The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (Themes)

Themes

Change and Transformation

“I’m different than I was!” Pavlo brags to his half-brother, Mickey, during a visit home following his basic training. “I’m not the same anymore. I was an asshole. I’m not an asshole anymore.” This somewhat desperate statement, however, proves to be much more an expression of desire than a statement of fact, as Pavlo demonstrates by lying to Mickey about being respected and liked among his fellow army trainees. Pavlo does not succeed in developing meaningful human relationships, nor does he seem capable of learning from his mistakes. He is generally incapable of change, expressing self-awareness only symbolically in his conversations with Ardell after the grenade explodes.

Death

True to the theme of a protracted and bloody military conflict, death pervades every aspect of Rabe’s play. Mrs. Hummel is obsessed with a story about a coworker learning of her son’s death in Vietnam. Her comment “I know what to expect” is a foreshadowing of Pavlo’s own death, but Pavlo is not engaged enough to respond to this warning nor to his mother’s accusation “I know what you’re trying to do.” Indeed, Pavlo by this time has already attempted suicide, but in an almost offhanded way, only expressing abstractly to Ardell a desire to “be bone.” Later, Pavlo may receive his first real intimations of mortality from attending to Sergeant Brisbey in the field hospital. Although Pavlo’s enthusiasm for combat fades a bit each time he is wounded, he continues to act carelessly and is unprepared for the possibility of his own death. The struggle to comprehend violence and death remains a theme throughout Rabe’s trilogy of Vietnam plays.

Duty and Responsibility

The theme of duty pervades Pavlo Hummel. Pavlo wants to serve well, to do his military duty, but in this pursuit he cannot stop himself from breaking the army’s rules. It makes more sense to him, for example, to practice handling his rifle on his own, rather than respond to the whistle for company formation. Sgt. Tower is incredulous, saying Pavlo must be “awful stupid, because all the good soldiers is out there in that formation like they supposed to when they hear that whistle.”

Pavlo does not understand that the primary duty of the soldier is to obey, that without this collective discipline, the men cannot depend on one another in combat. While Rabe has stressed repeatedly that Pavlo Hummel is not an anti-war play in the strictest sense, the conclusion of the play does challenge directly (at least in the context of Vietnam) the idea of war as a soldier’s patriotic duty to his country. As Pavlo is sealed in his coffin, Ardell prompts him to admit that in the end, the cause for and the circumstances under which he died are “all shit.”

Human Condition

The play’s perspective on the human condition is a fairly bleak one. The absurdity of human existence is highlighted strongly, especially by Sgt. Brisbey who, for example, tells Pavlo about a soldier whose hand was blown off, “and he kept crawlin’ round lookin’ for his fingers. Couldn’t go home without ‘em, he said, he’d catch hell.” Sgt. Brisbey’s anecdote about the explorer Magellan symbolizes a central theme of the play: Magellan, according to Brisbey, wanted to know the depth of the ocean on which he was sailing, so he dropped a rope of two hundred feet over the side of his ship. “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 all the rope you got is the bottom?” This concept — the existential question of just how low a human being can sink, is also reflected in Pavlo’s story about swimming in the Hudson River as a child, when he became disoriented and was fighting his way toward the bottom, thinking he was swimming upward. In both of these images is also reflected the confusion of existence — not only do human beings suffer, but, much of the time, they also lack a basic understanding of their situation.

Revenge

The climax of the action in Pavlo Hummel is an act of revenge: Sgt. Wall throws the grenade which kills Pavlo, in revenge for having been beaten and humiliated by him in the Vietnamese brothel. An analogous scenario marks the end of the first act, when Kress attacks Pavlo because he thinks the latter is taunting him. As Pavlo continues to yell obscenities at Kress, Pierce intervenes: “You gotta learn to think, Hummel. . . . You beat him; you had ole Kress beat and then you fixed it so you hadda lose. You went after him so he hadda be able to put you down.” Thus, while there is no rational excuse for Sgt. Wall’s brutal act of vengeance at the brothel, Pavlo is established as a character who often goes too far, pushing others into doing him harm. It is part of the complex psychology of his character, and of Rabe’s play in general, that the audience is not allowed to perceive Pavlo as an unwitting victim of violence.

Rites of Passage

As a teenager estranged from his family and seeking companionship and meaning in his life, Pavlo has a desperate desire to belong; this need cements his ties to the U.S. Army. Pavlo wants to become a model soldier, but he is inept at his training. He sees himself as an effective fighting machine, but he remains a misfit who steals from his fellow soldiers and attempts suicide to get attention. The army training as a rite of passage is a journey to nowhere: the army has not fostered Pavlo’s individuality nor his manhood — nor does it act as a surrogate family. The play suggests that those who look to an external institution to provide a rite of passage will ultimately be betrayed.

Topics for Further Study

• What is a conscientious objector? Research the experience of conscientious objectors during the Vietnam war; you might examine Gerald R. Gioglio’s Days of Decision: An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in the Military during the Vietnam War (Broken Rifle Press, 1988). Why does Sgt. Brisbey ask Pavlo in the hospital, “you’re not a conscientious objector, are you? So you got a rifle.” How does the perspective of a conscientious objector compare to Pavlo’s feelings about the war, or, based on what you might know from other sources, to those of Rabe?
• Many playgoers are surprised by the fact that Pavlo is not killed at the front but in a whorehouse after an argument that is ultimately meaningless. Research American casualties in the war; was it common for soldiers to be killed away from combat? What do the circumstances of Pavlo’s death contribute to Rabe’s depiction of the full experience of Vietnam?
• Tragedy, in its classical form, usually involves some act of self-recognition on the part of the primary character near the play’s conclusion. What, if anything, does Pavlo seem to learn as a character throughout the course of the play? Compare his awareness while living to the symbolic dialogue he has with Ardell after his death.
• Research perceptions of the Vietnam war at home in the United States and how they developed as the war progressed. Consider Mickey’s response to Pavlo’s stories about basic training. What is the significance of Mickey’s taunt, “Vietnam don’t even exist”?