Through first-person narration, the reader is immersed at the start of the story in the drab life that people live on North Richmond Street, which seems to be illuminated only by the verve and imagination of the children who, despite the growing darkness that comes during the winter months, insist on playing "until [their] bodies glowed".

Even though the conditions of this neighbourhood leave much to be desired, the children's play is infused with their almost magical way of perceiving the world, which the narrator dutifully conveys to the reader: Our shouts echoed in the silent street.

On one rainy evening, the boy secludes himself in a soundless, dark drawing-room and gives his feelings for her full release: "I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: O love!

By the time he actually speaks to her, he has built up such an unrealistic idea of her that he can barely put sentences together: "When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer.

But the narrator recovers splendidly: when Mangan's sister dolefully states that she will not be able to go to Araby, he gallantly offers to bring something back for her.

[6] Among later writers influenced by "Araby" was John Updike, whose oft-anthologized short story "A&P" is a 1960s American reimagining of Joyce's tale of a young man, lately the wiser for his frustrating infatuation with a beautiful but inaccessible girl.

Her allure has excited him into confusing his emergent sexual impulses for those of honor and chivalry, and brought about disillusionment and a loss of innocence.