Busiel is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas, Austin, specializing in modern drama and theatre. In this essay he discusses Rabe's play in the context of differing conceptions of what constitutes an "antiwar" play.

Although The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel dramatizes the senseless death of a young man in Vietnam, David Rabe has emphasized repeatedly that he did not intend his play to be received as an "antiwar" work. Certainly, the play is critical of the reasons that countries engage in wars and that young men go to fight in them. Pavlo's enthusiasm for the military is drawn strongly into question, as Ardell forces him at the play's conclusion to confront the reason for his death:

ARDELL. You tell it to me: what you think of the cause' What you think a gettin' your ass blown clean off a freedom's frontier? What you...