One could argue that the central conflict in “Araby” is between fantasy and reality. The unnamed narrator, a young boy living in a shabby-genteel part of Dublin, wants to escape from his everyday world, even if it's just for a few hours. That's why he's so excited about going to the bazaar. It will give him privileged access to a whole new world, a world of exotic glamor that's about as far away from his humdrum, workaday existence as it's possible to get.

Unfortunately for the young lad, however, all his hopes are unceremoniously dashed as he arrives at the bazaar too late, just as it's closing up. All of a sudden, the fantasy world that he'd done so much to cultivate, and which had given shape and purpose to his life, has come crashing down before his eyes.

As long as it was possible for him to go to the bazaar and buy something nice for Mangan's sister, on whom he has quite a crush, it was possible for fantasy to at least keep reality at bay for a little while. But the closing down of the bazaar represents a crushing victory for reality, in all its soul-destroying bleakness.

The naive adolescent tortures himself in anticipation and likens his journey to a quest to an exotic land. In his mind, Araby is an impressive, foreign land with wonderful gifts and enchanted treasures. Unfortunately, the boy's unreliable uncle returns home late and he is forced to ride a "bare carriage" to the bazaar, which is close to closing. When the narrator arrives at the bazaar, his imaginary visions and unrealistic expectations are shattered when he sees Araby for what it really is. The narrator is disheartened by the "improvised wooden platform," the dark hall, and the numerous closed stalls.

Once he approaches a stall, he overhears a "vague conversation" between a young lady and two gentlemen and notices that the lady only speaks to him out of a "sense of duty." At this moment, the adolescent experiences an epiphany and recognizes the bleak reality of his situation by comparing the young lady's disposition to Mangan's sister's attitude. The narrator loses his innocence by realizing that his childish imagination prevented him from recognizing that Mangan's sister does not share his feelings and was simply carrying on a casual conversation. After the adolescent understands the blinding effects of his infatuation, he burns with "anguish and anger" as he leaves the bazaar.

The central conflict in this story is that of imagination versus reality. In it, a young adolescent boy longs for a richer, more satisfying life than the one he leads in Dublin in a dark house at end of a "blind" alley. The imagery surrounding his life is dull and monotonous: we learn of "decent" lived within houses that have "brown imperturbable faces."

The boy finds an imaginative alternative to the dingy, rainy, cold environment he lives in when he develops a crush on his friend Mangan's older sister. She seems beautiful to him with her "soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side."

The boy dreams of her and blots out his everyday world thinking about her. As he wraps his imagination around her he is:

thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: 'O love! O love!' many times.

When the girl mentions wanting to go to the bazaar but not being able to, the bazaar and the girl conflate or merge in the boy's mind. They both become objects of desire. They seem apart from his dull, mundane world. Instead, they are tinged with exotic and beautiful colorings by his longings.

He decides he will go to the bazaar and bring Mangan's sister a gift. But his drunken uncle lets him down by coming home so late that the boy doesn't get to the bazaar until it is closing. What he sees is dusty and shoddy and no different from the Dublin life he wanted to escape. At the end of the story, his epiphany or realization is that he can't exchange reality for the exotic world he has imagined, because that exotic world doesn't exist for him. Because of this, his eyes burn "with anguish and anger."

The narrator in James Joyce’s “Araby” is a young boy who experiences his first crush on a girl, Mangan’s sister, who is described in a way that lets one infer she is a bit older than the narrator.

However, the primary conflict is man versus self, because the narrator transitions from childlike innocence to the cynicism of adulthood.

At the beginning, the narrator describes imaginary play with his neighborhood friends and the enchantment he experiences in his mysterious house. He soon becomes lovestruck, and afterward he constantly pines for Mangan’s sister—to the point that he no longer enjoys anything, not even the shopping trips he takes with his aunt.

When the narrator finally arrives at the bazaar just as it is about to shut down, he realizes how foolish he has been to waste time and money on going in the first place. He only went in order to buy a gift for Mangan’s sister based on his one and only conversation he has had with her. His infatuation blinded him to the reality that this pursuit was futile and ridiculous.

Therefore, the central conflict is an internal one within the narrator and his coming of age via the experience at Araby.

What are the conflicts of the main character in the story "Araby"?

The conflicts in the boy of "Araby" arise between his fantasy and reality. Discontent in his "brown" neighborhood, in his home that once belonged to a dead priest, living with his uncle and aunt, the boy embraces the escape that watching through his window affords him as he can see Magan's sister in her house and watch walk down the street, murmuring like Romeo, "O love! O love!" Also influenced by Sir Walter Scott's romantic tale, "Ivanhoe," the boy imagines himself the knight who seeks the holy grail.  As he shops for groceries, he pretends,

that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand.

Engrossed in this fantasy of his idealized love, the boy wishes to take Magan's sister to the bazaar with an exotic name, Araby.  However, she is going on a retreat and cannot accompany him.  So, he promises to buy her something there.  Unfortunately, this plan is foiled by the late return of his uncle who has stopped off for drinks.  Flippantly apologetic, the uncle mocks the intensity of the boy's feelings by asking him if he knows a poem entitled "The Arab's Farewell to his Steed" and gives the boy a coin, always a symbol for pettiness to Joyce.

When the boy arrives at the bazaar, the booths are closed, the conversations are all but exotic as the few remaining gossip.  Fighting back the tears in his Joycean epiphany, the boy realizes his disillusionment and disappointment in the shattering of his fantasy:

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

What is the conflict of "Araby"?

The main conflict of “Araby” is between the young boy and his society. He feels that he loves Mangan’s sister, but the world is constantly presenting obstacles to that love.

First, he must continue to endure the work of school all week before he can go to the Araby bazaar to buy her a gift that he feels will show her how much he cares for her. Then, on the night he is supposed to go to the bazaar, his uncle does not arrive home until very late, and his uncle forgets to give the narrator money to go until he is reminded. Next, the train seems subjected to intolerable delays. Finally, when the narrator arrives at the bazaar, he cannot find a cheap entrance and has to spend much of his money just to get in. Once inside the bazaar, he is completely unimpressed by how ordinary and mundane it is. Lights are flickering on and off, and he can hear the clinking of coins being counted. He finds himself surrounded by English tea sets and vases. The scene as a whole is drab and disheartening.

The boy ultimately realizes that he has been “driven . . . by vanity” and that he was wrong to think that his love for Mangan's sister would matter to the broader social world. He understands that what drives his society is money and practicality—not love—and that his interests had been in conflict those of society. This results in a loss of innocence and an initiation into the disillusioned and mundane world of adulthood.

What are the conflicts faced by the narrator in "Araby"?

It is clear from this excellent short story that the conflict lies in the fact that the boy's ideas about Mangan's sister and about Araby are sheer illusions. Neither the relationship as the boy imagines it nor Araby as a place of mystical enchantment actually exists in reality. Consider the following quote about how the narrator himself imagines his "quest":

I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand.

Here we can see clearly that the narrator is placing himself in the role of knight errant, on a Romantic quest to gain something for his lady. Consider how the description of the bazaar at the end of the story shows reality crushing in upon the narrator. He travels there in a "bare carriage" and disembarks on an "improvised platform". The bazaar, far from being a place full of Eastern mysticism, contains nothing more exciting than vases and tea sets and people engaged in mundane conversation. This is where the conflict ends as the narrator realises his own foolishness in a moving moment of epiphany when he grows up:

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 sees the truth in a crushing moment of self-realisation and recognises that the reality of his relationship with Mangan's sister and the reality about Araby.

What are the conflicts that the narrator faced in "Araby"?

The narrator's conflicts are within himself, first of all.  There is the obvious conflict involving his strong attraction to Mangan's sister, first of all.  He is immediately smitten with her and finds himself thinking about her constantly and unable to focus on much else...so much so that he resorts to going to a quiet place so he can have no distractions when thinking of her.  At the end, he is angry with himself (and embarrassed) that he has gotten so carried away with his attraction to this girl.  He reacts this way because his thoughts of her overtook his life and his normal routing, leaving him to do "irrational" things, like rushing down to the bazaar to get her a gift. He has this epiphany as he overhears a gossip-y conversation at the bazaar:

The narrator experiences emotional growth—changing from an innocent young boy to a disillusioned adolescent—in the flash of an instant. This insight occurs through what Joyce called an "epiphany," which is a moment of intense insight and self-understanding. Although the narrator suddenly understands that he has allowed his feelings to get carried away, this understanding makes him neither happy nor satisfied. If anything, he is very angry at himself for acting foolishly. This realization marks the beginning of his maturation from a child into an adult. ("Araby" enotes)