Totalitarianism and Indoctrination Theme Analysis

The French writer Luc Moullet once wrote, “On fascism, only the point of view of someone who has been tempted is of any interest.” These wise words apply to totalitarianism in general, and, in the spirit of Moullet, The Circle depicts a totalitarian organization from the point of view of someone who is slowly being pulled into its orbit. Because The Circle is told from Mae’s perspective, we learn relatively little about how, exactly, the Circle is going to take over the world—as is so often the case in totalitarianism, Mae (a mere foot soldier) is kept in the dark. However, by focusing so exclusively on Mae, the novel explores one of the key aspects of any totalitarian organization: how powerful people indoctrinate their underlings into obedience, using a mixture of peer pressure, persuasion, and outright brainwashing.

Perhaps the novel’s key insight into indoctrination is that it has to be gradual. Like the proverbial frog in a pot of water, Mae is slowly pulled into the radical ideology of the Circle. As the novel begins, she is enthusiastic about the basic premise of the Circle—accountability on the Internet—but skeptical of some of the company’s more ambitious ideas. Instead of live-blogging her life and posting online at all times, she spends time with her parents and kayaks alone. As the novel moves along, however, Mae’s colleagues and superiors cajole her into spending less time with her family, posting online more frequently, and cutting her ties to the world outside the Circle.

At first, the arguments Mae hears in favor of transparency seem to be somewhat justifiable. For example, Mae learns about the Circle’s plan to implant tracking chips into human bone, but she doesn’t question it because it’s intended to protect young children from kidnapping. Much later, when it becomes clear that the Circle is going to use the chips to track all human beings in order to control them, Mae still does not object—the moral groundwork for this totalitarian project has been laid already, and Mae has invested too much in her life at the company to change her mind once she begins to understand the truth. It has been argued that, had Adolf Hitler proposed the murder of the Jews in the early days of his regime, the German population would have opposed or ignored him. However, by gradually proposing increasingly extreme measures, Hitler was able to seduce his people into supporting his genocidal plan. Much the same is true of the totalitarian Circle: if Mae had heard on her first day that the Circle wanted to track all aspects of human life, she might have quit. But because the Circle slowly nudges her into obedience, she comes to support all of its endeavors.

Another important point about indoctrination is that it’s often a collective process in which the psychology of the group can convince individuals to conform. Central to this is the Circle’s emphasis on isolating employees: the Circle campus is a self-contained world that employees are encouraged never to leave, which means that they spend very little time with non-employees. This isolation amplifies the effectiveness of indoctrination in several ways. First, it minimizes the number of dissenting voices who might dissuade Mae and her friends from embracing the Circle’s ideology. Second, it pressures Mae and other new employees to fit in with the group at all costs, since this is their only community. Third, it creates a spirit of competitiveness, in which Mae and the other employees all want the same things (the same romantic partners, the same accolades from their superiors, and the same promotions). This instills loyalty to the company over loyalty to one another.

The Circle’s indoctrination techniques are, in sum, taken straight out of the totalitarian playbook. By examining the psychology of a lower-level employee who gradually comes to believe the company’s twisted ideology, the novel provides valuable insight into how even independent and intelligent people can be seduced into supporting practices that, when viewed objectively, are clearly immoral.