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“Dot Braden would be sinking Japanese ships.” — Liza Mundy
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As one of the thousands of unacknowledged women working on the same significant job, Dot (or Dorothy) Braden acted as one of the main characters in the novel “Code Girls: The True Story of the American Women Who Secretly Broke Codes in World War II” by Liza Mundy. This book sheds light on the untold story of the unsung women code-breakers during World War II and lets readers dive deep into their lives during that time. The book highlights their essential contributions to the Allie’s victory. Throughout the book, readers will be addressed with deeper insights into the significant stereotypes and discrimination towards women in the 1940s through various stories and perspectives of the code-breakers; Dot Braden was one of them. As the story continues to unfold, one might notice that significant issues such as sexism still persist and are reflected strongly in men’s actions and words. However, as women revealed how their efforts had shortened the war and saved countless lives, they were suddenly provided with access to careers that were previously denied to them. This hints at the idea of stereotypical views towards women slowly weakening and leading to a profound change in societal structure. Liza Mundy’s detailed narration of both the war progression and the growing awareness of female consciousness paints a vivid picture of the untold portion of history.
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1) Lesson 1: Identifying Central Ideas, Themes, Issues
The first key concept that was introduced to me was how to identify central ideas, themes, and issues. In the first notebook page above, I centered the first half on the essential ideas and methods for finding the three big ideas in a book and dedicated the second half to the central ideas in the example text. On the second page, I found several main ideas and added evidence (quotes) to them. I also took down more notes on my other notes page which is on the last part of my blog, and the quotes I have selected and made emphasis on are all solid evidence for the central ideas.
2) Lesson 2: Exploring Multiple Big Ideas At Once
In my second notebook page, I applied my understanding of the multiple big ideas such as gender inequality/gender norms and opportunities for women, and combined them together to make a more powerful and specific central idea. I also went back to this page after I finished the book to add some more evidence (such as the one on page 277) to further emphasize and support the claim.
3) Lesson 3: Tracking Ideas Across Your Books & Summative Assessment
Notebook Page:
Summative Assessment:
Though the two pages above look alike, there are still minor differences that represent developments throughout the book. This lesson focuses on tracking a central idea and seeing how it develops throughout the novel. The central idea I centered on is “Although sexism was still reflected in men’s actions and words in the 1940s, the stereotypical opinions towards women were slowly weakening, and this led to a change in societal structure”. I developed the page/summative by noting down all the evidence for the two parts of my big idea, sexism, and change. Then, I linked and connected the quotes together and developed a theme statement. The biggest difference between the notebook page and the summative is the last piece of evidence in the notebook which I highlighted in yellow. I believe that this evidence is crucial to the understanding of the dynamics between women and society; because although the book itself continuously emphasizes a society with more equality, the ending of the book draws an ironic but accurate contrast with that specific message. It is ironic because although women made remarkable contributions during the war, they still could not deserve a place to stand in society; it is ironic because after the seeming “changes” and “opportunities”, everything the women worked so hard to earn turned into pretty much nothing after the men came back. The fact that most (or all) of the talented women who demonstrated strong potential during the war all went back to the plain lives of marriage instead of pursuing and striving for individual development is also pretty ironic. Though I am not denying the subtle changes in status and rights, I still feel indignant by the minimum amount of change and the women’s grim lack of acknowledgment. This ending of the book also delivers a sad, but accurate truth about the ongoing gender inequality. This is why I added the part to my notebook page and explained it in great detail here in the blog.
4) Lesson 8: Descriptive Passage
In lesson 8 we learned about how word choices, mood, and tone of a setting description could reflect a big idea. I focused the first half of the page on a t-chart of two settings in the example video and used the second half to do the same. One can see the enormous difference between the two settings just by their descriptions. Word choices like “dark” and “crowded” contrast a lot with words such as “palace” and “spacious”, and I believe that that is one of the charms of reading since words and tone act as the sturdy basis of a good book.
5) Lesson 9: Cause & Effect
The last lesson page that I am going to focus on is lesson 9, where we learned about the causes and effects of a story. The first page above is centered around the three types of cause and effect and the causes and effects in the book Hidden Figures. The second page is the page about the causes and effects demonstrated in Code Girls. I chose to use arrows pointing towards the center issue as the cause and drew arrows off the cause bubble as the effects. As you can see, there are some parts where one cause leads to one effect and some other parts where one cause could lead to multiple effects.
Additional Notes:
These four pages above are all the additional notes I had while reading the book. They are all quotes I annotated in the book and some reasonings that come with it. The quotes that are highlighted in pink are mostly centered around sexism and how it was reflected at the time. The blue highlights are the ones I used when I saw emphasis on the responsibility put on women. The yellow highlights are about how the stereotypical views and sexism are changing or weakening (which also helps with my tracking ideas page).
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As a conclusion, the book Code Girls by Liza Mundy reveals the untold story of the thousands of American women who served as codebreakers during World War II and highlights how their efforts had made great contributions to the war’s success. Moreover, themes of sexism, gender inequality, scientific accomplishment, and courage are all portrayed in the novel. The book also emphasizes the strict vow of secrecy from the women and nearly erases their own efforts from history. Code Girls rescued a piece of forgotten history and gave these American heroes the recognition that they deserve.