SOURCE: Fenn, Jeffery W. “Conditioned Response: David Rabe's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.” Canadian Review of American Studies 21, no. 2 (fall 1990): 157-72.

In the following essay, Fenn asserts that The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel exemplifies the defining characteristics of the genre of the Vietnam war drama and places the play within the context of Rabe's Vietnam trilogy.

David Rabe's “Vietnam Trilogy,” comprising The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummell (1968), Streamers (1976), and Sticks and Bones (1969), exemplifies many of the recurring themes and motifs that came not only to characterize, but virtually to define, the genre of drama that emerged from the Vietnam War. This genre of dramatic literature constantly and consistently reflects the stresses, anxieties and tensions that shattered the social equilibrium of the America of the 1960s, and focusses on the consequences of these stresses for both the individual and his society. The events of the period fractured...