an aura of light surrounding her, a saint for whom he seeks the "grail" when he goes to Saturday market, he later in the narrative switches his perception of this Oriental fete held in the capital city for Christian charity. It changes to an arena of money-changers and idolatry and the pre-Christian custom of offerings to gods. For, while he talks with Mangan's sister and she tells the boy that she cannot come to the bazaar because she is going to a religious retreat, his eyes focus on the silver bracelet that she twists back and forth, saying he will buy her a gift that will match the bracelet in value. At this point, some critics feel the boy teeters close to idolatry and the ancient custom of offerings to the gods. 

But the crushing force of reality changes these images and connotations for Joyce's narrator. When he finally arrives at the bazaar it is dark and the place unfriendly and counterfeit as the vendors speak in English accents about petty issues. The word Araby changes its connotations from the exotic, titillating, and mysteriously romantic place to one of petty smallness and insignificance. It suggests the boy's journey from romantic love to despair.

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 best summary is "B." The story shows how dreams end up in disillusionment.

The boy narrator of "Araby" tries to escape through dreams from his dull existence as a Dublin schoolboy. His dreams center mainly around Mangan's sister, an older girl he develops a crush on, and the bazaar called "Araby," which is coming to Dublin. He promises to get Mangan's sister a gift at the bazaar. In his mind, the bazaar and the girl seem to conflate or merge to represent all that is desirable, exotic, and different from his mundane life.

However, the bazaar, when he arrives to it late, is cheap and mundane, just like the rest of Dublin. He ends the story filled with bitter disillusion as his dream of encountering a more sublime existence crumbles.

The ending of the story is called an epiphany: it is not an event, but the boy's realization or sudden insight that he has put his hopes in false dreams.

The statement that best summarizes the story is "dreams often end in disillusionment." 

Joyce's short story begins with the idealism of youth and ends in bitter disappointment when he realizes that reality cannot possibly hope to live up to his expectations.  Like the young man's day dreams of Mangan's sister in which "her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance," his dreams of going to the "splendid bazaar" make Araby seem romantic and adventurous.  In truth, the fabulous bazaar turned out to be dingy, dark, and empty; the merchandise was dull and more than half the lights were out.  In the end, his "eyes burned with anguish and anger," because he realized how foolish he had been and felt embarrassed.

For the narrator, the word Araby conjures up exotic visions of all that is missing in his daily life: color, wealth, beauty, romance, and mystery. These feelings are especially strong when the concept of Araby illuminates his reveries about Mangan's sister:

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.

Just the word itself draws the narrator out of his own drab life into one of rich and exciting possibilities.

To answer this question we have to understand what the story "Araby" by James Joyce is about and what part the titular bazaar plays in the story's theme.

The story "Araby" is a type of hero's quest. The narrator, who lives in a somber neighborhood in Dublin, is infatuated with a girl who lives across the street, identified only as Mangan's sister. However, he is too bashful and intimidated to tell her how he feels. He is unexpectedly given an opening when he and the girl have a short conversation about the Araby bazaar. She explains that she cannot go, and the narrator replies that if he goes, he will bring her back something.

The title "Araby" identifies the destination of his quest. From that moment, his objective is to surmount all obstacles, make his way to the Araby bazaar, and return with something special that he can give as a gift to Mangan's sister. In the end, the narrator's uncle comes home late and gives him the money to go, but by the time the narrator reaches the bazaar, it is closing and what he sees falls far short of his grand expectations. His quest thus ends in bitter disappointment. The Araby bazaar, then, represents a tantalizing goal that the narrator strives for but is ultimately unable to attain.

Before he tries and fails, the narrator envisions the Araby bazaar as a wondrous and enchanting place. As Joyce writes:

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.

A scholar of Joyce named Stephanie Rains, writing in the DublinJames Joyce Journal of the James Joyce Research Center explains that the Araby Bazaar was a major event that happened yearly in Dublin in the mid-1890s.

The Araby Bazaar was, in reality, one of the largest public spectacles held in Dublin in the late nineteenth century. Attended by 92,052 visitors, it filled the large indoor and outdoor spaces of the RDS (the Royal Dublin Society Arena) for over a week, with elaborate stage-set backdrops, a wide range of goods for sale, multiple restaurants, bars, fireworks displays...

Thus, we can see that Joyce based the bazaar in his story on an actual grandiose event that took place yearly in Dublin. When we consider the scale and mystical quality of the destination the narrator attempts to reach and the emotional value of the object that he is trying to procure at it, we better understand his heartbreak when he fails at his quest.