The majority of the novel takes place in December 1949. The story commences with Holden Caulfield, the seventeen-year-old narrator and protagonist of Catcher, addressing the reader directly from a mental hospital in southern California. He wants to tell us about events that took place over a two-day period the previous December. It is a frame story, or long flashback, constructed through Holden's memory as he describes encounters he has had with students and faculty of Pencey Prep (scholars often compare Pencey Prep to Valley Forge Military Academy, which Salinger attended from the ages of 15 to 17) in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. He criticizes them for being superficial, as he would say, "phony."