He grew up in the surf of a dying city and became an individual sensitive to the fact that the vibrancy of his city receded, leaving the faintest echoes of romance, a residue of empty piety and symbolic memories of an active concern for God and humanity that no longer exists. Although the young boy cannot fully understand it intellectually, he feels that his environment has become malformed and ostentatious. He is at first as blind as his surroundings, but Joyce prepares us for his eventual insightful awakening by softening his carelessness with an unconscious rejection of the spiritual stagnation of his community. By hitting Araby, the boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist outside of his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and realizes his self-deception, describing himself as "a creature driven and ridiculed by vanity", a vanity of his own (Joyce). This, by nature, represents Joyce's archetypal epiphany, a small but definitive moment after which life is no longer quite the same. This epiphany, in which the boy experiences a dream despite the unpleasant and material, comes to its inevitable conclusion, with the unique sensation of the disintegration of life. At the moment of his realization, the narrator realizes that he is able to better understand his particular situation, but, unfortunately, this