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
Chinese mythology on earth, and that adequate records are kept about the process. One example being Yánluó the wáng ("King Yanluo"). Various functions are said to be performed by minor officials and their minions, such as Ox-Head and Horse-Face, humanoid devils with animal features. The functions performed in Diyu tend to focus on punishment by torture according to the crimes committed during life, weighed against any merits earned through good deeds through a process of judgment. In some versions of mythology or Chinese folk religion, the souls are re-incarnated after being given the Drink of Forgetfulness by Meng Po. Much mythology involves