Discuss the theme of the quest in Araby.

The narrator of the story, a boy entering adolescence, wants to experience more than his humdrum life in Dublin. He describes his surroundings as bleak. His house is on a dead end (which he calls a "blind" end) and faces "brown" houses, reflecting how his life seems drab and dead ended. His home is filled with musty air, and he plays in muddy lanes.
When he sees Mangan's older sister, he becomes enchanted with her, and when she asks him about going to the bazaar, Araby, he is equally enchanted. She can't go, so he promises to bring her something if he can.
Getting to Araby becomes the narrator's quest and becomes conflated with his adoration of Mangan's sister. Both represent a more exotic, alluring world, one he wants to escape into. He dreams of Araby, which seems to represent all that is opposite from his dull life. He states,

The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me.

The narrator's quest to find something different and better through Araby fails. He gets there late, as it is closing, and realizes it is just another dusty, tacky place in Dublin, not different at all from what he knows. His "eyes burn . . . with anguish and anger" at the realization he is chasing a fantasy.
His quest is unfulfilled but represents a longing in the human soul for a life that is nobler and more exalted than the everyday.