By the end of the novel Mae has officially become the most infuriating protagonist in the history of literature. She, through her own stupidity, did nothing to stop the Orwellian future from becoming a reality. She was too ignorant of the incredible power The Circle had at their disposal and was blind to see all the numerous negative applications that this type of technology could have on the world.

It would almost be better if she was written as a crafty mastermind who only wanted to execute her diabolical plan of controlling the world through the expansion of The Circle’s power. If she was written more maliciously, it would’ve without a doubt made the entire novel better. However, I believe that I am in the majority in my utter dislike for the ending of the novel. It is reasonable to be disappointed in this ending because she is presented with all this information that would sway anyone else and yet she refuses to change and ultimately help out humanity. And I realize that this is supposed to seem like a tragic occurrence but it just comes off as poor plot just to get some shock value out of the reader.

Imagine how ultimately more interesting a villainous Mae would have been to this novel. To watch her rise through the corporate ranks, scheming and conniving her way into the inner circle, Mae planting seeds of her “open” world through technology and data, and even insidiously using the tech once she has gotten high enough in the company. that would’ve been so compelling and interesting and would have put a darker overtone that could’ve been much more subtle than the way that technology and data were represented in the novel. And just like any novel or movie with a subpar villain, the payoff doesn’t have the same impact as it should.

At the end of the novel, you don’t feel any closure. It feels as though nothing has changed. Yes, Mae is a inherently different character than the one we were introduced to at the beginning of the novel but since her values changed so early in the novel, it ends up seeming like once the conclusion comes along, there is no weight to it because it seems like the answer should be so simple for Mae. She should know that the right thing to do is but she makes the wrong choice, which does go against common literary conventions where, at the end of a novel, everything ends up being alright, or there is some kind of conclusion that completes the novel.

It seemed that Dave Eggers pulled a cheap, television trick on the readers by making it seem as though Mae was going to do the right thing only for some time to pass and have the reader discover that se did the opposite of what it seemed she would do. It was different and unconventional but it could have been done so differently that it would have seemed natural instead of preachy and shoe horned in. If Mae had intentionally been written as the villain, the novel would have been much better as a whole.