Another bildungsroman, and y'all know how I like those. I'm probably one of the few people for whom this was not required reading in middle or high school. For some reason my teachers never assigned it to us, probably because I was in the dumb classes due to my grades, and they felt the "Dick and Jane" series was more appropriate. 
 Maybe one of the reasons I was in dumb English was because I didn't (and still don't) have any appreciation for symbolism in literature. I prefer to read a story for the story, and I must say that as far as stories go you can do much worse than this tale of boys stranded on an island who end up turning so wild that they're starting to murder each other by the end. That's basically the book; the slow progression from acting semi-civilized to savagery, and they're also really mean to the one kid who has decent ideas. Of the two main leader characters, Ralph gets better, and Jack turns from asshole-second-class to douchebag extraordinaire (probably because he was the head of an all-boys choir at a prep school; that should be enough to make anyone a dickhead). Piggy is the boy everyone is mean to. In fact, we don't even find out what his real name is because he's fat and everyone just decides to call him Piggy. 
 Now for the other stuff. Apparently this book is an allegory. Unfortunately, I've never been 100% sure what an allegory is, so I can't give a complete description of it. (There are apparently subtleties involved with the term that I can't seem to wrap my head all the way around). At any rate, it's something about a representation of how human nature would melt down into chaos if civilization were removed from the equation, but at the end we're still chaotic savages even with our big toys such as the nuclear submarine that picks the boys up in the end. The boys got rescued by an adult, but there's nobody there to rescue the adults after they sail away. (Is anyone else confused as I am?... No?... Well, that's a shame). Anyway, I didn't come up with any of this by myself; it was explained to me by the editor who devoted six or seven pages to interpreting the book for those of us who are unable to do it without assistance. It's a good thing it was a short section at the end, or I wouldn't have bothered to read it. 
 As for what does the lord of the flies represent? I don't really know. The lord of the flies was a severed pig's head on a stick which talked to a schizo kid, and it either explained or represented that we humans would all eat ourselves when we got back to our base nature, or something like that. 
 So, if you're into that kind of representative allegory stuff, this is probably a great book for you to read, but I'm not sure if everyone would agree that Golding's take on the matter is actually as dire as he makes it out to be. I don't particularly care. All I know is that if a naked 12 year old boy with a knife and sharp stick starts after me, I'm probably going to do what I can to knock his head off before he can stick me, then maybe worry about whether or not he's a symbol for bad vibes in the human psyche later, but I'd probably only worry about that if I've forgotten a few doses of my meds. If he was still alive after getting his ears boxed by yours truly, I'd probably just take him to a psych ward and let them wonder whether or not he's been listening to the swine that ain't got nobody... 
 -Pierce