In short, he found that his daydreams were childish, and that the humdrum monotony of life in northern Dublin was real and adult. Sarty Snopes, on the other hand, is conflicted between what he believes to be right internally, and the pressures upon this belief from his external reality. Essentially, he steps into manhood in a similar manner as the narrator in "Araby," but instead of being consumed by romantic visions of love, Sarty is convinced in the existence of justice or right and wrong. In many other settings, this belief would not create a conflict, however, Sarty's father is a relatively nefarious character; he resents those who possess more than him, takes affront easily, and retaliates in petty as well as in criminal ways. Yet, of course, Sarty is bound by blood to his father -- which Abner reminds him of on a number of occasions. Abner calls this "The old fierce pull of the blood," (Faulkner). This presents a conflict that Sarty is not, initially, ready to deal with. This pull leaves Sarty conflicted through the majority of the story, and causes him to sometimes sympathize with his father and other times to act to stymie his actions.

Sarty first acts on his father's behalf after the first court hearing, in which his father was accused of a barn burning and found innocent, despite his actual guilt. Sarty spills his own blood in a fight defending his father -- a highly symbolic event. Later, after Abner is told by de Spain that he could never hope to earn the money that the rug was worth, Sarty again sympathizes with his father: "His father looked at him -- the inscrutable face, the shaggy brows beneath which the gray eyes glinted coldly. Suddenly the boy went toward him, fast, stopping also, suddenly. 'You done the best you could!' he cried," (Faulkner). Yet, as the story progresses, his father's repeatedly demonstrated disgust for all that Sarty associates with truth and justice gradually...

Ultimately, this manifests itself in Sarty's attempt to warn the de Spains that Abner would burn down their barn. Sarty's realization that his mother and aunt actually agree with his point-of-view regarding justice aids the boy in making the choice to act against his father. The boy's initiation into adulthood, however, comes when he realizes that his attempts to uphold the ideals of justice actually resulted in the death of his father at the hands of de Spain. Sarty realizes that his attempts to uphold his inner ideals cost him the external life he was familiar with; so he comes to appreciate his father, not for what he was, but for what he could have been: "Father, My father, he thought, "He was brave!" he cried suddenly, aloud but not loud, no more than a whisper," (Faulkner).
Each of these stories tells the tale of a young boy being introduced to adulthood by having his innermost conceptions of truth coming into conflict with the very real circumstances of his life. Sarty comes to realize that although truth and justice may be valuable ideals, they are not the only principles that matter in the real world. Similarly, the narrator of "Araby" comes to realize that a life of dull and ceaseless responsibility is more of a reality than a life of exotic love and excitement. So, although the specific lessons that each boy learns is undeniably different, they both have their childhood analogously stripped of them by coming into contact with an external world that fails to adhere nicely with the world they had imagined as children.