Structure

Notes on a Silencing is divided into 15 chapters. All but the final chapter are labeled with the season and year in which their enclosed events occurred. Chapter 1 begins with the night of Crawford's assault, and details her experience immediately following. Chapter 2, however, shifts back in time, and depicts Crawford's "first year at school" (26). Instead of beginning with her earliest days at St. Paul's School, Crawford starts in medias res. Beginning with the night of her assault, however, is not merely a narrative gimmick, or an attempt to sensationalize sexual assault. Rather, by opening the memoir here, and then moving back, Crawford centralizes the assault, in order to show how it dictated the majority of her time at the elite boarding school. Though the attack did not happen until her second year at SPS, the horrific event colored the majority of her relationships and experiences on the campus...