I would just like to mention that Lord of the Flies was the first novel to impact my psyche. It introduced me, long before I became a Christian, to the idea that human nature is inherently not good. For years after I read it (at age 14), I was so sure that if you isolated a group of people (children or not) from society, they would become savages. (I now doubt it, though, believing that that in most people, the desire to go home would prevent or at least discourage the descent into savagery.)