The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (Style)

Style

Realism and Expressionism

While Pavlo Hummel struck audience members as a realistic portrayal of an American soldier’s experience in Vietnam, this fact should not obscure the manner in which Rabe’s play breaks from the form of theatrical realism. The interior dialogue between Ardell and Pavlo (continuing even after Pavlo’s death) gives the play its psychological complexity, in a manner associated with expressionism (conversely, the psychology of characters in realism is revealed externally, through their actions). Rabe writes in his introduction to the play that it was primarily the influence of producer Joe Papp which caused him to refashion his essentially linear, realistic play during the course of rehearsal, giving it the expressionistic structure it was eventually to have (Rabe’s career later moved more strongly toward realism).

Rabe has described in interviews his careful bridging of two styles, acknowledging that in Pavlo Hummel he “set up a framework in the play that wasn’t realistic” but yet tried “to keep Pavlo as close to the facts. . . the graphicness of the events, as I could,” (as he described his process in Vietnam,

We’ve All Been There). Much of the realistic quality Pavlo Hummel does have is a reflection of Rabe’s application of his own military experience onto the events and language of the play. Rabe’s dramatic influences reflect his integration of varying theatrical styles: he calls Arthur Miller (author of Death of a Salesman, known for realistic plays on social issues) his favorite American playwright, but also acknowledges the influence of the Absurdist playwrights Eugene Ionesco (The Bald Prima Donna), Jean Genet (The Balcony), and Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot).

Plot Construction

Ultimately, Rabe’s play achieves thematic unity not through telling a linear story from beginning to end but through the complex relationships which develop between scenes. Rather than simply building to Pavlo’s death as a conclusion, the play stages the death twice, once at the very beginning and then repeated near the end. The audience thus knows Pavlo’s death is inevitable and will watch the play differently than they would if its plot depended more upon an element of suspense.

Writing of the relationship between scenes in the play, Critical Quarterly’s Richard Homan called Rabe’s technique “collage,” through which, for example, the playwright “suggests the incompatibility of Pavlo’s military way of life with his civilian life through the juxtaposition of scenes and speeches from both lives in simultaneous settings.” Beidler, writing in American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam, similarly identified a quality of Rabe’s dramatic style that he called “pastiche,” and he believed more strongly than Homan in its effectiveness; Beidler found the play “inexhaustible,” “a collection of master images.”

Characterization

Because the action of Pavlo Hummel does not unfold in a fully realistic or linear form, Rabe’s characters are often seen as something other than real people. Homan commented that while effective, Rabe’s collage “allows only for personifications; character development and sustained dramatic conflict are impossible.” Pavlo does have genuine complexity as a character, however, and many of Rabe’s other portrayals — especially of the trainees and military characters like Sgt. Tower — are considered vivid and engaging. Edith Oliver was among the critics who found Rabe’s characterizations to be a strength of his work, writing in the New Yorker: “For all its factual background, the play is not a documentary but a work of the imagination, and its drama, scene by scene, lies in what it reveals about the characters, whatever their circumstances.”

Theatrical Space

Rabe’s play makes use of multiple spaces on the stage with fluid changes between them and the interweaving and occasional overlapping of scenes. The sparse, abstract set design allows for rapid changes between scenes by merely suggesting different locales on different parts of the stage. The setting both facilitates the movement of scenes in Rabe’s distinct dramatic structure and is itself an element of the play’s expressionism. Dominating the sparse set, for example, is the drill sergeant’s tower, which remains a pervasive image throughout the play (visible even during scenes set elsewhere than the boot camp).