SOURCE: Cooper, Pamela. “David Rabe's Sticks and Bones: The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” Modern Drama 29, no. 4 (1986): 613–24.

In the following essay, Cooper provides a critical analysis of Sticks and Bones.

For David Rabe, the Vietnam war has been a source of artistic inspiration and creativity. His political and social consciousness, fused with his command of dramaturgy, produces taut expositions of the encounter between the American psyche and a war which assaulted some of the most traditional American values. His “Vietnam Trilogy” is clearly based on knowledge gained at first hand: he spent two years in Vietnam with a hospital support unit and later tried to return there as a war correspondent. This personal experience of the war is central to Rabe's career. A Fullbright Fellowship then enabled him to complete the first two plays of the Trilogy: The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones.

Rabe...