that time and used adjectives describing characters and settings that belonged to the period but also showed the reader exactly how the characters that inhabited this town viewed them. “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courtyard sagged in the square,” (Lee 5) our protagonist Scout comments at the beginning of the novel. These descriptions are old-fashioned, developing the setting magnificently, but again, this could be hard for the reader to connect with since this is an unfamiliar setting. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the grammar and language used is very intimate and personal. Charlie begins the novel with “I am writing to you because she said you would listen and understand and didn’t try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have.” (Chbosky 2) From the first sentence in the book, we learn about the introverted mindset of the character, which adds to the reader’s empathy towards our protagonist and his unique modern worldview. Paper Towns has an abundance of “John Green-isms”, certain stylistic choices in Green’s writing that make his novels contemporary and sets them apart from others. Quentin tells Margo before their quest of revenge that “I’m IM’ing with Ben Starling.” (Green 25), and later, Margo tells Quentin that “Everything’s uglier up close.” (Green 57) These statements are exclusively used in our 21st century, and so the reason John Green’s novels have struck chords as tales of adventure and self-discovery with modern youth readers is because the slang used in his stories’ amusing situations remind us of our own eccentric lives. Through these examples, we can understand that prose tends to be emphasized in literary fiction whilst mainstream fiction will utilize unique stylistic writing in order to get to the meat of the narrative. In literary fiction, the plot isn’t the main focus of the novel; rather, the social issues and character developments at the time are infused throughout the writing. This also proves my point that language and grammar can also affect how modern readers read literary vs. mainstream stories of self-discovery.

The contemporary setting of the 21st century has changed self-discovery, or how people “come of age” in fiction, therefore changing the viewpoints of millennial readers. History, conflict, and language changes, just like anything else over time. The farther away we stray from traditional values, the harder it can be to connect to characters coming of age in stories set in times that we no longer live i