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 American society in a manner unknown since the Civil War, and the stresses associated with the Vietnam conflict exacerbated the social, political and intellectual divisiveness which characterized this period of American history.

The individual and collective psychological trauma of American society has been characteristically interpreted by American playwrights in expressionistic dramas which have featured central dramatic metaphors of fragmentation and disintegration. This expressionism has reflected the rupturing of equanimity in American society in metaphors that portray the shattering not only of the individual, but also that of the collective consciousness.

The principles by which America defined itself and set itself apart from other societies were tested on the battlefields of Vietnam and perceived by friend and foe alike to be flawed. The impotence of America's military—which had at its command the latest in war technology—became increasingly apparent; there was an evident failure of America's idealism—its values, ethics and mores—in the disastrous attempt to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people; there was the war on the home front where war protesters took to the streets and engaged the authorities on American soil. All these events challenged the validity of the very essence of what America professed to be and to stand for.

This cultural catastrophe resulted in a breakdown of the mythic underpinning of American ideological, technical and social supremacy, and the subsequent disillusionment triggered a crisis of identity and purpose both in the individual and in the larger community. The assault on the individual and collective American psyche became manifest on the American stage in dramas illustrating individual isolation and alienation concomitant with a loss of cultural and social identity. Consequently, the genre of Vietnam dramatic literature can be characterized and defined in the struggle of an individual attempting to gain or to regain, to define or to redefine, to assert or to reassert, his essential and rightful place in a cultural construct.

This struggle constitutes the definitive motif in Rabe's Vietnam trilogy. Hummel and Streamers are plays of initiation which depict recruits being incorporated into a new cultural environment—that of the military society; Sticks and Bones is a play of attempted re-integration in which a soldier, alienated from his society by his extra-cultural experience in Vietnam, undertakes to reconstruct and redefine his former relationship with his family. In all three plays, the protagonists inevitably fail in their conception, definition or redefinition of their place in American society, and their attempts at integration or re-integration into the social order.

The definitive motif underlying the plot, structure and action of Rabe's trilogy follows that outlined in anthropologist Arnold van Gennep's “rites of passage.” Rabe structures his dramas on the ritual associated with the tripartite pattern of separation, experience and re-integration; he documents the stresses on an individual who undergoes the transitional stage of induction into the army, the extra-cultural exposure overseas; and the attempts at re-integration into a society from which he has been alienated as a consequence of his military training and war experience. The major thematic thrusts and the dramatic impact of Rabe's trilogy are worked through the examination of the consequences for the individual when the cultural signifiers which formulate his consciousness are re-conformed in the military structure. The play's focus on the effects of the demands of the psychological re-programming necessary for the implementation of the new social order of the military, the trauma of extra-cultural experience, and the problems of re-assimilation into a society whose ethics and values, perceptions and modes of behaviour have become alien to him.

The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, the earliest play of the trilogy, exemplifies not only its dominant themes and motifs, but also those that came to define and characterize the genre of Vietnam War drama. Rabe presents the breakdown of the individual and collective equilibrium, psychological fragmentation, alienation, isolation, internecine conflict and a loss of cultural identity. Hummel is of particular interest in reflecting the effects of cultural conditioning and extra-cultural experience, since of the three plays, it is the only one which includes scenes set in Vietnam.

In the opening scene of Hummel, a grenade, later identified as a “M-twenty-six-A-two fragmentation” type, is thrown into a bordello in which the title character is consorting with a prostitute. The grenade has been thrown by a Sergeant Wall, with whom Pavlo, a PFC, has had an altercation concerning rights to a prostitute, Yen. “Fragging” is a term specifically associated with Vietnam, and refers to the shooting of an officer by his own men; this was a more frequent occurrence than military officials still care to admit.¹ The fragmentation of social order implicit in such an act corresponds well—both in dramatic and thematic sense—to the destructive action of a fragmentation grenade and the psychological fragmentation associated with the breakdown of social order. The nature of the weapon and the state of Pavlo's mind create a raw irony as corporeal and psychological disintegration occur simultaneously.

The subsequent action of the play is developed through a series of flashbacks drawn from Pavlo's fragmented consciousness, a disjointed collection of his perceptions that date from his childhood and mark his progress through his army training and war experiences. These disjointed expressionistic flashbacks chronicle the soldier's conditioning as a civilian, his experience as a recruit in basic training, and his life as a front-line soldier.

Emerging from the dying Pavlo's mind, these flashbacks are orchestrated by a choral figure and alter-ego named Ardell, a black sergeant who appears immediately after the explosion, and returns periodically during Pavlo's military indoctrination to comment on his situation and to advise him on his course of action.

Ardell orders Pavlo to attention, and the soldier springs from his dying position to answer in ritualized military terminology questions concerning his identity and status. He names the officers of his company, his battalion, platoon and squad by rote, and adds his height, weight and complexion type.² Ardell immediately takes Pavlo to task about the occasion of his death and his failure to avoid being killed by the grenade:

ARDELL:
You had that thing in your hand, didn't you? What was you thinkin' on you had that thing in your hand?
PAVLO:
About throwin' it. About a man I saw when I was eight years old who came through the neighbourhood with a softball team called the Demons, and he could do anything with a softball underhand that most big-leaguers could do with a hardball overhand. He was fantastic.

(11)

Pavlo's death is subsequently demonstrated to be a consequence of his confusion of cultural realities. In his mind, the grenade has become only a harmless baseball, and instead of disposing of it or taking evasive action as his military training would demand, his response is delayed because of his uncertainty about the cultural construct in which he is functioning. In effect, his out-of-context “basic training”—his cultural conditioning—has killed him.³ The Pavlovian conditioning of basic training overlaps with that of the previous culture and proves to be a source of confusion, inaction and ultimate destruction.

There are also sexual concerns associated with Pavlo's confusion and uncertainty in his own identity; these problems are directly related both to his civilian and military basic training, and are revealed as the source of his impotence and his problems in relating to women. Ardell's “‘You had that thing in your hand, didn't you?’” refers to Pavlo's performance in the bordello. In his fight with the sergeant, Pavlo kicks Wall in the groin, and the incapacitated NCO resorts to the use of the grenade. The internecine war is seen to arise from sexual frustration, a constant source of anxiety associated with the soldiers' re-conditioning to new codes of sexual standards and behaviour in the cultural construct of military society. A definitive characteristic of Rabe's plays, as well as of many others that treat the War, is the consistent theme of the sexual repression of the American male—the fixation on a somewhat unsure and uncertain perception of manhood—and the consequences stemming from this confusion.

At the blast of a whistle, the scene changes to the initial period of Pavlo's indoctrination, and Ardell acts as a focussing mechanism for Pavlo's conscious recall of events. Sergeant Tower appears: he is the Drill Instructor who will supervise the men through their basic training. The rite of passage to manhood associated with the army and sexual maturity becomes an integral part of this training, and sexual perceptions and expression are reordered along military lines. Tower draws the recruits' attention to his “left tit-tee” over which is inscribed “U.S. Army”: he refers to the muscle of his arm on which is the symbol of sergeant, the stripes which give him both his name and identity (14). Recruits are referred to as “motherfuckers,” an expletive used repeatedly by the sergeant and enlistees alike. The term has several extended connotations, both in the context of Rabe's play and outside it, the most significant being the reduction and denial of the female authority figure from the previous culture. The dominant marching tune, “Ain't no use in goin' home / Jody got your gal and gone,” underscores the men's sexual isolation from the women in their former life, and their reliance on the army for identity and status within the context of its own social hierarchy.

The training sergeant quickly draws a distinction between the former status of the recruits and their present rank: “The only creatures in this world lower than trainees is civilians” (14). “You live in the Army of the United States of America” (15). All aspects of the men's lives are regulated “by the numbers,” including bowel movements:

You are gonna fall out. By platoon. Which is how you gonna be doin' most everything from now on—by platoon and by the numbers—includin' takin' a shit. Somebody say to you, “One!” you down; “two!” you doin' it; “three!” you wipin' and you ain't finished, you cuttin' it off.”

(16)

This “toilet training” is symbolic of Pavlo's Pavlovian military conditioning, reflecting a rebirth in a new life where even biological functions must be relearned in accordance with the rules and demands of the new culture.

The process of basic military training is revealed as a paradigm of the conditioning mechanism of the larger culture, and the most obvious and significant ramification is the equating of sexual maturity and vitality with the exercise of martial power. Rifle training is continually couched in sexual references:

This an M-sixteen rifle, this is the best you country got. … You got to have feelin' for it, like it a good woman to you. … You got to love this rifle, Gen'lmen, like it you pecker and you love to make love.

(83)

Sexual passions and the passions of killing are a popular equation in Vietnam War dramas, and also in non-fictional accounts where soldiers have reported experiencing orgasms in the heat of battle.⁴

The theme of sexual repression of the American male provides much of the subtext of Hummel. For most of the recruits, initiation into the military is closely related to rites of puberty, and the power inherent in the gun is readily associated with sexual libido. A corporal who has been to Vietnam arouses Pavlo with the observation, “Can of bug spray buys you all the ass you can handle in some places … You give 'em a can of bug spray, you can lay their fourteen-year-old daughter” (41). For many of the men, in fiction as in fact, their first sexual encounter takes place within the context of military experience. Staged concurrently with the sergeant's instruction on the use of the rifle is a brothel scene in which Pavlo is making love to Yen. Rabe's stage direction suggests, “Something of Pavlo's making love to Yen is in his [the sergeant's] marching” (83).

Pavlo's death in the brothel results from the fragmentation of his lower body and genitals; the mutilation of the sexual organs is a frequent theme both in the dramas and in non-fictive accounts of battle. That phenomenon, while representing a serious danger under actual war conditions, is closely associated with the subliminal fears of the male, and is a basic concept of Freud's anxiety theory of the “castration complex.”⁵ The mutilation of the sexual organs is also prominent in certain of van Gennep's analyses of rites of passage; changes in social status, particularly maturity, are often accompanied and demonstrated by such mutilation.⁶ In the War dramas, injuries of this kind are imbued with a symbolic significance, as they imply not only the emasculation of the individual, but also the enervation of his culture.

Pavlo is revealed as a misfit in civilian life, and his problems follow him into the army. Unsuccessful with women in the civilian world, he also has problems with rifle drill:

You mother rifle. You stupid fucking rifle. Mother! Stupid mother, whatsamatter with you? I'll kill you! rifle, please. Work for me, do it for me. I know what to do, just do it.

(27)

His inability to relate to women is reflected in his lack of co-ordination in handling his rifle. Threatening, then cajoling, his pleas to his rifle assume the attributes of an adolescent's verbal foreplay. He subsequently talks of an affair that he had had with a girl before joining the army, but it is unclear whether the story is contrived in order to enhance his manhood in his comrade's eyes, or whether it actually represents his civilian initiation into manhood.

In an effort to belong, to become one of the group, Pavlo invents stories calculated to elicit the awe and respect of his fellows. He tells of his uncle Roy, who, he says, has been executed at San Quentin:

He killed four people in a barroom brawl usin' broken bottles and table legs and screamin', jus' screamin'. He was mean, man. He was rotten; and my folks been scared the same thing might happen to me; all their lives, they been scared. … I got that same look in my eyes like him.

(23-24)

Pavlo also responds to his fellows' tales of criminal exploits: he has, he says, stolen twenty-three cars. In response to his juvenile bragging, he elicits the comment from his fellows: “Shut up, Hummel! … you don't talk American, you talk Hummel! Some goddamn foreign language!” (24; ellipses in text).

Pavlo genuinely tries to become part of the new system: he studiously memorizes his General Orders, he volunteers for menial duties and for supplementary physical training. His actions, however, have an effect opposite to what he intends. Failing to realize that the assimilation of an individual by a group can only be realized through proper ritual and communal assent, he does not succeed in his attempts at integration with his fellow men and with the military system. Pavlo's problem is that he attempts to accomplish through a process of rationalization what must be undertaken subconsciously: an implicit surrender to the rituals of incorporation inherent in the drill and its cadence.

In Hummel, military conditioning is a product of the repetitive mind-numbing but habit-forming close-order drill. The mind must be subsumed within conditioned automatic reflex—in essence, Pavlovian conditioning. In the rhythms and lyrics of the drill cadence are expressed the recruits' identity, function and sense of purpose. The Drill Sergeant commands: “I GONNA DO SOME SINGIN', GEN'LMEN, I WANT IT COMIN' BACK TO ME LIKE WE IN GRAND CANYON—AND YOU MY MOTHERFUCKIN' ECHO” (16). Marching refrains include: “LIFT YOUR HEAD AND HOLD IT HIGH / ECHO COMPANY PASSIN' BY”; “MOTHER, MOTHER, WHAT'D I DO? / THIS ARMY TREATIN' ME WORSE THAN YOU” (19); “SAW SOME STOCKIN'S ON THE STREET / WISHED I WAS BETWEEN THOSE FEET”; “STANDIN' TALL AND LOOKIN' GOOD / WE BELONG IN HOLLYWOOD” (70). Even the passage of time is measured collectively: “LORD HAVE MERCY I'M SO BLUE / IT SIX MORE WEEKS TILL I BE THROUGH” (47). Through the rhythms and the repeated chants expressed communally by the men as they march, they are molded into a homogeneous and distinct society.

The first act of the two-act play presents Pavlo's problems in becoming assimilated into his new social order. In an expressionistic scene, he fantasizes with his psychological mentor, Ardell, about aspects of biological warfare training. In testing Pavlo's reactions to hypothetical situations, Ardell vividly describes a “radiation attack.” Pavlo recoils in horror, “No, no,” but, as men rise about him, the denial becomes a response to an accusation of a stolen wallet. Pavlo's stories of theft have now been taken at face value, and he is severely beaten by the other recruits (43-44). His failed attempts to integrate into the new society stem from his insistence on his individuality, which is antithetical to the process of regimentation in the military order. He subsequently realizes that integration is not a function of individual striving, but of collective assent.

In his search for belonging, Pavlo desperately wants to be privy to the esoteric knowledge that he believes is part of the military mystique. He senses that association with this mystique will define him as a man, and will endow him with the self-esteem and sexual prowess that has eluded him in civilian life. In conversation with the returned Vietnam corporal, he is told of an event which happened Incountry. An old Vietnamese with a young girl approach a U.S. patrol; the girl is crying. As they draw near, according to the corporal, a U.S. sergeant drops to his knees and

lets go two bursts—first the old man, then the kid—cuttin' them both right across the face, man you could see the bullets walkin'. It was somethin'.

(42)

Pavlo does not understand why the sergeant shot the two Vietnamese, and the corporal explains: “Satchel charges, man. The both of them front and back. They had enough TNT on them to blow up this whole damn state” (42-43).

The incident becomes the source of a consuming passion for Pavlo; he must understand how the sergeant was aware that the pair were carrying explosives. In wonderment, he accosts a fellow recruit:

Can you imagine that, Hinkel? Just knowin'. Seein' nothin', but bein' sure enough to gun down two people. They had TNT on 'em, they was stupid slopeheads. That Sergeant Tinden saved everybody's life.

(48)

He is sure that integration into the army and experience in action will lead him to the arcane knowledge that Sergeant Tinden possesses, a knowledge which has eluded him in civilian life.

In the course of his repeated and frustrated attempts at integration, Pavlo becomes spiritually confused and confides to Ardell that he is contemplating suicide. Pavlo consumes a large bottle of aspirin and crawls into his bed. A montage scene ensues in which the Drill Instructor gives a lecture to the men on how to find their way by the North Star. He explains the process of locating the Big Dipper and the “pointer” stars, and concludes:

They them two stars at where the water would come out the dipper if it had some water and out from them on a straight line you gonna see this big damn star and that the North Star and it show you north and once you know that, Gen'lmen, you can figure the rest. You ain't lost no more.

(56)

Reinforcing the central operative metaphor and thematic focus of the play concerning the isolated individual who attempts to gain a place in a social and cultural construct, the colloquial lecture of the sergeant illustrates how one can find one's way in the empirical world.

However, the sergeant's exhaustive description of how to navigate by locating the North Star is counterpointed to an extended metaphor introduced by a Sergeant Brisbey in reference to problems of psychological and metaphysical orientation. Brisbey is a patient who, Ardell explains, has stepped on a mine, a “Bouncin' Betty,” which has blown off an arm, both legs and his genitals (79). Brisbey is contemplating suicide and relates to Pavlo, who is at this time a medical orderly, a parable concerning Magellan.

Brisbey both presents and represents the central and definitive metaphor of the work. His parable illustrates the problem of trying to fix one's place in time and space. He confides to Pavlo,

I keep thinkin' about ole Magellan sailin' round the world. … So one day he wants to know how far under him to the bottom of the ocean. So he drops over all the rope he's got. Two hundred feet. It hangs down into the sea that must go down beyond its end for miles and tons of water. He's up there in the sun. He's got this little piece of rope danglin' from his fingers. He thinks because all the rope he's got can't touch bottom, he's over the deepest part of the ocean. He doesn't know the real question. How far beyond the rope you got is the real bottom?

(89)

Brisbey, his body and sexual organs mutilated and destroyed in war, still lacks a sense of direction and a sense of purpose. The esoteric knowledge of experience formerly demonstrated by Sergeant Tinden—who has instinctively sensed danger and reacted accordingly—has somehow eluded him. He is a seventeen-year veteran of the army, and his experience has led only to the formulation of his own existential question: “How far beyond the rope you got is the real bottom?”

Pavlo naïvely responds to Brisbey's philosophical statement with an improvised account of a sexual experience, where, in orgasm, he “just about blew this girl's head off” (89). He suggests that he would not have had that experience had he killed himself in a suicidal state such as the one which Brisbey manifests—an intensely ironic statement given Brisbey's condition, Pavlo's own very limited frame of reference, and his own pathetic previous suicide attempt. In order to ameliorate Brisbey's suicidal tendencies, Pavlo creates what he thinks is a comforting myth for him.

An indication of the origins of Pavlo's problems in civilian life is revealed in Act II. Pavlo has never met his father, nor had the family known a father figure. His mother evidently had had so many lovers that the identity of Pavlo's father is unknown even to her. Recognizing that he is failing to establish himself within the military, he again attempts to orient himself within his family. He calls his mother on the telephone, and asks her what is evidently an often-repeated question, who his father was. She responds:

MOTHER:
You had many fathers, many men, movie men, filmdom's great—all of them, those grand old men of yesteryear, they were your father. The Fighting Seventy-sixth, do you remember, oh I remember, little Jimmy, what a tough little mite he was, and how he leaped upon that grenade, did you see, my God what a glory, what a glorious thing with his little tin hat.
PAVLO:
My real father!
MOTHER:
He was like them, the ones I showed you in movies, I pointed them out.

(75)

Pavlo has the designation “R.A.” before his name, indicating that he is Regular Army, an enlisted man rather than a draftee, and that point has been the cause of some of the friction between him and his fellows. He has joined the army in search of identity and belonging: his mother has given him many celluloid images of a heroic military father—particularly James Cagney—but Pavlo is compelled to seek the real person behind the screen image.

Pavlo's own suicide attempt is brought to the attention of his barracks-mates, and for them his act triggers an attitude of acceptance. As they strive to revive him, one squad member, Kress, refers to him as “Weird, chimney-shittin', friendless, gutless, cheatin' …,” but the squad leader, Pierce, responds, “NOOO! NOT IN MY SQUAD, YOU MOTHER. GET UP!” (59). By default and ineptness, Pavlo has found acceptance. His death in the context of the larger civilian society would pass blameless and unnoticed; in the microcosmic world of the small military unit, it would reflect badly on the squad. In a move to protect both the integrity of his unit and that of his leadership, Pierce summons aid and thus effects both Pavlo's spiritual and physical redemption.

His acceptance finally acknowledged by the men, they approach him and ritualistically attire him in his dress uniform. Under Ardell's direction, they bring his clothes and gather about him in order to create an image of the proper military figure. Rabe's stage direction notes: “It is a ritual now: Pavlo must exert no effort whatsoever as he is transformed” (61). Ardell comments on Pavlo's new demeanour:

You startin' to look good now; you finish up, you gonna be the fattest rat, man, eatin' the finest cheese. You go out on that street, people know you, they say, “Who that?” Somebody else say, “That boy got pride.”

(62)

Ardell adds, “They gonna cry when they see you. You so pretty, baby, you gonna make 'em cry. You tell me your name, you pretty baby.” Snapping to attention, Pavlo responds, “PAVLO MOTHERHUMPIN' HUMMEL!” (62-63). Ardell observes, “Who you see in that mirror, man? Who you see? That ain't no Pavlo Hummel. Noooo, man. That somebody else. An' he somethin' else” (62). Believing that he is accepted and acknowledged by the army and his comrades, Pavlo goes on leave in his street uniform in order to exhibit his new status and identity before his friends and family.

The two realities and attitudes of the civilian and the military world conflict, however, since the self-images inspired by the military and its uniforms are not necessarily perceptions that are reflected in the mirrors of the alternate civilian culture. Pavlo does not realize the anticipated sexual fulfilment that should accompany home leave: his former girlfriend Joanna has married without even acknowledging their relationship, which possibly was also a figment of Pavlo's imagination. His sexual fulfilment must wait for the extra-cultural context of Vietnam where force of arms and the enhanced value of the American dollar facilitate the obtaining of sexual favours.

Pavlo soon encounters the equivocal attitude of the civilian world in its perception of the military. His half-brother, Mickey, expresses cynicism about whether Pavlo is even in the Army, and about whether there really is a place called “Vietnam”:

MICKEY:
For all I know you been downtown in the movies for the last three months and you bought that goddamn uniform at some junk shop.
PAVLO:
I am in the army.
MICKEY:
How do I know?
PAVLO:
I'm tellin' you.
MICKEY:
But you're a fuckin' liar, you're a fuckin' myth-maker.
PAVLO:
I gotta go to Vietnam, Mickey.
MICKEY:
Vietnam don't even exist.

(66)

Pavlo tells Mickey embellished stories about his experiences in basic training in much the same form as his stories to his fellow recruits have fantasized his civilian past: the “uncle” in San Quentin now belongs to a fellow trainee. Mickey, though, is quite aware that his brother tends to create his own version of reality.

Both Pavlo's civilian and military lives are portrayed as a series of disillusionments, as “facts of the mind” continue to be contradicted by the immediate experience. The central dramatic metaphor of the play continues in force as Pavlo resumes his quest to gain esoteric knowledge and to establish definitive parameters of existence. When he is shipped overseas to Vietnam, he is designated a medical orderly, but is dissatisfied with that posting because he is denied the battle experience that he feels will lead him to the desired arcane knowledge. Fellow members of his medical unit treat him with disdain when, in an attempt to demonstrate his battle expertise, he suggests setting up “fields of fire” about the camp hospital (91). It is only after he goads his captain about the latter's training as R.O.T.C. rather than O.C.S. that he is transferred to an active combat unit.⁷

The later movement of Act II consists of a surrealistic montage of scenes of battle, demonstrations of Sergeant Tower's drill instructions, events occurring in the bordello, and periodic appearances by Ardell. The juxtaposed and overlapping scenes illustrate the quickening pace of Pavlo's psychological disintegration as his mind begins to recall and to replay formative incidents in his life whose relationships appear to lack cause or effect, logical progression, or chronological order or continuity.

The avid pursuit of his quest for knowledge results in Pavlo's distinguishing himself on the battlefield by his heroic efforts as a medical orderly to retrieve the wounded and the bodies of the dead. In the act of recovering the body of a comrade, he himself is wounded by a knife thrust from a fleeing Viet Cong. As he lies, bleeding, Ardell appears and chastises him over his quest for the esoteric knowledge that Pavlo thinks will give him critical insights into the nature of existence. As Pavlo moans in agony, Ardell comments:

The knowledge comin', baby. I'm talkin' about what your kidney know, not your fuckin' fool's head. I'm talkin' about your skin and what it sayin', thin as paper. We melt, we tear and rip apart. Membrane baby. Cellophane. Ain't that some shit.

(96)

Ardell points out the elemental distinction between innate knowledge, the knowledge of the “kidney,” and the arbitrary perceptions which are products of the mind, and limited to it.

In a subsequent montage, Sergeant Tower expands on his lecture about finding one's way by the North Star, and Ardell continues to pursue Pavlo:

ARDELL:
You ever seen any North Star in your life?
PAVLO:
I seen a lot of people pointin'.
ARDELL:
They a bunch a fools pointin' at the air. “Go this way, go that way.”
PAVLO:
I want her man. I need her.
[He touches Yen]
ARDELL:
Where you now? What you doin'?
PAVLO:
I'm with her, man.

(98)

And Pavlo is back with Yen, she reappears as he drifts in and out of the disparate scenes depicting the fragments of reality, of perceived experience, that structure the play.

Under the stress of battle experience, Pavlo's sensations become more distorted and jumbled. He shoots a Vietnamese farmer believing the latter to be approaching with satchel charges under his clothes, but his judgement call is never vindicated. Ardell notes, “You don't know what he's got under his clothes” (99). Pavlo's mental condition totally disintegrates in a confusion of images when, believing he is shooting at the Vietnamese farmer, the target image changes to a fellow soldier, and ultimately he incurs the wounds himself. Taking aim at the farmer, he cries:

I fuckin' shoot him. He's under me. I'm screamin' down at him. RYAN, RYAN. And he's lookin' up at me. His eyes squinted like he knows by my face what I'm sayin' matters to me so maybe it matters to him. And then, all of a sudden, see, he starts to holler and shout like he's crazy, and he's pointin' at his foot, so I shoot it. (He fires again.) I shoot his foot and then he's screamin' and tossin' all over the ground, so I shoot into his head. (Fires.) I shot his head. And I get hit again. I'm standin' there over him and I get fuckin' hit again. They keep fuckin' hittin' me.

(100)

Pavlo's mental disintegration is complete when he can no longer distinguish cause from effect, illusion from reality, or friend from foe.

The problem and consequences of not being able to identify one's enemy are further revealed when Ardell, commenting on Pavlo's inability to differentiate between the farmer, the soldier, and himself observes, “When you shot into his head, you hit into your own head, fool” (101). Ardell adds that Pavlo shot the farmer not because he had made a judgement call, but because two weeks earlier the Viet Cong had shot his comrade, Ryan. Pavlo's action is based not on an intuitive and esoteric knowledge but purely on blind, brutal vengeance.

The incident is counterpointed in a sequence where the Drill Sergeant tells of an incident that happened in the Korean War. A group of American POWs are reported to have cast one of their wounded into a snow bank to freeze because his screaming disturbed their sleep. Tower tells the men, “You got to watch out for the enemy” (103).

The essence of Ardell's and Tower's observations is that war so conditions men to brutality that discernment is neither problematic nor necessary. The men are programmed to react automatically to a given situation, and judgmental humanistic values have no place in combat. Sergeant Tinden, in the tale recited by the corporal, would have shot the old man and young girl in any case, either on pure suspicion, or in an act of vengeance. The esoteric knowledge that has inspired Pavlo's quest is revealed as unthinking, conditioned and unquestioned brutality. Knowing and identifying one's enemy is the key to survival. For the soldier, the enemy is the indecision and uncertainty that springs from humane instincts which are incompatible with war, and are only atavisms of the civilian culture.

This scene is counterpointed to yet another demonstration of unbridled power: Sergeant Tower lectures to the men about the capabilities of the M-26-A fragmentation grenade:

This is a grenade, Gen'lmen. M-twenty-six A two fragmentation, Five-point-five ounces, composition B, time fuse, thirteen feet a coiled wire inside it, like the inside a my fist a animal and I open it and that animal leap out to kill you. Do you know a hunk a paper flyin' fast enough cut you in half like a knife, and when this baby hit, fifteen metres in all directions, ONE THOUSAND HUNKS A WIRE GOIN' FAST ENOUGH!

(105-106)

In a world of so many variables and where reality and illusion are so confounded, the performance specifications of a military weapon have a reassuring predictability, much like the North Star. The objective mathematical reality inherent in ballistics and navigation provides a reassuring counterpart to the fragile perception of reality which is ultimately revealed as a product and hallucination of the mind.

After being wounded three times in the line of duty, Pavlo ironically meets his end fielding the grenade thrown into the brothel by his rival. Pavlo's attraction for Yen is hardly quixotic; it is a purely an exercise of power demonstrated in a sexual way. As Sergeant Wall and Pavlo contend for Yen, Pavlo warns,

I don't know who you think this bitch is, Sarge, but I'm gonna fuck her whoever you think she is. I'm gonna take her in behind those curtains and I'm gonna fuck her right side up and then maybe I'm gonna turn her over, get her in the asshole, you understand me? You don't like it you best come in pull me off.

(105)

His attitude towards Yen is clarified when it becomes apparent that he believes he is degrading himself by using her, and that by doing so he is taking revenge on his mother.

Pavlo's insecurity can be traced back to his childhood conditioning in the family environment. At the time of Pavlo's leave, after his basic training, Mickey taunts him with, “You know, if my father hadn't died, you wouldn't even exist,” and, in reference to the mother, adds,

All those one-night stands. You ever think of that? Ghostly pricks. I used to hear 'em humpin' the old whore. I probably had my ear against the wall the night they got you goin'.

(69)

Pavlo's search for identity has a very real base in a legalistic as well as in a psychological sense, and it becomes further apparent that his motivation for joining the army was the result of a direct confrontation with his mother.

In the bordello, after Pavlo has kicked Sergeant Wall in the groin, he turns to Ardell, and boasts,

Did I do it to him Ardell? The triple Hummel? Got to be big and bad. A little shuffle. Did I ever tell you? Thirteen months a my life ago. … What she did, my ole lady, she called Joanna a slut and I threw kitty litter, screamin'—cat shit—“Happy Birthday!” She called that sweet church-goin' girl a whore. To be seen by her now, up tight with this odd-lookin whore, feelin' good and tall, ready to bed down. Feelin'—

(106)

Evidently the mother, in response to Pavlo's first association with a girl, Joanna, has projected onto Pavlo's relationship those very attributes that she has been accused of herself. In having sex with a Vietnamese girl, in the most degrading manner possible, Pavlo is taking revenge on all that is implied in his mother's idolization of the screen images that have portrayed America's heroic exploits in former wars. In addition, given Pavlo's imaginative nature and the unsubstantiated, tenuous truth of the relationship between Joanna and Pavlo, the mother may well not have been attacking the relationship itself but her son's self-sustaining myth of the relationship, his own “life-lie.” The ultimate revelation is that Pavlo has fled into the army in search of all the things that have eluded him in civilian life, and that what was unattainable in his previous existence remains even more elusive in his new milieu.

The grenade explodes and Ardell relates subsequent events involving the preparation and transport of Pavlo's body home. At the end of his speech, he turns to Pavlo and asks whether he has anything to say:

ARDELL:
What you think a gettin' your ass blown clean off a freedom's frontier? What you think a bein' R.A. Regular Army lifer?
PAVLO:
Shit!
ARDELL:
And what you think a all the 'folks back home, 'sayin' you a victim … you an animal … you a fool.
PAVLO:
They shit!

(107; ellipses above in text)

Pavlo then expands his observations into his own existentialist philosophy: “It all shit” (107).

Pavlo has found neither purpose nor substance in his military career and faces the same existential void that he found in civilian life. Access to another culture, the substitution of one form of conditioning for another, have neither increased his knowledge nor made him more capable of coping with existence.

Like many other plays of the period and genre, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel deals less with the actualities of the War—conflict between cultures—than with the problems of the individual within his society—an internal “culture clash.” Problems of integration, of belonging, of identity, purpose and function are exacerbated, but they have not caused the larger external conflict. The conclusion, “It all shit,” expresses the absurdist existential condition that prevails when the individual, faced with the complexities of life, is caught in a futile and desperate search for recognition, belonging and fulfilment.

Notes

1. See Santoli, 262, for a description of “fragging.” The motion picture Platoon played on this idea, but did not properly come to terms with it. The internecine conflict was depicted as occurring between two men of equal rank, both sergeants.

   For a Vietnam War play which deals specifically with this syndrome, see David Berry's G.R. Point.

2. David Rabe, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, 11. All further references to the play are given in parentheses.

3. Similar cultural cross-references were reported in case histories. In reference to the My Lai massacre, Lifton notes that one soldier, seeing a small boy who already had had one arm shot off, found the motivation to act by assuming that, if a foreign army invaded America, a foreign soldier would kill an American child in a similar circumstance. He shot the boy. “In this intense moment his conditioned cultural paranoia asserted itself and the soldier acted accordingly.” See Lifton, 376.

4. In this respect, see also David Berry's G.R. Point.

5. See Freud, passim.

6. See van Gennep, 65-115.

7. R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corps) refers to an officer selection and education system incorporated into university studies; O.C.S. refers to Officer Candidate School, a military institution for training officers in the regular forces. Implicit in Pavlo's observation is that the university-trained officer lacks the instinct of the “real” soldier.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Tr. James Strachey. James Strachey and Angela Richards, eds. Middlesex, 1973.

Rabe, David. “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel,” in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones. New York, 1973.

Santoli, Al. Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-three American Soldiers Who Fought It. New York, 1981.

van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Tr. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago, 1960.

Lifton, Robert J. “America's New Survivors,” in Ourselves/Our Past: Psychological Approaches to American History. Robert J. Brugger, ed. Baltimore, 1981.