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I know they consider it a literary masterpiece and I guess it is but when they made us read it in jr hs along with so many other pessimistic, depressing, negative books well, I just feel there was some pandering to a certain outlook on life by liberals at the time who thought it was the mark of superiority to be extremely shocking and negative.

I don’t care to be manipulated by an author who seeks to shock me and sits back and waits for applause as if that was the mark of his genius.

That could be the problem. You read it in junior high. That's way too young to understand many of the themes of the book, not least of which is the innate savagery of the human animal when suddenly all morality -- and all the enforcers of morality -- disappear.

I think the ending is spectacular: morality (suggested through a distant ship) seems to be returning, and the savage heart (the children) experience waves of regret, contrition, even terror.

Golding won the Nobel Prize for Literature (when it meant something) for this work alone. It's a masterpiece.

I know they consider it a literary masterpiece and I guess it is but when they made us read it in jr hs along with so many other pessimistic, depressing, negative books well, I just feel there was some pandering to a certain outlook on life by liberals at the time who thought it was the mark of superiority to be extremely shocking and negative.

Actually those books fit well in to a classic liberal arts education.

Except that modern education leaves out the most important part of a Classic Liberal Arts Education; God and Religion.

In the past these books would have been taught in the context of civilization and the root of civilization that is God. God’s rule makes civilization possible.

Without God civilization falls in to might equals right, the strong survive and the rest fall to will of the strong or perish.

The teaching of these books are worse than useless without that background.

These books are the cautionary tales of what the world is like without God.

And unfortunately the Left is hell bent on taking us there.

I know they consider it a literary masterpiece and I guess it is

The rest of your post indicates that you didn't think it was a masterpiece, and I think that's perfectly valid. Art is subjective - if you didn't think it was good, that opinion has just as much weight as any positive opinion about 'Lord of the Flies'.

For me, the book is indeed a masterpiece - a chilling and very well-written novel about how easily the veneer of civilization is peeled away. I didn't much like it when it was required reading in freshman year of high school, but I've come to love it as an adult. The fact that the characters are males - young boys - is not incidental to the story. The behavior - both good and bad - is utterly typical of boys and not of girls.