How we cite our quotes: (Book.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"But for now, let's go back to the places in the world where we most need transparency and so rarely have it." (1.8.63)
According to Eamon Bailey, absolute transparency is the only guarantor of justice. It's no surprise that his thought process follows the track that it does in The Circle. By making it impossible for people to be anything but transparent, he believes that he'll eradicate injustice. Is he right? Do you think he even really cares about justice?
Quote #5
"You know what I say, right? In situations like this, I agree with the Hague, with human rights activists the world over. There needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness. And to this end, I insist that all that happens should be known."
The words dropped onto the screen:
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN. (1.8.65-67)
Eamon Bailey's all-caps announcement that All That Happens Must Be Known is our first major clue that Bailey has a bit of a God complex. Will omniscience be enough to satisfy him, or is he likely to claim quasi-divine powers of judgment for himself, too?
Quote #6
This went on for an hour, and by the end, Mae was wrecked. The MS, her helplessness to slow it, her inability to bring back the life her father had known—it tortured her, but the insurance situation was something else, was an unnecessary crime, a piling on. Didn't the insurance companies realize that the cost of their obfuscation, denial, all the frustration they caused, only made her father's health worse, and threatened that of her mother? (1.9.66)
Mae Holland's moral compass isn't always off-kilter; there are scattered moments throughout The Circle when she's fully capable of recognizing unjust behaviors. The problem is that Mae is often seduced by "solutions" that are equally unjust. The medical insurance that the Circle offers her parents seems, at first, like a liberation from the criminal behavior of their former insurers, but it doesn't take long for Mae's parents to realize that the Circle's medical care comes with terrible rules and conditions of its own.