The Three Wise Men

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Although Ty Gospodinov, Eamon Bailey, and Tom Stenton are often referred to as the Three Wise Men (the three foreign men who followed a star and brought gifts to baby Jesus), the novel suggests that they're actually an unholy version of the Holy Trinity.

This point is emphasized most strongly by Bailey's repeated insistence that the Circle's technologies are going to bring human beings closer than they've ever come to divine omniscience. When he debuts his SeeChange cameras to the 10,000 Circlers who work at the Circle's main campus, he tells them, "We will become all-seeing, all-knowing" (1.8.85).

What's troubling about this isn't just that it means the end of privacy for everyone; it's also that Bailey is so laughably small-minded about what being "all-seeing, all-knowing" might mean. For Bailey, it's all about data: if you know all the data about something, then you know everything. But as the novel makes clear, there are things that can't be quantified as data: human experiences, emotions, thoughts.

Annie lying in a coma, for example, is something that irritates Mae precisely because that coma is getting in the way of Mae knowing everything about Annie. But what if Annie actually could express her thoughts to Mae at this moment? She'd have to use language to do it, and language can't express everything that we feel and experience. There's always something that we don't quite know, something that we can't quite express. There's always something that isn't data.

The fact that Bailey—not to mention the Circle itself—believes that data is all there is to know shows just how un-visionary it actually is, in the grand scheme of things.

If you keep your eyes peeled, you'll see that The Circle has lots of subtle shout-outs to Christian imagery. Those shout-outs create a distinct motif—one that emphasizes just how greedy for knowledge and power and totally limited in any kind of real philosophical outlook—the Circle's Wise Men (or two of them, anyway) really are.