After feeling excited about the prospect of going to the Araby bazaar, the unnamed young narrator ends up feeling thoroughly disillusioned and disappointed by the time he finally reaches his destination at the end of the story.

After Mangan's sister, whom the narrator fancies, motivates him to go to the bazaar, the boy's imagination is filled with thoughts of the Araby bazaar and all its associated excitement and exoticism. For an all too brief period, the young lad is promised a tantalizing glimpse into a different world, a world far removed from the shabby lower-middle-class Dublin life that he normally leads.

But once he finally reaches the bazaar, his hopes and dreams suddenly evaporate. Due largely to his uncle's late arrival at home that evening, the boy misses the bazaar, which is in the process of closing down by the time he gets there.

One of the merchants asks him if he would like to buy anything, but the boy's heart is no longer in it. The large, darkened hall has been stripped of romance, and so it would be inappropriate—and perhaps impossible—for the boy to fulfill his original quest and buy something special for Mangan's sister.

Feeling thoroughly disillusioned and humiliated by the experience, the boy can only gaze into the darkness, his eyes burning with “anguish and anger.”