Essay 2 — History in Enigma

Purpose

This exercise increases your ability to locate sources and use them to support a written argument. This exercise also reinforces skills of stating theses, forming and presenting arguments, and building conclusions.

Background

Robert Harris’s novel Enigma is set against a background of actual historical events: Bletchley Park really existed and really was a massive but very secret code-breaking enterprise, one of its main targets really was the German enigma cipher, etc. Harris provides very colorful glimpses of this background in the novel: how the characters live, the pressures they work under, and so forth. Your basic job in this essay will be to assess how accurately this background material captures the historical Britain of 1943.

In order to write this essay, you will need to learn something about British life and code-breaking in World War II. This is where library research comes in. To help you start this research, our class meeting on October 18 will be a library research workshop by Bonnie Swoger, one of the librarians at Milne.

Because this is a research essay, I expect you to use and cite external sources. While I am not dogmatic about citation styles, APA style is a good one to follow if you want concrete guidelines. It is described in the Little Seagull Handbook, and Milne Library also has some very good pragmatic guidance on citing sources.

Activity

Write an essay of 1200 to 1500 words (four to five pages) in which you compare some background element from Enigma to actual facts; your essay should be based on a thesis about how accurately Harris represents that element of the real history.

You may decide for yourself exactly what “background element” you want to work with. We will spend time in class on October 20 brainstorming and talking about possible topics.

You must use and cite multiple external sources in this essay. I expect that topics appropriate to the size of this essay would require four to six authoritative sources to cover well, although you can of course use more if you wish. Every idea taken from an external source should be identified by a short citation in the text; these citations should reference full bibliography entries (author, title, publisher, date, etc.) at the end of the paper.

You will probably need to order external sources through Milne Library’s Information Delivery Service (IDS). IDS is phenomenal in its ability to get materials for you, but some can take several weeks to arrive. You therefore must make your IDS requests early, and you must have backup plans in case they don’t all arrive in time for the first draft of this essay. In order to encourage early requests, you need to turn in a list of sources you plan to use by October 21.

Follow-Up

You will write this essay in stages, each with its own deliverables and feedback.

• By October 21, you must email me a list of sources you want to consult while writing this essay. The list should indicate which sources will need to be requested through IDS, and you should submit your IDS requests on that same day.
• On November 1 you will share drafts of your essay with other students in this class, and exchange feedback with them. You must bring copies of the draft to class that day, and should email me a copy before class.
• I will email a copy of your draft with brief suggestions back to you; if you want longer feedback from me you may, but do not need to, meet with me to discuss the draft.
• The final version of the essay, revised in response to feedback from your peers and me, should be emailed to me by 11:59 PM on November 10.
• Finally, by the end of the day on November 16 you should meet with me to get my feedback on your final version and the grade for it. This meeting is required, and should be half an hour long.