Select the correct answer.
Which text from the short story “Ambush” by Tim O’Brien exemplifies the theme of soldiers’ reticence, or inability, to discuss their experiences at war?
Later, I would remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would've died anyway. He told me it was a good kill that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop staring and ask myself what the dead man would've done if things were reversed.
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.
I had come to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty.
But here I want to pretend that 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.
