One of the central themes of the play relates to an idea of the universality of the human life cycle. This notion is conveyed and explored on several levels, from direct commentary to the choice of the set elements. 

The actual set is largely devoid of detail. This helps to make Grover's Corners a representative town. It is "every town" on stage while it is also given some specific description in the text of the play. 

The Stage Manager describes Grover's Corners in language that finds a balance between the specific and the general, helping here also to render the town as a universal example of a small town. Later remarks by the Stage Manager further define the theme of the life cycle, as he introduces the play's second act. 

In addition to the comments made by the Stage Manager regarding the play's interest in daily life, marriage, and death (as a broad interest in the universal cycles of life), other characters are situated either in representative situations or allowed to make comments on marriage and death. 

Our Town is concerned with the great and continuing cycle of life; out of life comes death and from death comes life. This cycle is man's closest understanding of eternity, his finest artistic expression of what he senses to be a mission and a purpose.

The wedding is particularly symbolic in the play as it is circumscribed by commentary by the Gibbs and Webb families and the Stage Manager. 

The marriage of George and Emily is representative of all weddings, as the Stage Manager intimates:

I've married over two hundred couples in my day Do I believe in it? I don't know. M ... marries N . . millions of them. The cottage, the g-cart, the Sunday-afternoon drives in the Ford, the first rheumatism, the grandchildren, the second rheumatism, the deathbed, the reading of the will,... Once in a thousand times it's interesting.

Marriage is specifically noted as being a part of life and a universal condition, fitting into the cycle of life as a major element, shared across the generations.