The unnamed narrator of "Araby," a young adolescent boy, is dissatisfied, is a dreamer, and is passionate.

The narrator's environment has become uninspiring to him: drab, dull, old, stagnant and constricting. He describes the houses on his street as having "brown" faces. He depicts his own house as stale and unpleasant stating:

Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms

He is a dreamer, and he get caught up in his dreams of the bazaar Araby after Mangan's sister tells him she is sorry she will be out of town and can't attend it. It becomes a magical dreamscape to him. Instead of reading his school book, he fantasizes about the bazaar:

The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me.

Finally, like many young adolescents, he is often overtaken by his passionate emotions. His crush on Mangan's sister takes on an oversized importance, and he states that:

Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

He also reacts passionately and emotionally when he realizes that he has built up an ordinary, drab Dublin bazaar into something special in his mind. He is very hard on himself at the end of the story. As he has his epiphany, he states:

I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

The story focuses on the narrator's interior life, which is rich and vivid, showing him to be a sensitive young person who yearns for more from life. His Dublin environment is not adequately feeding his soul. At the same time, he is experiencing the turbulent emotions typical of a person of his age.