How does the setting progress the story of "Araby"?

Think about the metaphors of blindness and silence Joyce uses to describe where these characters live; the street is "blind," the rooms airless, someone has just died. The only life and color that is introduced into this boy's world comes through his awareness of a girl's braid of hair. Where she is, is light and sound; everywhere else is cast in shadow. There is promising activity, but it slows up again while he has to wait, bored and impatient, for his uncle to return home. He gets his money, gets on a train; the train moves too slowly, and when he gets to the mystical Araby fair, the place is closing down, being plunged into darkness and silence, as is the boy. The story begins with the metaphor of darkness and silence, and ends on the same note, with a twist. Now the protagonist is not just aware of how colorless his world is, he is also disgusted with himself for his vanity; it is a sin. The background Joyce alludes to, but only briefly paints, is the world of Irish Catholicism, where a young man in the throes of his first real crush, is nonetheless surrounded by a claustrophobic, self-absorbed world where the "decent" inhabitants all know each other's business, and watch, silently, while life passes them by. The narrator knows he will be one of them now, since he has let himself down. He dreamed a grand dream, and could not deliver on its promise.