Lord of the Flies
Golding's 1954 parable of civilization's fragility has influenced every "what happens when order breaks down" story since. Its argument with Rousseau is perpetual: children are not innately innocent; savagery is the default. Golding won the Nobel in 1983, partly on the strength of this single book.
Golding's boys are chess pieces: Piggy is Reason, Jack is Savagery, Simon is the Mystic, and each does exactly what the allegory requires. As anthropology the thesis is shaky; the famous real case of marooned schoolboys ended in cooperation, not spears. And with the verdict fixed before the first chapter, the whole book plays less like a story than a proof grinding toward the answer Golding already had.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
