ABSTRACT. The article addresses aspects of an individual’s identity molded by the State in a dystopian society in which conformity creates absurdities such as mass sterilization and mass euthanasia advertised as entertainment or as an antidote to boredom. Like its real counterpart, the totalitarian system imagined by Evelyn Waugh in Love Among the Ruins (1953) aims at reversing a democratic and common sensical set of values. The State imposes a New World disconnected completely from the perennial and moral old one to make room for the social mighty project of the New Man.

Keywords: dystopia; Evelyn Waugh; Love Among the Ruins; totalitarianism; custom-made Man; reversed penology