Cranes

How does symbol of the hand or the cranes reveal the meaning of the story?

• So--what is the meaning of the story?
• How does the symbol function to help reveal the meaning?

In Cranes the meaning of the story is that couples that are happy together die together and they will take their lives together. I believe that the meaning of the story is revealed through the use of the cranes. Throughout the story the couple is sitting in their car watching these cranes that are strolling on the shoreline. Then the husband proceeds to tell his wife that cranes mate for life, and that they are going extinct because of that to which his wife tells him that she believes in mating for life. This causes the reader to believe that there is symbolism in the fact that this woman and her husband have been married for basically her whole life. Therefore, she is relating the cranes to their own love story because they both mate for life. Also, one other part that I deemed extremely symbolic was towards the end after the woman laid her head on her husbands shoulders, he said that the cranes "plunged upward" like the souls lifting upward after they die.