The Circle, a book written by Dave Eggers, is a fascinating read that takes readers through the story of protagonist Mae Holland as she begins working at a social networking company called The Circle. Eggers includes a great amount of symbolism to project his ideas to readers, all of which are a very important facet to the overall message of the book. The part of the novel that stood out to me most was what Eggers called a "black tear", to describe an emotion that protagonist Mae Holland feels frequently throughout the novel. As the "black tear" grows and is evolved by Eggers during the second half of the book, it becomes clear that social media can have detrimental effects on a person, causing them to completely lose their grasp on reality.…show more content… The main event leading up to her being overwhelmed with this blackness was the disappearance of Kalden, who hadn't contacted Mae for 2 weeks. Eggers at this point doesn't go much detail about the tear, but just touches the surface and lets readers draw their own conclusions about what it must be. At this point, the only big clues that Eggers lets readers on about it is that it occurs when she is feeling abandoned, and that Mae tries to cope with it by sleeping with Francis. Mae describes it essentially as a "wave of despair that was gathering in Mae's chest," (p. 197) and because of the way Eggers refrains from revealing too much about the blackness in its first appearance, it is set up nicely to be used as a recurring theme. The symbolism of the black tear ends up being one of the most important facets to The