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 generally said to be inhabited by souls of the dead (see hun and po. Inhabited by souls of dead humans and various supernatural beings this subterranean hell is known by various names, including Diyu or the Yellow Springs. In more historically recent mythology, this subterranean land is generally described as somewhat similar to the ideas about the land above land above. It possesses a hierarchical government bureaucracy, centered in the capital city of Youdu. The rulers are various kings, whose duties include making sure that the souls of dead humans are correctly placed according to the merits of their life