Can someone help me I don’t get this?

Which phrase in this excerpt from james joyce's "araby is a participial phrase? north richmond street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the christian brothers' school set the boys free. an uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. the other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces the former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. among these i found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: the abbot, by walter scott, the devout communicant and the memoirs of vidocq. i liked yellow. the wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which i found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. he had been a very charitable priest, in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.

Read the passage below and answer the question that follows. ‘you make me feel uncivilized, daisy,’ i confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. ‘can’t you talk about crops or something? ’ i meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way. ‘civilization’s going to pieces,’ broke out tom violently. ‘i’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. have you read ‘the rise of the coloured empires’ by this man goddard? ’ ‘why, no,’ i answered, rather surprised by his tone. ‘well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. the idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. it’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.’ in this passage, tom’s ideas about race relations come off as uncivilized. what literary device is fitzgerald using here? irony personification metaphor simile

Based on this excerpt the authors are mostly likely to attempt to answer which question?