Abstract
The trilogy, published when she was approximately twenty-four years old, was her first major publication, and while it can be read simply as an entertaining bildungsroman of an Indian girl, it is more importantly a scathing polemic criticizing the Indian boarding school system and is an important early example of her use of rhetorical silence. Because Bonnin's clear and powerful rhetorical strategies of silences and silencings are more easily discernable in the concise paragraphs of opri (1924), I discuss that work first and establish definitions essential to my discussion of silence in the Atlantic Monthly trilogy (1900). In describing her "mute aching head"-her painful silence-Bonnin solicits a sentimental response from her audience. Because of her presentation of the boarding school experience, her Atlantic Monthly readers are prompted to pity her painful transformation.