as finding a buried treasure or eluding a criminal. The termepiphany is based on the story of the wise men in the Bible coming to see the infant Jesus and realizing he was the Messiah.

The epiphany in "Araby" occurs in the last sentence, in which the boy narrator has a realization:

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

The narrator has arrived very late to the bazaar, the object of his youthful desire for a more romantic, exotic existence. Once there, he finds that it is just an another example of drab, ordinary Dublin life. He has built it up in his mind into a glamorous, beautiful place, just as he built up Mangan's sister into an object of adoration and worship. He has believed he could find a better life through both Araby and the sister.

Now, however, he realizes he has deluded himself. His epiphany is a moment of self-loathing in which he blames himself for the vanity of harboring false hope of finding something sublime and awe-inspiring in Dublin. He then feels a sense of anger and deep emotional pain over the way his hopes have been dashed.

An epiphany is a moment of blinding realization in which a person sees the light—or, often, recognizes a truth which causes them to see something in their world in a different light. It usually results in an important emotional shift for the person experiencing it. An epiphany might be religious, but it can also be, as in this story, simply a moment of understanding which changes how a person relates to the world. The narrator in this story is a boy whose life is lived amid the poorer quarters of Dublin. He has little to distract him from the drab and the mundane. The story’s title gives an indication of how he views the bazaar: he imagines it to be a little bit of Araby, or the exotic Arab world, within Dublin. The idea of visiting the bazaar, then, becomes a sort of romantic quest for the boy. He imagines it as an opportunity to journey into another world—perhaps one in which Mangan’s sister, the object of his desire, will love him back.

The idea of the bazaar as the route out of his boring existence and into his crush’s heart begins to obsess the boy until he has built the bazaar up in his mind into a fantasy land. His epiphany, then, occurs when he finally visits the bazaar. It is late, it is dark, and the stalls are being put away. What the boy sees is not a fantasy land, a place of romance, but, rather, just a rundown market in a grubby part of town. He realizes that the exoticism he imagines is not real and possibly that he cannot hope to attain his dreams after all.

In answering this question, we need first of all to establish what an epiphany is. An epiphany can be defined as a sudden great moment of realization, such as that which often precedes a religious conversion. Whether an epiphany is religious or not, the person who experiences it undergoes a radical change.

And that's precisely what happens to the unnamed narrator in Joyce's “Araby.” For much of the story, the young lad was excited about going to the bazaar and buying Mangan's sister, the girl upon whom he has an enormous crush, a nice gift. Thoughts of both the bazaar and Mangan's sister fill the boy's every waking hour, giving his otherwise drab, humdrum existence some much-needed color and excitement.

However, when the boy finally reaches the bazaar towards the end of the story, he experiences an epiphany in which he realizes that the color, romance, and excitement he'd previously associated with the bazaar was all just a mirage. He's arrived at the bazaar too late, just as the stalls are closing down. In the darkening hall, there is no trace of the exotic or the romantic—just traders packing away their goods, ready to be sold another day.

As a result of his epiphany, the boy becomes thoroughly disillusioned—not only that, but hurt, angry, and humiliated. All of a sudden, he's been unceremoniously dumped back into the everyday world he'd tried so hard to escape.

James Joyce is famous for creating characters who undergo an epiphany—a sudden moment of insight—and the narrator of "Araby" is one of his best examples At the end of the story, the boy overhears a trite conversation between an English girl working at the bazaar and two young men, and he suddenly realizes that he has been confusing things. It dawns on him that the bazaar, which he thought would be so exotic and exciting, is really only a commercialized place to buy things. Furthermore, he now realizes that Mangan's sister is just a girl who will not care whether he fulfills his promise to buy her something at the bazaar. His conversation with Mangan's sister, during which he promised he would buy her something, was really only small talk—as meaningless as the one between the English girl and her companions. He leaves Araby feeling ashamed and upset. This epiphany signals a change in the narrator—from an innocent, idealistic boy to an adolescent dealing with the harsh realities of life.

The epiphany in James Joyce's short story "Araby" takes place when the young boy overhears a casual, meaningless conversation between an English woman and two men while he is standing at a stall about to purchase something for Mangan's sister. As he listens to the meaningless conversation, the young boy experiences an epiphany and realizes for the first time that his previous conversation with Mangan's sister was similar. He acknowledges that he was clouded by infatuation and his dreams of winning Mangan's sister's heart were simply illusions.

The boy loses his innocence and realizes that Mangan's sister couldn't care less if he purchased something from the bazaar for her. Essentially, the young boy becomes aware of the harsh realities of life by recognizing that his dreams were simply illusions. He discovers that Araby is not an exotic bazaar and is simply an empty, run-down warehouse. The young boy also realizes that Mangan's sister was not genuinely interested in him or concerned about his intentions during their previous conversation.

The epiphany was popularized by James Joyce, an early twentieth-century writer from Dublin, Ireland, and it refers to the point in a literary text when a character has a sudden realization or insight that affects his understand in some significant way.  In this story, the narrator—an adult man reflecting on a memorable childhood experience—pursues his first real crush, his friend Mangan's sister.  

When you read the story, you'll notice that Mangan's sister is always referenced with some description of light.  When she goes outside to call her brother in to dinner, "her figure [was] defined by the light from the half-opened door."  The narrator says that "Her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance.  We walked through the flaring streets [...]."  When he thinks of her, he seems to notice, even in the midst of the ugly street with the drunkards and bargaining merchants, the lights flaring—not the ugliness of the setting.  When he finally speaks to her, he says that "the light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there, and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing."  As he finally makes his way toward Araby, he sees the streets "glaring with gas," which, he says, "recalled to [him] the purpose of [his] journey."  He also recalls the "twinkling river" and the "lighted dial of a clock."  While he feels himself to be in love, all is light.

However, when he gets to the bazaar, he has to spend a lot of his money just to get in.  Once inside, all is silent but for the vapid flirting of the young woman and her customers and the clinking of coins being counted.  Suddenly, he hears

a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out.  The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.  Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and rage.

When the narrator experiences his epiphany, everything has gone dark, literally, and this seems to imply some figurative meaning as well (i.e. light/dark is symbolic).  The narrator saw the world as a light and bright place when he felt love for Mangan's sister; everything felt lit up.  However, once he realizes that Araby, the bazaar she so wanted to visit, is actually no more exotic than an English tea service, no more worldly than counted coins, the narrator also realizes that his love is nothing special either.  It's as though he expected everything to work out for him and his love simply because he willed it—this is the "vanity" part of the epiphany—and he realizes that the world doesn't care about him or his love: it cares about money.

The epiphany in James Joyce's short story "Araby" from the collection Dubliners occurs at the very end:

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

Joyce's idea of an epiphany is a moment of sudden enlightenment, a moment in which one sees the world for what it is, or realizes a truth about him or herself.

In this short story, the narrator is filled with romantic notions of buying the perfect gift for Manghan's sister, a gift that will represent his passion for her.  He goes to Araby, a bazaar, as a knight on a quest, hoping to complete his mission.  Throughout the short story, however, the audience sees the dark world of Dublin that the narrator inhabits--we see the poverty of his neighborhood, the stagnation of the adult world, the squalor of the marketplace.  However, the narrator is so caught up in his infatuation that he thinks of little else and is oblivious to the world around him.

It is not until he arrives late to the the bazaar, when everything is shutting down, and he looks at the cheap, overpriced trinkets that he sees himself and his mission for what it is:  a futile attempt to escape the reality of Dublin.

An epiphany is a transformation, a growing of self such as the gaining of wisdom. In the short story "Araby" from the Dubliners collection by James Joyce, a young boy starts to grow up as he moves from seeing the world and relationships through the eyes of a child to the more realistic or cynical eyes of an adult. He carries the "goblet" of his idealistic dreams about a young girl he knows through the forest of people and emotions he encounters on his way to a church hall sale to get her a gift. This odyssey takes on an enormity of resolve that is unwarranted - the girl is really not that bothered, and neither is anyone else as he finds out when he gets to the bazaar. In everyone else's eyes it is just another day, just another sale, at the conclusion.

In Joyce's "Araby," the narrator tells of his epiphany in the final sentence of the work:

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anquish and anger.

The speaker realizes that he has been living under an illusion, that he has been blind (like the street he lives on), that he's been "dark" (like the bazaar is now), that he's been thinking about the so-called relationship he has with Mangan's sister far more than the relationship deserves. 

The speaker sees that the famous Araby bazaar is nothing so grand, hears the trivial, silly conversation among the workers, is disappointed in some way in the articles for sale, and realizes that he, too, has been blind and dark and trivial, as well as self-important.  In reality, Mangan's sister probably barely even knows he exists.  And she doesn't even have a name in the story.  The narrator gives up his studies, obsesses, suffers in his waiting, and then realizes how trivial he's been.

The epiphany gained by the young man happens at the very end of the story.  He has had his crush on his friend Magnan's sister for a awhile, and he has his plan to go to the bazaar, Araby, and bring back something special for the young lady.  He has built up Araby in his imagination to something very special.  Unfortunately, he is delayed in his getting to the bazaar and by the time he arrives it is already closing down for the night.  Several shops are closed or closing up and the one that is still open has a very disinterested sales girl running the place.  She is more interested in flirting with boys than helping the young man of the story.  The boy is incredibly disappointed by the entire experience.  His epiphany is that the reality of things can never live up to the build-up created in the imagination of those things.  He went to Araby as a young naive boy, but he loses that innocence in the passing of his time at Araby.  He will return home empty handed and forever changed.