Essay 4—Historical Background of Enigma

Purpose

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 March 25 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. Milne Library also has some very good pragmatic guidance on citing sources.

Exercise

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 reach and defend a conclusion 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. However, here are some examples of things that I think would be about the right size for this essay. You may write about one of these if you want, but you don’t have to.

• Daily life
  • Off-hours life at Bletchley Park: food, lodging, social activities, etc.
  • Daily life in British universities during World War II: how were the universities organized, who lived at them during the war and what were those people doing, etc.
• Military background
  • What was happening in the Battle of the Atlantic during late 1942 and early 1943?
  • Enigma’s plot eventually hinges on German army messages concerning events in Eastern Europe: were such messages actually intercepted, did the events they describe actually happen, and did the British government react in the way portrayed in the novel?
• Operational background: How was Bletchley Park organized, what tools and clues did the analysts use to break German ciphers and how, what psychological pressures were they under, etc.

Your essay should identify the background element that it assesses, describe how that element is portrayed in Enigma, describe its actual historical reality, and state and defend some thesis about how accurately Harris presents it. Defending the thesis will, of course, require that you also explain or interpret the material you take from Enigma and actual histories in order to show how the novel does or doesn’t align with the history.

You must use and cite multiple external sources in this essay. I expect that topics such as those suggested above 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 citations (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). While IDS is phenomenal in its ability to get materials for you, 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 version of this essay (note that you will write a revision later, and hopefully everything you ask for now will at least be here in time to use in that revision). In order to encourage early requests, you need to turn in a list of sources you plan to use soon after starting this project; in order to ensure that you have a concrete topic in time to form this list, you need to give me a one-sentence description of your topic shortly before the sources are due.

Follow-Up

Even before you really start writing this essay, you need to give me a description of your topic and a list of sources you hope to consult. The topic description can literally be a one-sentence statement of what you want to research (e.g., “I want to write about off-hours life at Bletchley Park”). This is due via email to me (baldwin@geneseo.edu) by 11:59 on the “Topic Idea due” date above.

After turning in your topic, you need to email me a list of sources you hope to consult by 11:59 on the “List of Sources due” date above.

You will do peer critiques of each other’s essays on the “Peer Critiques” date above. Please bring 3 printed copies of draft essays to class on that day.

Turn in your essay by emailing it to me. You can write your essay with any common word processor, and send it to me as an email attachment. Your email should be time-stamped no later than 11:59 on the “Papers due” date above.

Finally, please make an appointment to see me and discuss your essay. This appointment should be half an hour long and should end by 5:00 PM on the “Grade by” date above. Note that your next exercise will be to revise this essay, and that I plan to assign this revision on Tuesday, April 15. The earlier you meet with me the sooner you will have my feedback to consider in planning the revision.