A short story is a shorter literary work than a novel. While some may believe that the length may not be enough to develop a noble story, in these few pages an author can deliver a powerful blow that will leave one in awe, disgust, or utter sadness. Whether there is a moral to the story or it is simply for the reader's enjoyment, each author has their own style of conveying a message through their work in very different ways. Through the works of Flannery O'Connor and Chuck Palahniuk we can see this very clearly. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor is a short story about a family who is shot and killed by a criminal, named The Misfit, on a family road trip. This story is full of themes such as immorality, subtle manipulation and self-centeredness. Through the character known simply as "The Grandmother", I believe O'Connor's goal is to try to enlighten the reader about the flaws of society. Just like Grandma, we as humans have a tendency to sacrifice the safety of everyone else just to satisfy our own well-being. On the other hand, Chuck Palahniuk's Guts has to be the exact opposite when it comes to themes and plots with what seems to me to have absolutely no morals. This story is divided into three detailed stories focusing on the drawbacks of masturbation. Chuck Palahniuk takes a very sensitive topic and makes it even more poignant by describing the horrors of masturbation gone haywire. As the stories went on, they became more and more disgusting. I cringed as I read this story. Palahniuk was able to make me physically feel the events through the sentences using enough detail to make me wonder what was going to happen in the next song. One boy used a carrot covered in Vaseline to stimulate... half of the paper ......comes together to make his reading more of a thrilling experience than reading a story. Palahniuk has the ability to engage all of the reader's senses while reading his whimsical narratives. Being able to physically feel the twists and turns in your stomach as he recites lines like, “It's not a snake. It's my large intestine, my colon came out. What doctors call prolapse. It's my insides sucked down the drain. Throughout the story, he uses choppy sentence structure to get his point across quickly. This style of writing manages to provide a sort of mysterious nuance because it gives just enough to intrigue the reader. Guts is a difficult story to read, especially if you have a weak stomach, but with Chuck Palahniuk's sentence structure and bawdy diction, it leaves you breathless and begging for more in the same breath..