[Flycatcher]

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.

[Beowulf9]

I understand now what it meant but I still hate those books I read.

At such a young age we were full of the joy of life, happy and enjoying the fun of youth. I never have felt those ‘lessons’ were of any use whatsoever except to cause me disgust and depression as I read them.

I especially hated the Red Pony.

I still harbor a resentment of that whole thinking process of the academia. Forced to put into my mind these just awful things, more like poison than art.