt if they were, you know, given or sold to the murderers."
"The what?" Mae had gone limp.
"Oh god, they were raped and kept in closets and their bodies were dropped down some kind of abandoned missile silo. I mean, it was the worst story ever.”
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Explanation and Analysis:
Book One, part 6
Quotes
"You're enjoying this?" she asked.
"Mm-hm," he managed.
Mae thrilled at her power over him. Watching Francis, his hands on the bed, his penis straining against his pants, she thought of something she could say. It was corny, and she would never say it if she thought anyone would ever know she'd said it, but it made her smile, and she knew it would send Francis, this shy boy, over the edge.
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Book One, part 8
Quotes
"Was the information he presented incorrect? There were factual mistakes?"
"Well, it wasn't that. It was just . . . piecemeal. And maybe that made it seem incorrect. It was taking a few slivers of me and presenting that as the whole me—"
"It seemed incomplete." "Right."
"Mae, I'm very glad you put it that way. As you know, the Circle is itself trying to become complete. We're trying to close the circle at the Circle." He smiled at his own wordplay. "But you know the overall goals of completion, I assume."
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