The Basic Training Of Pavlo Hummel - 1615 Words

In The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. The Vietnam Plays, Volume One, Slaughterhouse Five, and A Long Way Gone survival in war is portrayed from the ability to overcome extreme states of conflict and war through training, luck, and personal determination. All of these works tell the story of survival, though not all the protagonist survive. In The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. The Vietnam Plays, Volume One, The protagonist Pavlo Hummel is trained to survive even after the opening chapter starts with his death. In Slaughterhouse Five the protagonist Billy Pilgrim survives through shear luck as he bumbles his way through the war and in A Long Way Gone the protagonist Ishmael Beah ends up surviving through his determination to leave the†¦show more content†¦Gonna tell you little bit about what you do you comin’ through the woods, you find a man wounded in his chest. You gotta seal it off. That wound workin’ like a valve, pullin’ in air, makin’ p ressure to collapse that man’s lung; you get him to breathe out and hold his breath. You apply the metal-foil side a the waterproof wrapping of the first-aid dressing, tie it off. Gonna hafta tie it extra; you use your poncho, his poncho, you get strips of cloth. You tear up you own damn shirt. I don’t care. You let that boy have his lung. You let him breathe.† (Rabe, 55-56). This training is specific to saving the life of and relying on your fellow soldiers. Sergeant Tower is determined that all recruits under his care learn the valuable lessons of how to survive. Again, Sergeant Tower gives sage advice on survival when he teaches the soldiers how to kill in hand-to-hand combat when he states, â€Å"This here real life, Gen’lmen. You actin’ like there ain’t never been a war in this world. Don’t you know what I’m sayin’? You got to want to put this steel into a man. You got to want to cut him, hurt him, make him die. (Rabe 38). This lesson in survival describes brutal killing in a kill or be killed scenario. The dominant technique that Rabe has Sergeant Tower express multiple times throughout the story is the ability