How does setting contribute to the story?

Place and story are closely integrated in "Araby." The alleyway, the busy commercial street, the open door of Mangan’s house, the room in back where the priest died, the way to school—all are parts of the locations that shape the life and consciousness of the narrator. Before the narrator goes to Araby, it is his thoughts about this exotic, mysterious location that crystallize for him his adoration of Mangan’s sister, who is somehow locked into an "Eastern enchantment" (paragraph 12) of devotion and unfulfilled love. At the story’s end the lights are out, the place is closing down, and the narrator recognizes Araby as a symbol of his own lack of reality and unreachable hopes. Seemingly, all his aims are dashed by his adolescent lack of power and by the drunken and passive-aggressive uncle.