Masterful exploration of duty, ethos as well as manhood and desire. The contemporary reader will find the dissection of the latter concepts could have benefited from a non-old-male perspective but it is a product of its time still. 
The haunting landscape and eerie world is painted into the reader's brain and poses the central questions of right and wrong, dignity in face of personal failure and shortcoming, and the inescapable humiliation of aging, impotence and the powerlessness of both the wretched and the blessed of the earth.