The narration of real events mixed with fictional additions, and vice versa, is irrelevant to how the moral of each story resonates with the reader. They invent plots and ideas to “get to the truth” (O'Brien 81). “History-truth” has little to do with the reality of war. Instead, it is up to the reader to determine the value of the work in their own life, to make sense of the connections resulting from intense conflict” (Smith 116). Stories become reality depending on the reader's different emotional response, coming to life under the canopy of personal experience and individual reaction. It is up to the reader to identify the moral of each cartoon, “like the thread that makes the fabric, […] revealing its deepest meaning” (O'Brien 74). A true war story, like those told in The Things They Carried, cannot be taken literally. They are much deeper than simply being about war. “It's about love and memory. It's about pain” (O'Brien 81). A true war story is not true at all, unless the reader is able to identify the various personal and emotional truths within it; the truth is fictionalized so that it can be accessible to a wider audience of readers, so that it can have meaning