Read the excerpt from Gulliver's Travels.
He has been eight years upon a project for
extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which
were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and
let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years
more. he should be able to supply the governor's
gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but
he complained that his stock was low, and
entreated me "to give him something as an
encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this
had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I
made him a small present, for my lord had
furnished me with money on purpose, because he
knew their practice of begging from all who go to
see them....
I saw another at work to calcine ice into
gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he
Next, read the statement.
When Gulliver tours the academy, he sees a man
attempting to get sunbeams out of cucumbers and
a man trying to turn ice into gunpowder.
This statement is an example of
a paraphrase
a quotation
text evidence
verbal irony