Character Analysis
Tom Stenton may well be The Circle's least complicated character. He's rich, greedy, and hungry for power, and he'll get behind any Circle technology that promises to make a buck.
When Mae Holland examines a portrait of the Circle's Three Wise Men, Stenton appears to her as a "world-striding CEO and self-described Capitalist Prime—he loved the Transformers—wearing an Italian suit and grinning like the wolf that ate Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother" (1.3.62). Sound deliciously ominous? Check out the rest of the narrator's description:
His hair was dark, at the temples striped in grey, his eyes flat, unreadable. He was more in the mold of the eighties Wall Street traders, unabashed about being wealthy, about being single and aggressive and possibly dangerous. He was a free-spending global titan in his early fifties who seemed stronger every year, who threw his money and influence around without fear. He was unafraid of presidents. He was not daunted by lawsuits from the European Union or threats from state-sponsored Chinese hackers. Nothing was worrisome, nothing was unattainable, nothing was beyond his pay grade. (1.3.62)
All this guy needs is a couple of horns and a pitchfork.
Although Stenton shares a little of Eamon Bailey's intense curiosity about the world—he has a groundbreaking submersible designed and built so that he can explore the depths of the Mariana Trench—he believes in none of Bailey's platitudes about the human duty to share. Stenton has absolutely no concerns about the responsibility to make all experiences accessible to everyone: when he goes down into the Mariana Trench, for example, he goes alone.
Tom Stenton's only two concerns: 1) Tom Stenton, and 2) $$$.
It'll come as no surprise to you that the translucent shark that Stenton brings back from the ocean depths turns out to be a symbol of the voracious, insatiable greed that he himself represents. Although Annie Allerton swears to Mae that Stenton isn't actually as "sharky" as his portrait makes him out to be (1.3.61), The Circle itself begs to differ.