Did you know that the environment you grow up in greatly affects your personality? The setting of a novel is the place and time where a story takes place. In The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, the action takes place in the northeastern United States in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The adventure of the main character, Holden Caulfield, begins in Agerstone , in Pennsylvania, at Pencey Prep, then moved to New York. Pencey Prep was an all-boys school in a suburban neighborhood. New York City looked a lot like modern New York City. It was a big city with lots of action. The setting, Pencey and New York, influenced Holden's actions and contributed to the novel's conflict. Throughout the novel, Holden is faced with a big problem that many teenagers eventually have to face (their transition to adulthood) and the context he finds himself in makes his problem worse. His biggest conflict is that internally he doesn't want to grow. The 40s/50s were a very turbulent period. At that time, teenagers liked to venture into adult-like behaviors. They smoked, drank and partied. Holden described how crazy things happened at Pencey Prep, like...