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
Day of the Dead Mexico. It is served cold and quite sweet with a lot of ice. The ruby-red beverage is called hibiscus tea in English-speaking countries and called "agua de Jamaica" (water of Jamaica) in Spanish. In Belize, Day of the Dead is practiced by people of the Yucatec Maya ethnicity. The celebration is known as "Hanal Pixan" which means "food for the souls" in their language. Altars are constructed and decorated with food, drinks, candies, and candles put on them. "Día de las Ñatitas" ("Day of the Skulls") is a festival celebrated in La Paz, Bolivia, on May 5. In pre-Columbian times