Theme across genres: mastery test question 4 of 5 instructions: select the correct text in the passage. which sentences in these excerpts reflect the common theme of soldiers’ reluctance to talk about their war experiences? ambush by tim o'brien (excerpt) when she was nine, my daughter kathleen asked if i had ever killed anyone. she knew about the war; she knew i'd been a soldier. "you keep writing war stories," she said, "so i guess you must've killed somebody." it was a difficult moment, but i did what seemed right, which was to say, "of course not," and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while. someday, i hope, she'll ask again. but here i want to pretend she's a grown-up. i want to tell her exactly what happened, or what i remember happening, and then i want to say to her that as a little girl she was absolutely right. this is why i keep writing war stories: symptoms by john steinbeck (excerpt) if they had been reticent men it would have been different, but some of them were talkers and some were even boasters. they would discuss their experiences right up to the time of battle and then suddenly they wouldn't talk anymore. this was considered heroic in them. it was thought that they had seen or done was so horrible that they didn't want to bring it back to haunt them or their listeners. but many of these men had no such consideration in any other field. only recently have i found what seems to be a reasonable explanation, and the answer is simple. they did not and do not remember--and the worse the battle was, the less they remember.