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
Barge of the Dead travel to Gre'thor on a barge steered by a ferryman". Religious studies scholars Ross Kraemer, William Cassidy, and Susan L Schwartz interpreted the representation of Gre'thor and Klingon spirituality as borrowing from Norse and Greek mythology, specifically the crossing of the rainbow bridge Bifröst or the river Styx. Exploring the influence of the Greek story of Odysseus (Latin: Ulysses) on "Star Trek: Voyager", the Classical philologist Otta Wenskus points to Siren-like creatures who call out with the voices of those loved by those on the barge. Though the motif of a barge and ferryman is not present in Homer's portrayal