Question

What is at least 2 metaphors in this passage?

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shud up its windows and drawn shades in an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia. It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house! The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

Answer 1

Explanation:

it had shud up its windows and drawn shades in an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

Put a like before an old maidenly aunt or woman. That makes it a simile. Take the like out and you have a metaphor.

Do the same thing with like in front of an alter. Take out the like and you have a metaphor.

What a grim and yet wonderful passage.