Character Analysis
Here be spoilers, Shmoopers. Read with caution.
Tyler Alexander Gospodinov is known to most of the world as Ty. Thanks to his Bruce Wayne-y commitment to secrecy, though, Mae Holland knows him as Kalden. It isn't until the bitter end of The Circle that Ty finally reveals his true identity to the woman he's chosen to be his partner in saving the world from destruction.
Smart move? Probably not.
Who Is This Dude?
Ty Gospodinov is the kind of socially awkward genius you might expect to see portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in an Aaron Sorkin film. When Mae looks at a portrait of Ty during her first full tour of the Circle's main campus, this is what she sees:
Ty Gospodinov, the Circle's boy-wonder visionary, was wearing nondescript glasses and an enormous hoodie, staring leftward and smiling; he seemed to be enjoying some moment, alone, tuned into some distant frequency. People said he was borderline Asperger's, and the picture seemed intent on underscoring the point. With his dark unkempt hair, his unlined face, he looked no more than twenty-five. (1.3.46)
Like a lot of Silicon Valley "visionary" types, Ty is young, a little geeky, and a little different, but he's also charismatic and charming in a way that just looks like genius to everyone around him. Is he really a genius, or do people just think he is because he fits an image of what they think a genius should look like, at least in Silicon Valley? It's a little unclear; maybe both.
Anyway, Ty looks a bit "checked out" (1.3.47) in the portrait, and nothing about this hoodie-wearing Freaks and Geeks alumnus prepares Mae for the man she meets when she first comes across Ty posing as Kalden:
He smiled and looked out the window, and with his face turned away, Mae took him in. His eyes were dark, his face oval, and his hair was grey, almost white, but he couldn't have been older than thirty. He was thin, sinewy, and his skinny jeans and tight long-sleeve jersey gave his silhouette the quick thick-thin brushstrokes of calligraphy. (1.12.14)
Even though this scene literally recreates the turned-away pose that Ty holds in the first portrait that Mae sees of him, Mae doesn't connect the dots. Not only are Ty's and Kalden's surface appearances too different for her to see the similarities, but Ty is also a skilled actor. As he later tells Mae, he makes a point of changing the way he moves when he goes out into the world as Kalden (2.27.17). Looks like computer programming isn't the only thing he's good at.
The Birth and Rise of the Circle
Ty was the original brains behind the Circle—a fact that gives him no pleasure now that he can see what the company has become.
He started out with a simple idea that was intended to make the internet a more civil and orderly place. His idea was TruYou, a "Unified Operating System" that "combined everything online that had heretofore been separate and sloppy—users' social media profiles, their payment systems, their various passwords, their email accounts, user names, preferences, every last tool and manifestation of their interests" (1.3.55).
Aside from being convenient, the system revolutionized the internet by forcing people to be more accountable for their online conduct. Since all of TruYou's users had to use their legal names in order for the service to work, internet anonymity started to go the way of the dodo:
TruYou changed the internet, in toto, within a year. Though some sites were resistant at first, and free-internet advocates shouted about the right to be anonymous online, the TruYou wave was tidal and crushed all meaningful opposition. It started with the commerce sites. Why would any non-porn site want anonymous users when they could know exactly who had come through the door? Overnight, all comment boards became civil, all posters held accountable. The trolls, who had more or less overtaken the internet, were driven back into the darkness. (1.3.58)
As Ty himself tells Mae near the end of The Circle: "I was trying to make the web more civil. I was trying to make it more elegant. I got rid of anonymity. I combined a thousand disparate elements into one unified system. But I didn't picture a world where Circle membership was mandatory, where all government and all life was channeled through one network" (2.27.33).
Ty had the vision to simplify the internet through TruYou. Unfortunately, he didn't have the vision to see what the unintended consequences might be.
Ty is in a rough spot throughout most of The Circle, but the novel leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions about him. Why doesn't he take steps to dismantle the Circle as soon as things start to go south? Why doesn't he expose Tom Stenton as soon as Stenton starts to frame government representatives for crimes they didn't commit? Why on earth does Ty wait around for someone like Mae to join his cause and dismantle the Circle with him, hand in hand?
What's Up With This Guy, Anyway?
When it comes right down to it, it's hard to say exactly why Ty does what he does in The Circle (besides making it easy for Dave Eggers to construct the novel's plot). Even so, since we here at Shmoop love to make inferences about literary characters, we'll offer up some final thoughts on Ty's patently awful choices.
We know from Annie Allerton that Ty didn't have a lot of confidence in his ability to present the right face to the world during the early days of the Circle. As Annie puts it: "Ty realized he was, at best, socially awkward, and at worst an utter interpersonal disaster" (1.3.53). This is the reason why Ty hired Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton in the first place. By letting two seasoned businessmen manage the company, he was free to do what he liked best: dream up ideas in seclusion.
Ty's taste for reclusiveness and his doubts about his own skills as a public leader probably have a lot to do with his reasons for keeping mum as the Circle starts to spin out of control. By looking for someone like Mae to join his cause, he does pretty much the same thing he did when he hired Bailey and Stenton. As Ty sees it, Mae will relieve him of the burden of going public. She'll be the public face of the resistance to the Circle, and he can continue to do what he does best—operate behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, Ty really never solves one fundamental problem: things like fairness, social justice, and philanthropy have a hard time coexisting with the drive for profit once they're all mixed together. The drive for profit is usually the winner.
That's our two cents, for what it's worth. Take it or leave it, Shmoopers.