SOURCE: Hertzbach, Janet S. “The Plays of David Rabe: A World of Streamers.” In Essays on Contemporary American Drama, edited by Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim, pp. 173–85. Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1981.

In the following essay, Hertzbach examines Rabe's use of violence in his plays.

The title and central metaphor of David Rabe's most recently produced play, Streamers (1976), provides a retrospectively useful way of describing the dramatic contexts of his four preceding plays as well. A streamer is a parachute which fails to open, and the thin ribbon of silk merely trails the hapless jumper as he plummets towards certain death. As he leaps out of the safe womb of the airplane, he is born, after a few moments, into a brief life governed by the terror of circumstance, the rule of irrationality, and the absence of alternatives to the destruction awaiting him. There is no opportunity for reflection...