In dramatic terms, Streamers is about human fear, weakness, and misunderstanding. Thematically, it is about evasions of moral responsibility, the limits of tolerance, sexual role-playing, and—in a limited sense—the war in Vietnam. Symbolically, it presents the military as a microcosm of all society; its viewpoint, though realistically seen in the confines of a single room of a military installation, is clearly more encompassing in suggestion. It has also been pointed out that Billy’s interfering and inability to understand the behavior of Richie and Carlyle or the violence within himself could be a metaphor for Americans in Vietnam; the unopened parachute has been noted as a possible metaphor for the fate awaiting all of Rabe’s characters. Above all, however, Streamers is an entirely involving drama that seems complete in its complex dramatic statement.