Read these excerpts, paying special attention to the underlined text. What common theme is developed in both excerpts?

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.

Symptoms

by John Steinbeck (excerpt)

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.

1.)Soldiers are unable to verbally communicate their true thoughts about the traumas of war.

2.) The psychological impact of warfare causes soldiers to lose interest in socializing with others.

3.)Combat warfare desensitizes soldiers, causing difficulties for them when they reenter society.

4.)Soldiers try to make sense of their traumatic memories by telling stories about their wartime experiences.

In these two excerpts the common idea resides in the fact that these men, who have experienced war and its aftereffects, are unable to verbalize the fact that they had to kill another human being. This, more than anything else about war, traumatizes the characters in both excerpts. This can be seen when in Ambush, the speaker reacts to his daughter´s comment on killing someone and he, overcome by the shame of having to face again the memories of something that happened during the war, lies to his child and reacts to her comment by embracing her instead of talking anymore. In the second excerpt of Symptoms, the soldiers are described as men who can talk willingly about all aspects of war except when they had to face the traumatizing event of killing people. Other than that, they would verbalize their thoughts openly; but not the thoughts of having killed, or witnessed the killing, of other people. This is why the correct answer is 1.