#8220;light” that he didn’t realize that it wasn’t love that he felt but, again, it was simply an adolescent infatuation or fantasy romance. As we have seen, Joyce uses the contrast of light and dark throughout the story as a way to reinforce the main theme and characters. The dark disillusion the boy experiences is all part of the reality of growing up, as is the infatuation that he had for Mangan’s sister and the light that he saw from fantasy. The boy is no longer young and naive, he realizes that he was “a creature driven and derided by vanity" (Joyce, 19). He loved Mangan’s sister so much that he was going to buy her a present to win her affections, but he didn’t realize that he meant nothing to her and probably never would. Perhaps as he “gazed up into the darkness” (Joyce, 19), he experienced the painful empty feeling many adults find in life when a relationship ends. In the boys mind, he was having a romance with Mangan’s sister, but he was essentially clueless the whole time as to how insignificant he really was in her eyes. Through “Araby," Joyce shows how we all get ideas about how things are or will be and fantasize about those dreams even if they are not real. Then, upon being confronted with the darkness of reality we feel disappointed with ourselves because things didn't work out as expected. Therefore, as Joyce started the beginning of the story in darkness he so ends it in darkness with a “voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out” (Joyce, 19). The boy has no choice but to face the reality that is his life because his escape, his light, is gone: extinguished by darkness of reality....
