Araby is a story that takes place on a quiet street, where kids are kids and families are normal families. The narrator would play in the street with his friends, as kids" do, meanwhile adoring a girl, as boys do. I consider the main idea of the story to be that boys will do things they would normally not do, and act in ways they normally would not act, while forgetting about what they used to do, because of a girl, which just is not right. .
In this story the narrator is infatuated with a girl. He sees her every day, but they never speak. On the day that they do speak, she explains why she can't go to the Araby bazaar, and he promises that if he goes he will bring her back something. From this day on, his every waking and sleeping moment was bombarded with thoughts of her and thoughts of Araby. He just had to go. He petitioned his uncle for approval to go to the bazaar, and then on the day he was to go, he waited and waited as his aunt told him he may have to wait another day, his uncle finally came home drunk and his aunt told his uncle to give him some money, then he went off to the bazaar by train. .
The narrator ends up feeling disillusioned at the end of the story because he stopped to think about why he was even at the bazaar, and realizes he has been acting on the impulses of adoration for a girl. .
The fact that he waited for hours for his uncle to come home and give him money so that he could take a long train trip to the bazaar only to be harassed by a teenage sales girl and almost spend all of his money on a present for a girl who has only talked to him once accounts for his disillusioned felling.
The narrator learned that people don't always do things because they want to; however, they do them because of some underlying reason, one that can take over your entire being and make you become someone different. He learned how easy one can go from being a carefree boy playing with his friends, to a love stricken fool, acting on impulse, yearning for the adoration of another.
