This was a hard book to read. I had a notion that it would be, but i've heard so many offhand references to it in my lifetime that i knew it was something i needed to read anyway. It really is good, in a strange way. 
 This is a story with absolutely no females in it. Well--unless you count the animals, and that's kind of weird to think about. It's also a story with absolutely no backstory. We never learn why all these boys were in a plane together, where they were going, why there weren't any adults with them, what happened to make the plane crash. We never even learn how many of them there were to start out with. Piggy and Ralph are the only ones with a tiny bit of backstory, and i think that's because none of the boys think about the past. They don't really think about the future, either, except for their fear of the immediate future in terms of the Beast. 
 It's so interesting how the Beast shifts from one thing to another over the course of the story. And it's fascinating to see how Ralph changes in exactly opposite ways that Jack does. There's so much going on in this story - growing up, ostracizing, senseless violence, responsibility, the perils of anonymity, what it means to take care of oneself, what it means to be a friend, how societies work and how they fall apart. It's such a simple story, but it kind of encompasses the whole story of men. And yet, in the end, they're just a bunch of poor little boys. 
 After listing all those points, i'm starting to think about how this story relates to the senseless cruelty that abounds on the internet, thanks to the anonymity it affords people. They just go into these foamy-mouthed, hateful rages for no real reason, much like Jack and his gang of painted-face savages. They don't actually inflict violence on people, usually, but they usually threaten it, and that has real consequences. And people defend this behavior as "freedom of speech" and get even more enraged when they're censored. 
 I digress. But the point is that there's so much to think about after reading this book. It's an exposition of the ugly truth of human nature, but it's also more than that. Because we root for Ralph and Piggy. No wonder this is a modern classic.