The Circle by Dave Eggers: A Critical Book Review

George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World represent two distinct dystopian visions. 1984 features memorable torture sequences and prophetic elements about technology like computer-generated music. Brave New World explores social castes and the banalization of sex, heavily influencing subsequent science fiction including The Matrix. Both books are considered classics, though the narrator prefers 1984 for its more powerful writing. The narrator notes that Brave New World's narrative becomes rushed after introducing the Savage character.

The video explores dystopian literature through a comparative analysis of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It examines Orwell’s vision of totalitarian control through surveillance, propaganda, thoughtcrime, and linguistic manipulation via Newspeak, linking it to historical contexts such as Stalin’s Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and postwar Britain. The video highlights key concepts like “Big Brother,” “two minutes of hate,” “doublethink,” and the slogan “Freedom is slavery,” emphasizing how language suppresses thought. In contrast, Huxley’s dystopia is portrayed as a society controlled not by fear but by pleasure, consumerism, and conditioning, where citizens are pacified through hedonism, eugenics, and behavioral psychology. The video analyzes the caste system in Brave New World, the Savage Reservation, and the allusion to Shakespeare’s The Tempest through the character John the Savage. It contrasts linear versus circular views of history, critiques social hierarchy, and questions whether modern society aligns more with Huxley’s sedated conformity or Orwell’s oppressive surveillance. The lecture traces the genre’s roots to utopian literature, including Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and Plato’s Republic, and examines influences from Marx’s Communist Manifesto, H.G. Wells, and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. It also discusses the Gothic origins of dystopia, the impact of Victorianism to Modernism, and references other works like The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, and Infinite Jest. The value of dystopian literature is framed as a warning against ideological absolutism, loss of individuality, and the erosion of freedom through both coercion and complacency.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a dystopian novel that contrasts with Orwell's 1984. While Orwell's dystopia is imposed through force, surveillance, and forced language changes, Huxley's dystopia is imposed through pleasure and scientific advancement. In this society, people are created in laboratories and separated into castas (castes) from birth. The lower castes are physically strong but cognitively impaired, while the upper castes are intelligent. All castes are controlled by pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure, and by a special drug that has both religious and controlling properties. The story follows a 'savage' who was accidentally raised reading Shakespeare and falls into civilized society. The book contains many connections to contemporary society.

Two foundational dystopian novels are '1984' by George Orwell (1949) and 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley (1932). Orwell's novel depicts a totalitarian society called Oceania where Big Brother watches everything and the Party controls all aspects of life. Huxley's alternative vision presents a society where people are genetically engineered and conditioned from birth to serve specific functions, creating a 'perfect' but controlled world where happiness is manufactured through pleasure and conditioning rather than achieved through freedom. Both works explore different mechanisms of control and remain relevant to contemporary discussions about surveillance, censorship, and freedom.

These two seminal dystopian works present fundamentally different models of oppressive societies. 1984 depicts Oceania, a totalitarian regime built on force and lies, where the state uses propaganda, surveillance, and military might to maintain control. This system is highly effective but extremely expensive, causing societal decline. In contrast, Brave New World presents a technocratic utopia where society is controlled through scientific methods—ectogenesis, genetic engineering, and psychological conditioning. Citizens are conditioned from birth to accept their roles, making the system self-sustaining without overt violence. Both societies erase history and live only in an eternal present, but while 1984 uses fear to control, Brave New World uses pleasure and comfort.

A Redemption Arc is a character believing a lie and then gradually being challenged to choose the truth. The presenter explains that Saurin believes he must do terrible things to make his father love him, which is the lie. Each beat of his redemption arc is when this lie is challenged, but he chooses the lie anyway. The three-part structure includes: Part One (Villain) where the character is loyal to their villainous family; Part Two (Questioning) where they begin to question but still prioritize family approval; Part Three (Final Confrontation) where they face a moment too big to deny. A Corruption Arc is harder to analyze because the character doesn't start as a good guy but steadily gets worse over time. Characters exist in a gray zone where they are neither fully good nor fully evil, teetering on the edge between hero and villain. Characters cross from gray zone to abject villainy when they commit actions that cannot be justified by any noble cause.

Character arcs work by using established characteristics and beliefs to put characters in conflict over wider thematic questions. The moment of character sacrifice or transformation means significantly less without the establishment work done in preceding entries. Each preceding entry means less without the establishment work, creating a cumulative effect where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A well-structured character arc follows a specific formula: (1) Desire - what the character wants to achieve, (2) Obstacle - what prevents them from achieving their goal, (3) Strategy - the plan the character develops to overcome the obstacle, and (4) Twist - the unexpected outcome that changes the trajectory. Character arcs follow a three-act structure: Act 1 establishes the character's false belief, Act 2 progressively confronts them with their error and consequences, and Act 3 presents choices that manifest their internal transformation. Character arcs are categorized into three types: Positive Arc (overcoming false beliefs to grow), Negative Arc (sinking into destructive spirals), and Static Arc (remaining the same with external stakes). Each character in Arcane has a central theme driving their evolution: Va's theme is 'family', Jinx's is 'identity', Caitlyn's is 'justice', Victor's is 'immortality and legacy', Mel's is 'heritage and self-acceptance', Echo's is 'the present and potential', Jayce's is 'power and its corrupting nature', Heimerdinger's is 'mortality and human connection', and Silco's is 'deception and moral compromise'.

Corrupted characters are the most captivating in storytelling because readers love watching heroes become villains. A character arc is the progression of a character throughout a story. There are five major character arcs: two heroic (positive change and flat arc) and three negative (disillusionment, fall, and corruption). The key difference between fall and corruption arcs is that corruption arcs involve character choice, while fall arcs involve believing lies that lead to a worse worldview. Corruption arcs follow a three-act structure: Act 1 begins with the first temptation of a lie, Act 2 includes the character torn between truth and lie and embracing the lie, Act 3 includes fully embracing the lie and the climax. Corruption arcs work best over multiple installments (books, seasons, films) rather than standalone novels. Effective devices include dead loved ones as motivation, prophecy foreshadowing, history repeating itself, unreliable narrator twists, and betrayal twists. Corrupted characters don't always have to be villains; they can be morally gray or anti-heroes. Common mistakes include rushing corruption arcs, not delivering on setup, and using magical possession as a cop out. Every character should eventually be tempted by power, fate, or darkness. The three key elements of every corruption arc are: character flaws that can be exploited, the amount of pain and torment the character goes through, and power (which is a corrupting force).

In literature, characters can follow six distinct transformation arcs: the Positive Arc where characters overcome weaknesses and transform into better people; the Flat Arc where characters remain unchanged but influence others; the Deception Arc where characters discover tragic truths that contradict their expectations; the Fall Arc where characters reject truth and sink deeper into lies; the Corruption Arc where characters gradually abandon truth for lies; and the Negative Arc where characters discover their initial lies were merely the tip of a darker iceberg.

Over the past 20 years, technology has developed exponentially, leading to massive data collection and exploitation. The five major tech giants (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple) generate over $800 billion annually through personal data collection, with Facebook and Alphabet deriving 98% and 70% of revenue respectively from targeted advertisements. This data collection negatively impacts American daily lives as companies access sensitive information like names, addresses, and passport details. The US serves as a playground for big data economies. Personal data can also be accessed by government through court orders, as demonstrated by Verizon court orders requiring production of cell information. This data has been used in criminal cases, including Google history evidence in murder convictions. Data collection occurs without public knowledge because terms of service for major websites are written at college-to-professional reading levels. According to a 2015 Pew Research survey, 91% of Americans feel they've lost control over data privacy. A 2017 BMJ study revealed that misleading targeted ads significantly impacted medical decisions, with over half of parents switching from vaccine support to non-vaccination after seeing false claims. The proposed solution is federal government legislation requiring tech companies to clearly inform users about data collection, though tech companies' massive revenue makes lobbying against such legislation challenging.

Privacy is fundamentally about freedom—expression, conscience, religion, and assembly—not hiding something. Modern data collection has expanded dramatically since 2013, with surveillance companies now knowing more about individuals than they know about themselves. Big Tech creates false dependencies where users believe they must surrender all privacy to access technology. Major companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple have business models dependent on mass data collection for targeted advertising. Companies like Clearview AI maintain databases of over 3 billion photos for facial recognition, while Palantir has been valued at over $60 million for data mining. These companies employ specialized data scientists to improve behavioral modeling and neural networks. Google collects data passively through device sensors even without internet, tracking movements and opinions without user awareness.

The technology sector's rapid growth was enabled by minimal regulation, allowing consolidation into dominant players. Google controls 90% of search, Facebook dominates 70-80% of messaging, and Apple and Google together control 100% of smartphone operating systems. This creates a duopoly where all communications pass through these platforms, enabling extensive data harvesting for targeted advertising. When Zuckerberg acquired WhatsApp for $20 billion, he gained access to all messages, calls, and media exchanged, which are analyzed by algorithms to sell ads. Users' data—including their locations, contacts, purchases, and browsing habits—is continuously tracked even when phones are off or in airplane mode, as devices ping Wi-Fi and cellular towers. Additionally, app stores control which applications reach users, enabling censorship of speech and removal of controversial content. This concentration of power raises fundamental questions about privacy, freedom of expression, and the appropriate role of technology companies in society.

Over the past 20 years, large monopolistic corporations have emerged that dramatically changed the nature of the internet. These firms (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon) collect unprecedented amounts of information on users, eliminating privacy. They sell this data to advertisers and work closely with government agencies and the military for surveillance purposes, which contradicts democratic principles of free society.

Modern technology enables unprecedented surveillance capabilities that raise serious privacy concerns. Google reads every Gmail email to create targeted advertising profiles, tracks location 24/7 using cell tower and Wi-Fi data, changes search algorithms over 500 times annually without announcement, stores every search permanently including incognito mode, accesses microphones and cameras remotely, owns YouTube and promotes videos based on business interests rather than popularity, and maintains backup copies of deleted content. These practices demonstrate how technology companies collect, store, and utilize personal data in ways that users often do not fully understand or consent to. The accumulation of such data creates detailed profiles of individual behavior, raising fundamental questions about digital privacy rights and corporate accountability in the information age.