English Literature

Undying love and a lasting relationship are the central theme of Peter Meinkes The Cranes symbolized by no less than the whooping cranes. Considered to be already endangered, the whooping cranes are known to be symbols of conservation. In the case of the couple in the story, the whooping cranes perfectly described the kind of love they shared  rare, unique, and lasting. They were able to conserve and protect their relationship as the years went by. Up to their last breath, they were inseparable. Meinke effectively used the whooping cranes to convey the emotions ruling the story. As the whooping cranes stepped delicately away from the commotion, the two characters, nearing lifes end, are about to leave all the chaos in the world for a better, peaceful life after death.

Battle Royal, the first chapter in the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, narrates the story of an unnamed black narrator who needed to suffer much humiliation in front of a white crowd in order to get himself a college scholarship. One symbolic element in the story is the battle royal itself, a survival of the fittest game representing the life of African Americans in the 1940s. Instead of battling against racism and the discrimination, the blacks battled against each other just so they could please the whites who they think are the only ones powerful. Blindfolded in the game, the narrator is also blinded by the conspiracy that if he wants to be successful, he needs to humble himself before the whites, even up to the point of total humiliation. The briefcase which the narrator got after all the mortification is also symbolic in one sense, that it shows how nave the narrator was.

Fear and submission are two of what could be represented by the husbands hand in Colettes The Hand. In the story, not only once or twice was the hand mentioned. It was actually the hand which is the main character. From fascination, awe, and excitement, the wife, staring and reflecting on her husbands hand, eventually realizing how big it was, developed fear and a feeling of weakness and submission. While the wife is really supposed to submit herself to the husband, it doesnt mean that she no longer has power and independence. However, in the story, the big hand of the husband made the wife feel so inferior that she would just succumb to her husband in fear of what his big hands could do.

Discussion
If there is a similarity between the three stories, it would be that they deal with common issues in the society and they deal with them symbolically. The couple in The Cranes, the narrator in Battle Royal, and the wife in The Hand all have their share of submission and loss of innocence. But the more clearly seen commonality is submission. The couple submitted themselves to death and separation, the narrator, to the will and pleasure of the whites, and the wife to the husband (symbolized by the hand). All three authors effectively used symbols to add color, life, and meaning to their stories. Though each story is unique in its own way, they all make readers think and ponder on the issues they present even after reading them.