child in a way the child would not understand, and then the author behind the entire story has a greater perspective, which encompasses issues of class, religion, sentiment, and romance that go beyond even that of the immediate narrator.  with this thrice removed distance of author to character (all of them), the author does have a more god-like stance in terms of his knowledge.  He knows more than even the narrator the blindness (the dead-end quality) of this child's life, even from the beginning, and he knows the emptiness of Araby as well.  More importantly, he knows the longing all humans have for such a place of romance, a place where we become able to bring back to another something special, making us special as we do so.  Neither the boy nor the adult appreciate this as the author does.  Rather than cold, I would argue that the author, Joyce, is compassionate toward this experience, kind and generous, not considering the child stupid or clumsy but, like all of us, flawed in our aspirations toward wanting more from our otherwise dull lives.

Joyce's tone reflects the reality of the boy's world on North Richmond Street. He lives in a joyless, stifling environment where the residents are complacent and the street is "blind". In the face of this harsh and dirty reality of his life, the boy detaches himself from this atmosphere and becomes preoccupied with his first love. This love consumes him because it is an escape from the reality of his life. By the time he gets to Araby, the narrator is expecting a world of fantasy that he has idealized in his mind. Instead, he discovers the harsh reality of life exists in Araby just as it does on North Richmond Street. This "epiphany" is the boy's maturation from the idealism and dreams of childhood.

Joyce doesn't give us a sweet, syrupy coming-of-age story. We are given a realistic narration of how a boy living under these circumstances might come to a mature realization of how life is. Indeed, few of us have or will have the fairy-tale coming-of-age experience. The boy is angry at the end because he's wiser about the realities of the world, but he still isn't old enough to fully understand or appreciate the value of the lesson he has just learned.

Honestly? I'd call it the tone cool and distant. He gives us a narrator who ends the story by saying, "

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

However, despite talking about his emotions, look at the vocabulary: do you speak of yourself as being "derided" if you're really upset? Likewise, if your eyes were really burning with anguish, would you be so articulate?

The distance becomes ironic; this is a story about emotional passion, but it is shaped by artistry. As a result, the characters seem overly self-aware too; look at how the narrator knows exactly which coins are clinking at the story's end. This is not someone gripped by passion.

In order to effect the brutal epiphany of the teenaged boy's disillusionment at the end of "Araby," writer James Joyce employs a ironic tone through the use of the adult narrator who recounts a tale of his foolish, romantic youth.  For, this ironic tone in its presentation of the illusionary imagination of the boy foreshadows all the more the collision of the boy's illusions with the harsh reality of the banality of the bazaar.

On the "sombre" street of brown houses in the "cold air" through "dark muddy lanes" the romantic boy envisions a saint-like Mangan's sister who is defined by a light behind her as she stands in the half-opened door.  At this vision, the boy's heart "leaped."  At the market on Saturday with his mother, the boy carries the groceries pretending that he bears his "chalice," or Holy Grail for his maiden fair. 

Further, all the boy's romantic visions of light and the golden chalice contrast with the images browness of his life, the dark rainy evening during which he watches the girl from the dead priest's room.  When the girl speaks to him, she wears a silver bracelet, indicative of money and the mundane.  As he leaves the dark house, the boy encounters Mrs. Mercer--a name that means one who sells cloth--a "pawnbroker's widow."  And, when he finally reaches the bazaar after his uncle returns late from drinking, the boy rides "the third-class carriage of a deserted train."   He steps out onto "an improvised wooden platform" and finds all the stalls closed and "the greater part of the hall was in darkness."  Certainly, then the boy hears what he has earlier described as "the rain impinge upon the earth" and he realizes the foolishness of his romantically fevered imagination.  Disillusioned he turns away from the cheap shop girls idly gossiping, drops two pennies against the sixpence in his pocket, indicating the cheapness of the experience.  Stepping out into the darkness, the adult narrator recalls that he has been "a creature driven and derided by vanity."