question about tar command

Hi all,

I'm trying to learn about the tar command, so I'm reading and trying to practice along with the tutorial at https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html.

In section 2.5, it instructs me to run the following in the bash terminal-

$ tar -cvf afiles.tar apple angst aspic

I'm getting the following error-
tar: apple: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: angst: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: aspic: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

Am I being too literal trying to follow along? It seems like these 3 items were supposed to exist already? But the tutorial doesn't go over creating them.

What context am I missing? Should I just create the txt files with those names respectively and then follow along with the tutorial once those exist?

thanks all,