The physical setting of the novel is given notably little description or attention, and references to places lack descriptive imagery. Students are present on the football field, in the classroom, in their apartments, and often, most vaguely, on the phone. This is because the most prominent setting of the novel is within the students’ heads. By using a third-person omniscient narrator, Cormier moves fluidly from student to student, so that readers see events from a variety of perspectives. Rather than beginning each chapter by orienting readers in a physical space, the author often begins chapters with what characters are saying, thinking, and doing. This lends a restlessness to the novel, a sense of uncertainty and volatility that helps develop The Turmoil of Adolescence.

The cultural zeitgeist of this setting, an all-boys Catholic high school in the 1970s, develops the novel’s other themes by pitting ideas about tradition and conformity against individuality and resistance. This emphasizes the strict dynamics of power and control in institutions, and their reliance on tradition as a means of maintaining them. Throughout the novel, the traditions that dictate life at Trinity do more harm than good; at best, they are a neutral and even “boring” representation of the status quo; at worst, they are physically and emotionally abusive.