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True Emotions In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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The mind’s perception of an event creates a fictional story that reveals true emotions better than the reality of an actual event. O’Brien says that “What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way”(67-68), meaning, in certain events, there is a difference between what one person and another person sees. The way each person comprehends the event affects the way the situation is remembered, changing the memory to fit their personal reaction. The distortion of the memory affects how a person tells the story for others to understand the way the person felt at the time. When soldiers tell war stories, their feeling about the event causes them to embellish the story as a way to capture the effects of the event. As Tim

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