Implicitly, it also condemns the brutality and waste of war.
He bears a deep responsibility to the men of his regiment, a love of country and a full recognition of the waste of war.
What sets this account of the senseless slaughter of young men apart is the deep sympathy with which it scans the waste of war.
Today's Iliad readers are more likely to draw from it a sense of the pity, grief, and waste of war.
His 1988 opera "Greek" is a retelling of the story of Oedipus in the East End; "The Silver Tassie," first performed in 2000, is an expressionistic tale about the waste of war.
The proletarians are cynically sulky, no longer believing in the disinterestedness of those who appeal to them to make additional efforts and sacrifices to repair the waste of war.
O'Casey's jagged, heartfelt play about the waste of war doesn't remotely resemble the more traditional dramas set in the same era that New York has recently seen: the soberly naturalistic "Journey's End" or the sentimental pageant "War Horse".
Fashioned by the director Lisa Peterson and the actor Denis O'Hare to emphasize the waste of war, this one-man adaptation was originally intended to be performed by Mr. O'Hare, but a scheduling conflict arose.
There's nothing grand about the illusion of the French title; that illusion — the very subject of the film — concerns the futility and waste of war itself, the refutation of the patriotic call to arms.
As well as being a fine novel about the pitiful waste of war, it has at its heart a touching love story and a trenchant critique of the hypocrisies of religion.
