illusions recreate Mangan's sister, the object of his romantic desire, and imbue her with his shrouded lust as he stays in the shadows and defines her "by the light from the half-opened door" in which she stands. As he carries groceries for his aunt, he imagines that he is a knight who bears the Holy Grail: "I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes."

Of course, these illusions do not last, and after he goes to the bazaar, the narrator's fog of adolescent lust clears and he sees himself "as a creature driven and derided by vanity" in a crushing epiphany.

• Mangan's sister

Originally perceived as "shrouded in mystery," Mangan's sister is more mundane than the narrator realizes. She, too, is not named in order to convey how impractical and illusory the narrator's perception of her is. He has elevated her to an almost saintly position as he sees her with an aura of light behind her. Yet, she is no spiritual creature as she is described as turning "a silver bracelet round and round her wrist." 

• The uncle

The narrator's uncle seems to display little concern for the youth's desires. When the youth reminds his uncle on Saturday that he wishes to attend the bazaar in the evening, his uncle answers curtly, "Yes, boy, I know." However, he neglects to return until nine o'clock because he has stopped at the pub and he has forgotten. He apologizes, but detains the youth as he asks his nephew if he knows The Arab's Farewell to His Steed, and he begins to recite the first lines.

We learn about characters by what they say, do, think and feel, and how they react to their environments; we also learn about them by what the author tells us about them directly. Since "Araby" is written in first-person, our understanding of the narrator comes from his own words. We learn his thoughts and feelings--about his life and about his romantic aspirations. We know him to be a boy who finds his environment to be devoid of beauty, romance, or adventure and one who longs for those in his life. Making his trip to Araby, and his profound disappointment with what he finds there, reveals much about him.

The other characters are revealed by what the boy tells us about them and by what we can infer from his narrative. We have some insight into the loneliness of the dead priest as he lived and died in the back room, and we gain some understanding of Mangan's sister, a young woman who would "love to go" to Araby, but chooses instead a religious retreat. The narrator's aunt and uncle are revealed through their actions, with his aunt showing more sensitivity to his feelings. The shopkeepers at the bazaar are characterized primarily through their conversation, the dialog that the narrator overhears and repeats in the story.

At the beginning of the story, the narrator is a naively optimistic young boy, one who imagines that the world will make way for his intense love and longing for Mangan's sister. "Her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance": the market and the streets full of drunken men, prostitutes, cursing laborers, and shop boys.  He has no patience "with the serious work of life" and cannot concentrate in school because "it stood between [him] and [his] desire [...]." It all feels like "child's play" to him in comparison to his thoughts of her and Araby, the exotic bazaar at which he hopes to procure a gift for her that will do justice to his love.

However, when the day comes for him to go to Araby, "The air was pitilessly raw and already [his] heart misgave [him]." He begins to feel as though something will go wrong, and it does. Many somethings do: first, his uncle is very late, and then he has to eat before the narrator can address him. His uncle has forgotten that he'd promised the narrator he could go and asks many questions that detain him further. Though the river seemed to twinkle and the streetlights "glared with gas"—light that reminds him of his love—the train is delayed and then only "crept onward" when it does run. 

When he arrives at Araby, it is costly to get in, and then all the stalls are closed save one: an English girl sells china teacups and vases, nothing exotic at all. He hears the clinking of coins, the flirtation between the girl and some other boys, and the lights go out around him. Finally, he says, "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." In the end, he realizes that the world cares nothing for his love, for his hopes. In the end, he is unimportant, and he becomes aware of his vanity in thinking that the world would make way for him, that his love would somehow entitle him to happiness. He sees that he and his love are unremarkable, and his disappointment and sorrow cut him deeply.

The narrator of Joyce's story of disillusionment and romantic disappointment is an adolescent male youth of Dublin. Influenced by Sir Walter Scott's romantic tale Ivanhoe, the youth fantasizes and pictures himself as the knight who seeks the holy grail. While he shops for groceries, he imagines,

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

Further, the youth hopes to take Mangan's sister to the bazaar called Araby, suggestive of an exotic place. However, the girl tells him that she is going on a religious retreat; so he promises to purchase something there for her. But, unfortunately, the boy's uncle, with whom he lives, is dilatory in returning home, having been at a pub. He flippantly apologizes; then, he mocks the intensity of the boy's feelings by asking if he knows "The Arab's Farewell to his Steed" tossing him a coin, which is always a symbol of pettiness for Joyce.

Finally, the youth arrives at the bazaar, but most of the booths are shut down, and the conversations are trivial, not exotic.  Fighting back tears in a crushing moment, the youth realizes his delusions. He feels what Joyce terms paralysis, a frustrating awareness of his powerlessness:

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

"Araby" has only existed in his mind; it is an ideal that the youth cannot reach. With tears in his eyes, the narrator knows that he must now deal in realities.

The unnamed narrator in "Araby" is a young adolescent with a crush on an older girl who is only named as "Mangan's sister." The narrator comes across as emotional, imaginative, romantic, sensitive, and dissatisfied with his dull Dublin schoolboy life.

As this young narrator notes, he bases his crush on Mangan's sister mostly on his imagination, saying:

I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words. . .

He knows very little about her, but nevertheless he projects romantic desires onto her. For example, to get through his mundane tasks in life in places "hostile to romance," such as marketing on Saturday evenings with his aunt, he keeps an idealized image of Mangan's sister in mind, saying:

I imagined that I bore my chalice [sacred cup: his imagined love for this girl] safely through a throng of foes.

His intensity of feeling pours out in the following passage, showing him to be emotional and sensitive:

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

At home he will murmurs the words "`O love! O love!' many times."

His dissatisfaction with his ordinary life emerges in his lack of attention to his schoolwork. The real world and its work seems "ugly" and "monotonous" in contrast to his romantic, imaginary world.

His emotional sensitivity becomes humiliating when he has a sudden realization or epiphany at the end of the story that the exotic world of the bazaar Araby he had conjured up is an illusion. He calls the illusion "vanity." Then, showing the intensity of his interior emotional life, he experiences an undue measure of shame for his mistake—a mistake common to early adolescence:

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

In many ways, he is a typical young adolescent boy filled with emotional upheavals and growing pains as he matures.

"Araby" is a short story by James Joyce. It was originally published in Joyce's 1914 short story collection, Dubliners, which contains stories about people living in Dublin, Ireland. The story is set in the period shortly before the collection was published, and the characters, including the protagonist, are treated realistically.

The protagonist serves as the first person narrator of the story. He is an adolescent boy living with his uncle and aunt. The family is middle class (although perhaps struggling financially) and lives on North Richmond Street. The narrator is not named in the story. He has a crush on the sister of his friend Mangan and in some ways links this burgeoning sense of romance to his strong religious imagination. He also imagines the bazaar, Araby, to be romantic and mystical.

Outside of school and church, the narrator is a typical young boy of his period, enjoying playing outdoors with his peers and exploring his neighborhood—in addition to fantasizing about Mangan's sister. Although we are not told his precise age, he is still in secondary school but old enough to be allowed to go to a bazaar on his own after dark.

The main characters in the story are the narrator, his uncle, his aunt, Mangan's sister, and the dead priest, a man who used to live in a back room in the house. Even though the priest is dead, he still plays a role in the story. It is his books that the narrator reads in an effort to escape the drabness of his life on North Richmond Street. There are some minor characters, such as the workers at the bazaar, but their role is a functionary in establishing the true nature of Araby.

Other than the narrator, the most important character in the story is Mangan's sister. She becomes the focus of the narrator's romantic fantasies and inspires his trip to the bazaar which results in his disillusionment at the story's conclusion.