A Supermarket in California carried the dead into the underworld, across the river Styx. The River Lethe was a different river in the underworld, which caused those who drank its waters to experience complete forgetfulness. The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life. In "Story Line", Ian Marshall suggests that the poem is written to show the differences in American life depicted by Whitman and that which faces Ginsberg in the 1950s: "It's the distance of a century—with Civil War and the 'triumph' of the Industrial Revolution and Darwinism and Freud
Babylon 5: The River of Souls Babylon 5: The River of Souls The River of Souls is the third feature-length film set in the "Babylon 5" universe. It was originally broadcast on November 8, 1998 on TNT, as one of two films shown over the 1998–1999 season to fill in the gap between the fifth season of "Babylon 5" and the first season of the spin-off series "Crusade". After a short absence from "Babylon 5", Michael Garibaldi returns to the station to meet with a person in his employ. An archaeologist in search of a means of immortality brings his most recent find to "Babylon 5"