Love Am ong the Ruins : Waugh’s Dystopia

one line. The funeral company prepares an altar like a church, but its devotion is not to God, but to death.

Moreover, The Loved One emphasizes death b y describing infertilit y.

Dennis writes to Aimée by plagiarizing old English poetry i nstead of writing original poems. He cannot write even a fragment of poetry in the United States, even though he received six literary prizes when he was in England for th e book which he wrote during wartime (69). Most of the male characters in the novel appear without wives or children. The bees buzzing in the garden in Whispering Glades are unreal. They are machines sounding a humming sound (67 -68). “Kaiser’s Stoneless Peaches” become a

bestselling fruit as they have no seeds (68). These are all the examples of infertilit y described in this novel. However, it should be remembered that Waugh’s characters rarel y abandon marriage and give up the opportunit y to have children. Although Waugh does not praise love and marriage openl y, his characters often fall in love, get married, and have children, even during wartime, as if it is a matter of course. Therefore, infertilit y, an atmosphere of discordance between men and women after the Second World War, is a remarkable characteristic of The Loved One.

Among the Ruins also should be examined as a novel which shows Waugh ’s view on death, but especiall y as the novel which is deepl y related to the real societ y of Engl and soon after the Second Wor ld War.

Various new aspects of societ y are predicted in the near -future England of the novel. The death penalt y is abolished.⁹ Felons must be returned to societ y after medical treatment due to the New Law “that no man could be held responsible for the consequences of his own acts ” (450).^{1 0} Miles Plastic, the young protagonist, is detained in a facilit y converted from a beautiful country house, Mountjoy, for the crime of incendiarism which he committed while he was in the Air Force. After he stays peacefull y in Mountjoy, enjoying classical music and beautiful

landscapes for twenty months, Miles is released because “the State” decides that he has been recuperated. Miles is gi ven a position as a staff member of the euthanasia center, where he meets a beautiful ballet dancer, Clara. She is unfortunatel y forced to be sterilized by the head of the ballet company.

As its side effect, she grows a beard. Now useless as a prima ballerina, she is sent to the euthanasia center. Miles loves Clara because of her

individualit y and her taste for traditional art, which has been missing from the people for a long time. However, she has plastic surge r y to remove her beard and gets a rubber chin instead. In addition, Miles finds she has aborted their baby. In despair, Mile sets fire to Mountjoy. But the State hampers his arrest, to avoid a scandal, and appoints him as a lecturer promoting the State ’s policy in order to prove that prisons are no longer necessary.

It is necessary to examine why Waugh wrote this dystopian SF novel in 1949. As Patey points out (311), this novel is apparentl y i nfluenced by

George Orwell ’s Nineteen Eighty -Four (1949), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Ape and Essence (1949), Henry Green ’s Concluding (1948) and others, as well as Peter Flemings ’ Sixth Column (1951). In

addition to the influence of these dystopian novels, however, it is important to point out the antipathy toward Clement Attlee ’s Labour Part y cabinet at that time. Love Among the Ruins contemptuousl y describes a societ y where people dismiss all kinds of religious beliefs and ceremonies, devoting themselves onl y to production and social improvement. In oth er words, it symbolizes the societ y where socialism is ultimatel y accomplished. For example, Christmas is set onl y as “Santa Claus Day, ” the day when television shows an old folk play simpl y to awaken historical interest (472). The euthanasia center does a n enormous amount of business every day because everyone rushes into this place, preferring painless death to a

“welfare-weary” life (459). Without sacrament or prayer, patients are sent to a gas chamber. The last scene, where Miles sees the flame of a cig arette-lighter, is similar to the last scene of Brideshead Revisited, where Charles sees the flame of a burning lamp in the chapel. However, where the small light in Brideshead Revisited symbolizes the perpetual faith and religious belief throughout human history, the light in Love Among the Ruins is onl y a comfort to the personal desire of Miles, an arsonist, even though it is

“gemlike, hymeneal, auspicious ” (483). Julie Morère comments that Miles ’ lighter implies the atomic bomb in her essay “Evel yn Waugh ’s Artistic Outcry in Love among the Ruins of a Godless World ” [sic]. (par.7) Although her comment seems to be extreme , it is an acute observation in the sense that the state might be destroyed at one moment.

Not onl y concerning himself with religion here, Waugh depicts

English societ y of the near future, where all values are turned upside -down.

Criminals are kept in detention facilities to “rehabilitate, ” with no

consideration of prison terms or penalties. The y are not assigned to work as prisoners, but just enjoy a peaceful life there (445 -47). Children grow up surrounded by the works of Cubist artists like Picasso and Leger and are psychoanal yzed every month, while their lives are recorded, microfilmed, and filed. Then, they are transferred to jobs judged to be most suitable for them (448). Major offences escape indictment and are reduced to the simple charge of Antisocial Activit y. In the Court, psychologists plead the

prisoners’ innocence. In the case of Mil es, they claim that “the prisoner had performed a perfectly normal act and, moreover, had shown more than

normal intelligence in its execution ” (449). Citizens’ clothes are drab, serge robes which are surprisingl y like the chitons in Ancient Greece.

Homosexuals are distinguished by their coloured robes (448). The weather is planned and controlled by the State (445). Traditional education has almost disappeared, because the new law in 1955 exempts workers from taxation, which reduces people ’s will to go into higher education to gain promotion (459). In this way, Waugh describes a severe and stark future world developing with policies based on workers ’ pleasure, psychiatry, and the slighting of the traditional high -brow culture with which Waugh was familiar. It shows Waugh ’s strong satirical implication of the future that would result from the then English socialist government.