Which phrase in this excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut's "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" is an example of sarcasm? To ask how much longer the professor will live is to ask how much longer we must wait for the blessings of another world war. He is of short-lived stock: his mother lived to be fifty-three, his father to be forty-nine; and the life-spans of his grandparents on both sides were of the same order. He might be expected live, then, for perhaps fifteen years more, if he can remain hidden from his enemies. When one considers the number and vigor of these enemies, however, fifteen years seems an extraordinary length of time, which might better be revised to fifteen days, hours, or minutes. The professor knows that he cannot live much longer. I say this because of the message left in my mailbox on Christmas Eve. Unsigned, typewritten on a soiled scrap of paper, the note consisted of ten sentences. The first nine of these, each a bewildering tangle of psychological jargonand references to obscure texts, made no sense to me at first reading. The tenth, unlike the rest, was simply constructed and contained no large words.
The phrase in the excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut's "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" that is an example of sarcasm is "When one considers the number and vigor of these enemies, however, fifteen years seems an extraordinary length of time, which might better be revised to fifteen days, hours, or minutes." This phrase is sarcastic because it suggests that the professor's enemies are so powerful and numerous that he is unlikely to live for fifteen years, implying that his enemies pose a significant threat to his life. The sarcasm is conveyed through the exaggeration of the potential danger he faces and the suggestion that his lifespan is much shorter than fifteen years.
