In what way Lord of the Flies a novel about innocence?

When the boys end up on the island, they find themselves lost without adult supervision. For their first time in their lives, the boys are allowed to do whatever they want, however they want, and whenever they want. This quickly leads to a great deal of unhappiness for Ralph as he tries to get the boys to help him build shelters and keep the signal fire going, but they refuse. These boys are too young to be able to govern themselves without the guidance of an older person.

As time passes on the island, each of the boys begins to lose their innocence in their own way. Ralph discovers that leadership is much harder than he thought it was. When the others refuse to help him in the day to day work on the island, Ralph becomes frustrated and tries to find ways to fix the situation. However, Ralph cannot find good solutions to his problems. He even suggests that he does not know how to think like an adult and therefore he is at a disadvantage. Later, when Simon is killed, Ralph finds it difficult to live with what happened and his role in it. For Ralph, this is the end of his childhood, and the spiral continues when Jack decides to hunt Ralph.

These boys come to the island as civilized young men, most of them probably from wealthy families where little was expected of them. They were very innocent when they came to the island. However, as time passes, and they become more savage, the boys quickly lose their innocence as they begin killing animals and then escalate to killing one another. The ultimate loss of innocence is a major theme in the novel.