Whitman chose a bird and Oliver chose the black snake. In literature, birds are used to represent freedom, something positive or transitional. “They represent the human desire to escape gravity, to reach the level of the angel. The bird is often the disembodied human soul, free from its physical constraints” (Birds). Whitman uses the bird to represent the transition from the death of the self to the birth of a poet. The boy is free to be a poet, which is what his soul was always destined to be. In literature, snakes are used to represent fertility, a creative life force, rebirth, transformation, immortality, healing, temptation, chaos, or something negative. In literature, the color black is used to represent evil, fear, death or something negative. Oliver used the black snake because most people are afraid of snakes; Most people wouldn't want to stop their car to pick up a snake on the road and carry it to safety like they would deer, cats, or dogs. Oliver wanted the reader to realize that a person should always treat anything with care, love, and compassion, no matter what or who they are and no matter how good or bad they think they are. Oliver wanted people to realize that all life is sacred. The second difference between Whitman's poems and Oliver's is the way the characters arrived at an epiphany regarding death. In Out of the Cradle Endless Rocking, the boy initially does not have an epiphany about death after the bird disappears and never returns; he finally gets an epiphany when the sea whispers something to him: "Do not tarry, do not hurry, it whispered to me all night, and very clearly before dawn, it uttered to me in chatter the low and delicious word death" (Whitman 76) . In The Black Snake, the narrator has an epiphany surrounding death the moment the snake dies and they leave; they didn't need to show anything else either